Vincent-Marie Viénot de Vaublanc, 1st baron Viénot de Vaublanc and of the EmpireMade a baron on 19 December 1809 as prefect of Moselle. (; 2 March 1756 – 21 August 1845), known as the Count de Vaublanc (Comte de Vaublanc, ),From 1813 onwards. "Vaublanc a été fait chevalier de l’Empire le 28 novembre 1809, baron le 19 décembre 1809 et comte en 1813."Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny, Bibliographie critique des mémoires sur la Restauration écrits ou traduits en français, Librairie Droz, 1988, p. 251. was a French royalist politician, official, writer and artist. He was a deputy for the Seine-et-Marne department in the French Legislative Assembly, served as president of the same body, and from 26 September 1815 to 7 May 1816, he was Minister of the Interior.
His political career had him rubbing shoulders with Louis XVI, Napoleon, the Count of Artois (the future Charles X), and finally Louis XVIII. He was banished and recalled four times by different regimes, never arrested, succeeding each time in regaining official favour. In a long and eventful career, he was successively a monarchist deputy during the Revolution and under the Directoire, an exile during the Terror, a deputy under Napoleon, Minister of the Interior to Louis XVIII and eventually, at the end of his political career, a simple ultra-royalist deputy.
He is remembered now for the fiery eloquence of his speeches, and for his controversial reorganisation of the Académie Française in 1816 while Minister of the Interior. A man of order, he was a moderate supporter of the Revolution of 1789 and ended his political life under the Restoration as a radical counterrevolutionary.
Military education under the Ancien Régime
Born and raised at Fort-Dauphin, Saint-Domingue (now Fort-Liberté, Haiti), into an aristocratic family from Burgundy, he was the eldest son of Vivant-François Viénot de Vaublanc, commanding officer of Fort Saint-Louis in Fort-Dauphin. He saw metropolitan France for the first time at the age of seven.
After military education at the Prytanée National Militaire in La Flèche, and at the École Militaire in Paris from 1770 to 1774, he was decorated with the Order of Saint Lazarus (before he had even set foot outside the school) by the Comte de Provence, the future Louis XVIII, Grand Master of the Order.
He was admitted as second-lieutenant to the Régiment de la Sarre, which was controlled by the Duc de Liancourt from 1776 to 1782, and in which his uncle Charles was lieutenant-colonel. He was garrisoned successively at Metz, at Rouen and at Lille, before obtaining for Saint-Domingue to attend to family affairs.Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, ed. Michaud (supplément page 170)
There he married one Mademoiselle de Fontenelle, and returned to France in 1782 with a daughter. He purchased the office of for Dammarie-les-Lys, near Melun, and a house in the region, giving his profession as gentleman-farmer.
The responsibility of his station was to act as arbiter in legal disputes which involved points of honour, and this permitted him to make the acquaintance of a number of aristocrats in the region. It also gave him the time to study agriculture, literature and the arts.
Political career during the French Revolution
Convocation of the French States-General (1789–1791) Seduced at first by the new ideas of the Revolution, he threw himself into a political career by becoming an aristocratic member of the bailliage of Melun in 1789. He was elected secretary of this assembly, under its president M. de Gouy d'Arcy, of Melun, a fellow member of the famous explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville. The Assembly was assigned the task of drawing up a list of grievances to be submitted to the King and naming a deputy to the States-General. Vaublanc supported Fréteau de Saint-Just, an elected for the of Melun who was to become a member of the National Constituent Assembly.Mémoires sur la Révolution de France et recherches sur les causes qui ont amené la Révolution de 1789 et celles qui l'ont suivie (tome I, livre II, chapitre II, page 182), Chez G-A. Dentu, imprimeur-libraire, rue d'Erfurth, n 1 bis, Paris, 1833.
In 1790, Vaublanc became a member and later president of the conseil général of Seine-et-Marne. This gave him the right to preside over the administrative directory of this .Mémoires (tome I, livre II, chapitre IV, page 256)
Losing ground to the Jacobins under the Legislative Assembly (1791) After the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the electoral colleges reconvened to elect new deputies. Vaublanc was elected president of that of Seine-et-Marne. On 1 September 1791, he was elected deputy of Seine-et-Marne at the Legislative Assembly, the eighth out of eleven, by 273 votes out of 345.Dictionnaire des parlementaires français depuis le 1er mai 1789 jusqu'au 1er mai 1889 publié sous la direction de MM. Adolphe Robert, Edgar Bourloton et Gaston Cougny, Paris, Bourloton Editeur, 1889–1891, 5 vol.; in-8. He was one of the few to have any political experience, notably on the question of the Antilles, in an assembly composed essentially of political novices. Faithful to their promises, not one former member of the Constituent Assembly had been admitted.
A leader of the Club des Feuillants (1791–1792) From this point on, he took the name of Viénot-Vaublanc, which he retained until the end of the First Empire in 1814.
From the very moment of his appearance, he made himself conspicuous by delivering a speech which denounced the humiliating terms on which Louis XVI was to be received by the Assembly the next day.Mémoires (tome I, livre III, chapitre I, page 285)According to custom, a chair in the form of a throne, covered with gold and fleur de lys, was to be reserved for the King. Couthon proposed to give him a chair similar to the President's; Grangeneuve asked that the words Sires and Majesté "which are the inventions of servility, be replaced by Roi des Français, a much more attractive appellation." A motion was voted on, which resulted in the King's chair being lowered by one step. When Louis XVI threatened to boycott the Assembly, a compromise was reached and the seat of the King was lowered. See Feuillant et Girondins août 1791 - 20 avril 1792 by Dom H Leclerc, Paris, 1940, Letouzet et Ane, 87 boulevard Raspail. As a result of these statements, he was elected president from 15 November to 28 November 1791 by the assembly, the majority of whom were royalist.L'ami des citoyens, numéro 13, 16 November 1791, imprimerie Demonville.
On 29 November, Vaublanc was assigned the task of composing a message to the King, asking him to withdraw his veto of the decree of 9 November, a decree designed to slow the massive emigrations (then encouraged by the priests and the nobility) by threatening reprisals against German princes who continued to offer refuge to the armies of French noblemen (such as those of the Comte d'Artois, and of the Prince of Condé). The assembly was so pleased with his work that they asked him to read it to the King personally. Louis XVI replied that he would take the request into serious consideration, and, several days later, personally announced his decision on the matter.
On this occasion Vaublanc made a name for himself by informing the assembly "that the King had made the first bow, and he had only returned the gesture."Biographie universelle (supplément page 171) The anecdote reveals the shift in constitutional forces: the legislative power, embodied in the Legislative Assembly, was clearly ascendant over the executive, embodied in Louis XVI, who was now no more than the "King of the French" or .
Vaublanc now sided with the constitutional monarchists and joined the (dubbed the Club des Feuillants) with 263 other colleagues out of the 745 deputies. He became one of its principal figures, along with Jacques Claude Beugnot, Mathieu Dumas and Jaucourt, after the departure of Barnave and C. Lameth. He vigorously opposed revolutionary governments and was characterised by his loyalty to the King, his opposition to repressive measures against rebellious priests and to laws confiscating the goods of émigrés, and his denunciation of the massacres at Avignon. Debate became steadily more extreme. The crowds attending these debates often shouted at him (as they did at Charles de Lacretelle) "À la lanterne!"Charles de Lacretelle in "Dix ans d'épreuve sous la Révolution" (1842) Nicolas de Condorcet, his hostile colleague in the Legislative Assembly in 1791, said of him: "There are, at all meetings, these noisy air-headed orators, who produce a great effect through the constant repetition of redundant inanities."Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXeme siècle edited by Pierre Larousse. Brissot, one of the chief Girondists in the Legislative Assembly, nicknamed him bicaméristes.Mémoires (tome I, page 338)
The fall of the monarchy (1792) In 1792, he defended the Comte de Rochambeau before the Assembly and obtained his acquittal. Following the majority of the Assembly who sought to abolish slavery in the Antilles, he nevertheless took aim in a speech of 20 March at those hardline abolitionists like Brissot who knew little of life in the colonies and of the risks of civil war given the diversity of ethnicities and social conflicts in Saint-Domingue. He supported the law of 4 April 1792 which granted citizenship to all "coloured men and free Negroes". At the meeting of 10 April, he declared himself in favour of the progressive abolition of the slave trade throughout the colonies, following the examples of Denmark and Great Britain.
On 3 May 1792, he supported the proposition of Beugnot which provoked an accusatory decree from Marat and the abbé Royou, and on 8 May, at the Assembly, he addressed the Jacobins in these terms: "You wish, sirs, to save the Constitution; and yet, you cannot do so without beating down factions and the factious, without setting everything besides the rule of law to one side, without dying with the Law and for the Law, and I declare that I shall not be the last who shall die with you, in order to see it preserved; believe it, sirs...."Dictionnaire des parlementaires français
On 18 June, he was elected a member of the (Committee of Twelve), created by Marat to examine the State of France and to propose means of preserving the Constitution, liberty, and the Empire. He gave his resignation on 30 July.
The defence of La Fayette Following the events of 20 June 1792, La Fayette arrived in Paris on 28 June, hoping to convince the King to leave in order to head the armies assembled in the north. At the head of the National Guard, he tried to close down the political clubs, but his attempt failed, partly because of the Court's refusal to support him. In reaction to this, the left wing of the Assembly decided to charge Lafayette with treason.
On 8 August 1792, ill at ease and shocked by the course of events, Vaublanc delivered a speech before the Assembly, in which he defended, vigorously, and courageously, against the lively opposition of the Jacobins who dominated the Assembly and of the man in the street, General La Fayette, who stood accused of violating the Constitution. He later claimed to have succeeded (with the help of Quatremère de Quincy) in rallying 200 undecided deputies to his position. La Fayette was acquitted, by 406 votes out of 630.Mémoires (tome II, page 202)