Antoine de Sartine

Antoine Raymond Juan Gualbert Gabriel de Sartine , count d' Alby (Barcelona, July 12th 1729 - Tarragone, September 7th 1801) was a French politician occupying the stations of general Lieutenant of police force (1759-1774), then of Ministre for the Navy.

Its origins

His/her father, Antoine de Sartine or Sardine, middle-class man of Lyon, wire of grocer become financial, had been established in Spain at the beginning of the XVIIIe century when he enjoyed the favors of Philippe V. Initially charged with the supply of the French troops during the War of succession of Spain, it ends up sitting at the council of finances of the king, who granted the title of knight to him, and was named as Intendant in Catalogne. He had married Catherine Wilts, countess of Alby, lady-in-waiting of the queen of Spain, girl of Charles Wilts Secretary of State for the Kingdom of Ireland.

First French years

Antoine Raymond de Sartine was sent in formation near Charles Colabeau, business man and friend of his father. He obtains letters of nationality in 1752, buys the load of criminal lieutenant in Châtelet the same year, is anobli in 1755, and finally wife, in 1759, the grand-daughter of Charles Colabeau, Marie-Anne Hardy of Plessis. After that, seen well in court, it is named successively with the offices of general Lieutenant of police force (of November 22nd in the month of May 1774), of Master of the requests (9-12-1759), and a few years later of director of the Bookstore (1763 - 1774). In 1767, it is made advise of State.

The general lieutenancy of Police force

Administrator and skilful policy, Sartine taken with arm excel the body the problems of hygiene, provisioning and police force in general at the time of his lieutenancy. Papers with the hand lend occult operations to him, showing it to have maintained a " cabinet noir" and numbers of works revolutionary were to suppose to him a spy network in the capital. Thus, for Manual Pierre:

“When the Sartine libertine continued the citizens jusques under their guardian roofs which it épiait even the ashamed secrecies their nights, it was only to brighten a king, plus libertine still, of all nudities of the defect; it was to provide to its Master examples and excuses, like if its authority and its conscience had needed for it! ” ( the Police force of Paris revealed , Paris Garnery, 1791,2 flight, in - 8. t. II, p. 86)

The Secretary of State to the Navy

Near to the clan Choiseul, it is named with the Secrétariat of State to the Navy (1774 - 1780). It modernized and rationalized the Navy, was interested of close at the foundries, by creating in particular that of the Indret. He entrusted to the knight of Fleurieu the direction of the ports and the royal arsenals. He thus played a big role lasting the war of American independence in which he made profitable his experiment of the use of the spies acquired in the Police force. The historians evoke a “Sartine phase” which would have preceded a “phase Castries” in the chronology by military operations.

In 1780, shown by Necker of diversion in the cases of the State - one speaks about a sum of twenty million - he is disgraced on August 14th of the same year by Maurepas.

At the beginning of the Revolution, anxious of the turning of the events, he emigrated in Spain where he died without re-examining France. His/her son, Charles-Louis-Antoine de Sartine, remained in Paris, was to die on the scaffold the 29 meadow year II (June 17th, 1794).

The Lambinet Museum in Versailles preserves the portrait of Antoine de Sartine by Joseph Boze paints in 1787.

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