Charles-Joseph Bresson

Biography

Wire of a head of division at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Charles-Joseph Bresson was intended very early for the diplomatic career. Hyde de Neuville, Minister for the Navy of Charles X, charged it with a mission in Colombia.

In 1830, it was charged to notify with the Suisse the accession with the throne of Louis-Philippe I {{er}} and was then named first secretary with the embassy of France with London, near Talleyrand. It was one of the two diplomats charged to make accept by the Belgian government the decisions of the Conference of London, and discharged this mission with skill. It led then, with the satisfaction of the king, the negotiations for marriage of the new king of the Belgians, Léopold I {{er}}, with the princess Louise of Orleans. This success put it at the roof favor at Louis-Philippe.

In 1833, it was named person in charge with Berlin with the title of Ambassador plenipotentiary. It restores the relations, then extremely compromised, between France and the Prussia, preventing that this one does not approach the Russia completely. The November 10th 1834, it was named Foreign Minister in transitory the ministry Maret, but it did not have even time to join the capital which it had already fallen. It thus remained in Berlin where it dealt with arranging the marriage (1837) of the royal Prince with the princess Helene de Mecklembourg-Schwerin, of a allied family to the royal family of Prussia.

After this diplomatic success, the king named it Pair France (May 6th 1839). With the Room of the pars, Bresson defended with heat the project of fortifications of Paris (1841), to which the king carried a very particular interest.

It was then sent like Ambassadeur to Madrid and played a key role in the difficult negotiation of the Spanish marriages (August 28th 1846), i.e. the marriage of the queen of Spain, Isabelle II, with her cousin the duke of Cadiz, and, in parallel, the marriage of the duke of Montpensier with a sister of Isabelle II, the princess Louise Ferdinande de Bourbon. In this business, the interests of France were vigorously opposed to those of the the United Kingdom, and the count Bresson had to thwart the sometimes unfair operations of the ambassador of England in Spain, to sir Henry Bulwer. In reward of this success, his/her son was named large of Spain of 1st class with the title of duke of Holy-Isabelle .

The count Bresson was recalled in 1847. He spent a few weeks to London then was named ambassador with Naples. But it had just taken its station which it committed suicide by slicing the throat with a razor, probably following domestic sorrows.

Source

Adolphe Robert and Gaston Cougny, Dictionary of the French Members of Parliament , Paris, Dourloton, 1889

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