Charles Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu

Biography

Entered early to the service, it was attached to the staff of the Count de Rochambeau when this one ordered the auxiliary troops sent to the help of the Americans in the Guerre of the independence of the United States. The baron de Montesquieu was distinguished in several circumstances from this war, and was with the number of the French who accepted, after the triumph of the American cause, the decoration of the Ordre of Cincinnatus.

Returned in France, it was made colonel as a second of the Régiment of Bourbonnais, and then colonel-commander of that of Cambrésis. It was one of the officers most distinguished from the French Army when the French revolution of 1789 burst. It showed of them as of the beginning one of the most marked adversaries. The soldiers of its regiment being put, as all the others, in a state of rebellion against their chiefs, it took the party to withdraw from their attacks while emigrating in the first months of 1792, and made the first campaigns of a war which was to be so long and so loophole, under the orders of the Duc of Chastre, then under those of the Duc of Laval-Montmorency. In the Forwarding of Quiberon, it belonged to the staff of Lord Moira, and it escaped greatest disaster the than wiped the cause of the royalists.

Returned in England, it had happiness to be there distinguished by one from the most honourable families from this country, and it married the single heiress of it, which returned it owner of a considerable fortune and made it give up for always turning over to France. It would have however returned there easily under the directorial capacity, at the time where one striped without much sorrow those which could offer some money sacrifices or to be made support by powerful men. A quite serious consideration seemed even to make him a duty of it: his/her parents and co-heirs in the famous ground of Brède could not return in their rights without radiation and the preliminary return of the baron, whose portion was seized by the republic. They requested it vainly on several occasions; France of this time was repugnant to him so much so that he did not want to return there, even at the price of his fortune. All that it could make not to deprive its family of it was to offer to the republic, for what returned to him in the succession of its grandfather, all the new manuscripts of the famous author of the Spirit of the laws , and it sent these manuscripts in France.

The grandson of famous Montesquieu did not remain about it less not maintained on the list. Ground of Brède remained under sequestration, and manuscripts in hands of its family, which entrusted them later to a lawyer Bordeaux (Laine), which remained agent about it during several years, making useless efforts so that the government accepted finally the exchange suggested. He undertook several voyages to Paris, and consulted enlightened scientists and men who could support his request, inter alia Walckenaer. Not having been able anything to obtain, Laine gained its manuscripts in Bordeaux, from where soon they turned over to England.

It was only at the time of the restoration that the baron de Montesquieu, indicator his former lawyer become minister, believed duty to forget his resentments against the revolution, and brought them back itself to Paris, where it did not doubt that Louis XVIII did not hasten to honor the room with the pars of the name of Montesquieu, and well not decided in this case to make him homage of his invaluable manuscripts. But the baron was still misled in his waiting, and it tested in 1817 mortification to see publishing in its presence the large list or batch of pars intended to decorate in this room, with the liberal opinions, the majority that the ordinance of the September 5th had just made them obtain with the House of Commons. It is conceived that the name of the baron de Montesquieu was not to be reproduced on a similar list. He hastened to turn over to England and gained his manuscripts there, refusing very beautiful proposals which Walckenaer made him to join them to a new edition works of Montesquieu, which, in the hands of the scientist academician and with similar additions, could not miss having a great success, although he was there many useless things, but which had been wisely pruned. Walckenaer looked like the most invaluable part of these new works a Dissertation on Louis XI .

Turned over in his beautiful ground of Bridge-Hall, close Canterbury, the baron de Montesquieu spent the very happy days in his new fatherland, and it died there, without leaving posterity, the July 27th 1824. The Count de Lynch, par of France, which was the friend of its family, published a Notice on the baron de Montesquieu . Paris in-4°, where are, relative with the manuscripts of which we spoke, some inaccurate details.

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