Louis-Mathieu Mole

Biography

Wire of Edouard François Mathieu Mole, adviser with the Parliament of Paris which perishes on the revolutionary scaffold, and of his wife, Marie-Louise de Lamoignon, Louis-Mathieu Molé passed with his mother his first years in Suisse and England. Of return in France in 1796, it finished its traditional studies.

Under the Empire

It had twenty-six years when it began in literature by its Tests from morals and from policy (1806), which had two editions whose second was accompanied by a life of Mathieu Molé (1584-1656), First president of the Parlement of Paris under the Fronde and ancestor of the author. This work, which contained a outraged praise of the imperial institutions, was variously judged. Fontanes, with which Molé had bound in the living room of Mrs. de Beaumont, where it had also met Chateaubriand and Joubert, treated it with much benevolence in the Journal of the Empire and introduced the young writer to.

Mole knew an exceptionally fast rise: it was named listener with the Council of State (February 18th 1806) before being allowed there like Maître requests (June 1806). Rapporteur with the Council of State of the law of exception which the Emperor wanted to enact against the Jews, Molé found the project incompatible with the levelling principles of the French revolution and recommended an official recognition of the Jewish religion, following what the Emperor appointed it imperial police chief in Sanhédrin Jew. He was then prefect of Coast-in Or (November 1806 - 1809), to advise State (1809), managing director of the Ponts and Chaussées (1809), count of the Empire (December 29th 1809) and commander of the Ordre of the Meeting.

Mole was hated by its subordinates who reproached him his mortuary, and often décrié for his ignorance of the technology matters and its lack of administrative experience, but it was extremely in favor near the Emperor. The November 12th 1813, it was him which was charged to propose with the Senate to allot to the Emperor, by a Sénatus-consulte, the nomination of the president of the legislative Body without presentation of candidate. The November 20th 1813, it succeeded Régnier, duke of Massed in the functions of large judge, Minister for the Justice, which it exerted until the April 2nd 1814. With the other ministers, it accompanied the empress Marie-Louise when she went to Blois.

Under the two Restorations

It kept away from the public life under the First Restoration, and it was only as member of the municipal council of Paris which it signed, a few days before the March 20th 1815, the address presented to the king and in which was the sentence: “That we wants this foreigner to soil our ground of its odious presence? ” Napoleon did not hold rigor of it to him and, under the Hundred Days, it found its place with the Council of State like its functions of managing director of the Bridges and Chaussées, having prudently refused the wallets of Justice, the Interior or the Foreign affairs which the Emperor offered to him to be satisfied with this station little compromising. He refused to sign the declaration of the Council of State of the May 25th against the Bourbons that of which, highly blamed by Napoleon, he excused himself by putting forward “that he had not believed to be able to join a proclamation containing this political blasphemy: that Napoleon held his crown of the wish and the choice of French people”. Napoleon named it Pair France the June 2nd, but Molé left for water Plombières, wrote from there to be excused not to sit and awaited the continuation of the events.

Returned in Paris after Waterloo, he protested near Louis XVIII of his “inalterable fidelity”, preserved his armchair at the Council of State and was famous managing director of the Bridges and Chaussées (July 9th 1815) like to the Room of the pars (August 17th 1815). In the lawsuit of the marshal Ney, he voted for the capital punishment. Certain biographers affirm however that it the USA then of its influence to withdraw other victims from the white Terreur.

The marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr military school having passed from the ministry for the Navy to that of the War, the Molé county was named Minister for the Navy and the Colonies the September 12th 1817. He preserved this wallet until the December 28th 1818. It was in particular charged to present to the Room pars, in the session of 1818, the bill on the Freedom of the press. It left the capacity with the duke of Richelieu during dislocation partial of the cabinet consecutive to the elections of Fayette, Manuel and Benjamin Constant. It sat consequently at the Room of the pars with the constitutional royalists and fought several times at the platform the opinions of the extremists. Thus, with the meeting of the March 28th 1826, it spoke the first against the re-establishment of the Droit of seniority, calling upon the moral interests of the family and the financial interests of the State.

Under the monarchy of July

After the Revolution of 1830, the count Molé was called as of the August 11th 1830, on the suggestion of the duke of Broglie, with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in the first ministry for the reign of Louis-Philippe I {{er}}. Without experiment of the diplomacy, but large lord, endowed with the manners of the function and in favor of peace, he worked to make recognize the new mode by the foreign powers. He adopted, not without hesitation, the peaceful principle, expensive with Louis-Philippe, of non-intervention. But, because of its unpopularity and disagreements with his colleagues, it was not maintained in the ministry Laffitte the August 2nd 1830.

When duke of Broglie resigned of Ministry for Foreign Affairs 1834, Thiers suggested with king to call upon Mole him to succeed, but Guizot, which was judged weakened by the departure of his/her friend of the ministry and considered that the entry of Mole to the government would weaken it still more, was opposed to it, that of which Molé wanted to him much.

Charged with forming a new cabinet the September 6th 1836, it took again the wallet of the Foreign affairs with the presidency of the Council, and remained in place until the March 30th 1839. In the forefront of the difficulties whose Thiers left him the heritage, it found the question Swiss and the Affaire the Council. Persuaded that there was nothing truth in the mission of espionage allotted to Conseil, and that the protests of the Swiss diet against the role of France and its king were only one screen warped by the refugees to lose the French ambassador, Molé did not hesitate to stop any diplomatic relation with Switzerland, and the quarrel was alleviated almost at once, the Suisse not having persisted in its complaints.

The plot of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and the attacks unceasingly renewed against the life of the king soon caused new difficulties with the ministry, of which one of the first acts had been the widening of the former ministers of Charles X.

Mole had finally to fight against the coalition formed to reverse it and animated by Thiers and Guizot. In 1837, Thiers engaged the fight about the Spain: he endeavoured to show that the role of the president of the Council with regard to this country had neither glare, nor size; that the destinies of the constitutional monarchy in France related to the maintenance of the throne of Isabelle II in Spain, against were carried out the absolutist of gift Carlos; and that our alliance with the the United Kingdom ordered us to intervene in the Iberian peninsula. Mole opposed to these considerations elasticity terms in which the treaty of quadruple alliance was written, disadvantages of a policy of adventures and the hesitations which its rival had shown, on this same Spanish business, when itself was with the businesses. This argumentation carried the conviction of the Room and made it possible the cabinet to pass this first skirmish.

Following the lawsuits of associated with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte in his attempt at rising of Strasbourg, Molé first of all imagined to make grant to the ministry the right to move away from Paris any dangerous individual, but had, not without mood, to give up this project on the authorities of Duvergier de Hauranne; it presented three bills then: the first, known as “of disjunction”, provided that when the crimes envisaged by certain given provisions would have been committed jointly by civilians and soldiers, the first would be judged normally by the Court of Assizes, but that the seconds would be translated in front of the Conseil of war; the second established a Bagne with the island Bourbon to receive the political deportees; the third threatened of the reclusion whoever would not reveal a plot formed against the life of the king of which it would have been informed. In same time, the government presented a bill of Apanage for the duke of Nemours, like two others tightening one to increase by a million the income of the duke of Orleans and the other to constitute a dowry of a million to the profit of the princess Louise, become queen of the Belgians.

The law of disjunction caused a sharp parliamentary opposition. elder Dupin attacked it with a corrosive liveliness, which supported Delespaul, of Golbery, Nicod. Lamartine defended the project, but Chamaraule, Avoiding, Moreau (of Meurthe), Persil, Chaix of Be-Angel, Berryer fought it. Ultimately, the law was pushed back by 211 votes against 209.

However, the cabinet held good and the law of prerogative was presented. This one did not cause initially a difficulty in the offices of the Room, but caused a storm when it was known of the public. Cormenin wrote one of these poisonous lampoons of which it had been made the speciality. This crisis brought the fall of the first ministry Molé.

After several weeks of cabinet crisis, which showed impossibility of setting up a combination of replacement, Molé was charged to follow one another itself by constituting a new cabinet which took its functions the April 15th 1837. The government was constrained to withdraw the project of prerogative of the duke of Nemours but obtained, as of the April 22nd, the adoption of those concerning the equipment of the duke of Orleans and the dowry of the queen of the Belgians. Mole also negotiated the marriage of the duke of Orleans with the princess Helene de Mecklembourg-Schwerin.

Considering its majority insufficiently solid, Molé obtained from Louis-Philippe, the October 30th 1837, the dissolution of the House of Commons. But the elections of the November 24th did not answer its wishes. The discussion of the address of the new room gave on the carpet the execution of the treaty of the quadruple alliance and brought new debates between Molé and Thiers. The various oppositions redoubled heat against the cabinet: a polemic engaged in the press decided them to act in concert to reverse it.

Louis-Philippe, who had friendship, and even of tenderness for Molé, exhorted it to hold good, comforted it constantly. In August 1838, it made him the distinguished honor go at his place to the Château of Champlâtreux and chair the Council of Ministers it. The scene was immortalisée by a table of Ary Scheffer that the king offered to his head of government.

The coalition employed all the year 1838 to prepare its offensive for the session of 1839. The discussion of the address gave place to a fierce combat especially opposing Molé to Guizot. This fight grows singularly the president of the Council by which defense astonished at the same time its adversaries and its friends. Mole managed to make amend the project of address prepared by the coalition but, the very same day of the vote (March 8th), it gave its resignation to the king. The ministry withdrew the March 30th 1839 when the result of the new legislative elections was known, which were unfavourable for him.

Mole moved away consequently from the foreground of the political life. After beatbeing beaten, with Victor Hugo, by Dupaty, he was elected with the French Academy the February 20th 1840 by 30 votes out of 31 voters to replace the archbishop of Paris, M {{gr.}} of Quélen, the same day when Victor Hugo failed against Flourens; he was accepted the December 30th according to by André Dupin. He voted for Victor Hugo, but he was hostile with Alfred de Vigny; being charged to answer the speech of reception of this last, the January 29th 1846, it made a bitter-sweet speech. It also accepted Tocqueville and Vitet.

In 1844, Adolphe Crémieux having made vote by the Room that “no member of the Parliament could be adjudicator or administrator in the railroad companies to which concessions would be granted”, Molé, which was a chairman of the board of the Company of the East, was aimed: “I will throw to them to the nose all the railroads passed, present and future”, he with Barante wrote.

Its name was several times proposed in several crises and, in February 1848, Louis-Philippe charged it, but in vain, to form a ministry to try to save the monarchy of July.

Under the Second Republic

After the Revolution of 1848, the count Molé was carried candidate with the constituent Assembly by the “old parties” in the department of the the Gironde to replace Lamartine which had chosen the the Seine. Elected official the September 17th 1848, it sat in the rows of the right-hand side, of which it was one of the chiefs. Without often speaking, it did not have of it less influence. He voted against the amendment Grévy on the presidency of the Republic, against the right to work, for the whole of the Constitution, the Rateau proposal, against the amnesty, for the prohibition of the clubs, the appropriations of the Expédition of Rome, against the request of committal for trial of the president and his ministers.

For the presidential election of the December 10th 1848, it had supported openly the candidature of the general Cavaignac: “It saved the nation, which will be able to never forget it”, he with the platform declared the October 26th. Rejoined then with the government of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, it supported with the legislative Parliament, where it was elected the May 13rd 1849 by the department of the Gironde all measurements which announced the agreement of the executive power and the majority: it supported the Expédition of Rome, the Loi Falloux on teaching, was Member of the Commission of the seventeen which prepared the law of the May 31st on the Vote for all, but separated from the prince-president when the policy of the Elysium became contrary with the monarchical interests. He decided against the Coup d'etat of December 2nd, 1851 and belonged to the representatives who met in the town hall of Xe district to raise a protest.

Returned in the private life, he died of an attack of Apoplexie the November 23rd 1855 in his Château of Champlâtreux.

The count Molé had been general adviser of Seine-et-Oise. He was since the October 17th 1837 Grand Cross of the Légion of honor.

Judgments

“It made a career of political, flat like a limanda in front of its Masters and inflated flunkey of a poisonous vanity for its subordinates. For its discharge, it should be said that its ancestors had, as a whole, fact proof of a comparable nature under the Old Mode. ” (Alfred Fierro, Andre Palluel-Guillard, Jean Tulard, History and dictionary of the Consulate and the Empire , Paris, Robert Laffont, coll Books, 1995, p. 959 - ISBN 2-221-05858-5)

“a right judgment, an elocution without relief, but sufficient and sober, much of behavior, the presence of mind and coolness, the skill in the handling of the men, all that gives the practice of the great relations, the experiment of the businesses, a policy learned at the school from the Empire, and consequently the taste of the despotism, but with that a singular facility to yield with the yoke of the circumstances, little rise in the sights, null boldness in the execution, an anxious self-esteem and too easily irritable: here is what Mr. Molé had brought to the businesses in qualities and. ” (quoted by the Dictionary of the French members of Parliament )

References

Sources

Alfred Fierro, Andre Palluel-Guillard, Jean Tulard, History and dictionary of the Consulate and the Empire , Paris, Robert Laffont, coll Books, 1995, p. 959 - ISBN 2-221-05858-5

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