Pierre-Antoine Berryer

Biography

Wire of the lawyer Pierre-Nicolas Berryer (1757 - 1841), Pierre-Antoine Berryer was a rather poor pupil at the Oratoriens of the Collège of Juilly. He intended himself at the ecclesiastical state, but his/her father, who had recognized in him qualities of a speaker, opposed his vocation and made him make its right. It had as a repeater Guillaume de Bonnemant (1747 - 1820), lawyer with Arles and ex-member of the constituent Assembly, and studied the procedure with a solicitor named Normand. Still student, it married, the December 10th 1811, Caroline Gauthier, girl of the administrator of the military vivres of the division of Paris. About the same time, it published a booklet of worms in which it celebrated with enthusiasm the entry in Paris of and Marie-Louise, and began with the bar little time afterwards.

A brilliant lawyer career

Contrary to waitings of his/her father, his beginnings were without glare. As of 1812, it started to post royalist opinions; the military disasters of the end of the reign of Napoleon completed definitively to attach it to the opinions legitimists which it defended during all his life. It engaged in 1815 in the royal volunteers and made, says one, the voyage of Ghent during the Hundred Days.

Under the Second Restoration, it establishes its reputation while defending of the personalities of the Empire. He was assistant of his father and Dupin elder to defend the marshal Ney before the court of the pars, condemned and carried out the December 7th 1815. The following year, he pled in favor of the generals Debelle and Cambronne, which he made escape the capital punishment.

He pled in many businesses of press, defending the newspapers the white Flag , the Journal of DEBATEs , and Daily the . It defended the generals Canuel and Donnadieu, shown excessive violences during the repression of the insurrections respectively of Lyon (1817) and of Grenoble (May 4th 1816). At the time of the lawsuit of the Donnadieu general, it separated completely from the ministry and published against Decazes a very violent report in which it showed the government to have fomented the insurrection. It still represented the interests of Chedel, illegally imprisoned by the prefect of police Jules Anglès, of Nérac, Séguin against Ouvrard. It also defended in front of the Court of Assizes of Paris D Edme Castaing, shown murder of Hippolyte and Auguste Ballet (1823).

In 1826, it represented Lamennais, continued for the Ultramontanisme of its test entitled Of the religion considered in its relationship with the political and social order . The following year, it published a booklet against the ordinance subjecting the small seminars to the inspection of the University.

Under the Monarchy of July, it defended Chateaubriand (1833), imprisoned to have militated in favor of the release of the duchess of Berry, and belonged to the council of defense of the prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte judged in front of the Room of the pars (September 26th - October 6th 1840) after the forwarding of Boulogne-sur-Mer. He pled for the Gazette of France , Daily the , Renovating the , etc But its political career made him neglect the bar so much so that he had to put on sale, the August 6th 1836, his property of Augerville-the-River, which was repurchased by subscription and was returned to him.

Under the Second Empire, it left the political life and returned to the Barreau which named it Bâtonnier in 1854. He pled with glare in the businesses of Célestine Boudet, Mrs. de Caumont the Force (1855) and of Joufosse (1857) and defended Montalembert (1858).

With its oratories qualities, he united a majestic imposing presence and a splendid body, which gave to its speeches a powerful effect with hearing, but partly destroyed with the reading.

The herald of the liberal royalism

Vice-president of the electoral college of the 2nd district of the the Seine since 1822, Berryer was not long in launching out in the policy. After the death of Chabron de Solilhac, deputy of the Haute-Loire, the party legitimist thought of him to replace it; he had just the necessary age (40 years), but it was necessary to come to him to assistance so that it could justify taxable quota of eligibility: with the assistance of his friends, it bought the ground of Augerville-the-River (Loiret) and was, the January 26th 1830, elected with a vast majority by the departmental college of the Haute-Loire.

It approached the platform of the House of Commons for the first time the March 9th 1830, in the discussion of the Adresse of the 221 against the ministry Polignac. In the middle of the applause of the right-hand side, cries and interruptions of the left, it defended the crown cordially and tackled the Lorgeril amendment very highly:

“I am not astonished, concludes it, that, in their painful work, the writers of the project said that they felt condemned to speak with the king a similar language; and me as, more occupied the care of the future as of the resentments of the past, I feel as if I adhered at such an address, my vote would weigh forever on my conscience like one afflicting judgment…”

“Here is a power”, would have said Royer-Collard at the conclusion of this meeting while speaking about the speaker.

Berryer declined which was quoted to him of a ministerial wallet in the Polignac cabinet, was re-elected the July 5th by the 3rd electoral district of the Haute-Loire and, after the Révolution of July, became one of the principal speakers of the opposition. The August 7th, it protested with the House of Commons against the events and disputed that the deputies had quality to deliberate over the vacancy on the throne and to elect a new king. It lent nevertheless the sermen fidelity required by the Charte of 1830, but started a war baited against the Monarchie of July. It opened with the discussion relating to the committal for trial of the former ministers of Charles X and was continued, consequently, on any occasion.

Profiting skilfully, in the interest of its cause, of the revolutionary origin of new monarchy, Berryer undertook da to push it with the extreme consequences of popular sovereignty and claimed, like deputy of the opposition, the application of the jury to the violations of the press laws, the nomination of the mayors by the communes, the abolition of the taxable quota. It supported however the heredity of the peerage.

When the duchess of Berry came to France to organize a royalist insurrection in the Vendée (V. Insurrection royalist in the West of France in 1832), the chiefs of the party legitimist sent Berryer near it to try from of to dissuade it. It met it in an isolated farm and had with it a long maintenance in which it the USA vainly of its eloquence. The duchess persisted in her projects which showed a complete rout. Berryer itself was stopped, led to Nantes of brigade in brigade and put at the secrecy. It was going to be translated before a military commission when the protest about lawyers, by the voice of its barristers president, François Mauguin, made it return in front of bases of Loir-et-Cher which discharged it after a one minute deliberation. Cheers accommodated the reading of the verdict. When the defendant had entered the courtroom, the lawyers had taken off their hats and sworn had inclined themselves in front of him.

Once free, Berryer supported the petitions in favor of the widening of the duchess of Berry and continued her fight with the capacity, for the greatest happiness of the two oppositions, republican and legitimist, whose interests often met and who made sometimes causes common. He was re-elected the June 21st 1834 in three electoral colleges (Marseilles, Toulouse, Yssingeaux). He chose Marseilles where he accepted an enthusiastic reception and was re-elected in 1837 and 1839 in Marseilles and Hazebrouck, and in Marseilles only the March 2nd 1834 and 1846.

He travelled in Germany and, in 1835, returned visit to Charles X and the duke of Angouleme to Prague, and was accepted by the Empereur of Austria. From return in France in 1836, it learned death from Charles X. the November 27th 1843, it belonged to the legitimists chiefs who went to Belgrave Square to London, to swear their fidelity with the count de Chambord. The government attacked it highly and wanted that the Room “faded” this attitude. In the very sharp debate which followed, Berryer, blamed by the Room, ends up giving its resignation and was re-elected, in the middle of the legislature, in 1844.

The Révolution of 1848, to which Berryer had not contributed little, caused him neither sorrow, nor surprised. Once the Monarchie of July reversed the legitimists remained in the opposition and fought their old republican allies. While a minority of legitimists, around the marquis of Rochejaquelein, wanted to call some by the vote for all and to await the return of the king of the will of the people, Berryer opina, with the majority of its friends and the count de Chambord itself, that it was necessary to act within the constituent National Assembly against the Republic and for the parliamentary recognition of the divine right. He sought, in this aiming, to carry out the union of the royalists. As from December 1850, it formed part, at the sides of Alexis de Tocqueville, of the circle which met each week Place of the Harmony at the marquis de Pastoret to defend the interests of monarchy.

He was elected with Constituent the April 23rd 1848 by the department of the Rhone delta. He sat at the right-hand side of the Parliament and separated some to vote, the August 9th, against the re-establishment of the guarantee for the newspapers and, the August 26th, against the brought continuations with Louis Blanc; it opina with it against the abolition of the capital punishment, against the amendment Grévy on the presidency of the Republic, against the suppression of the military replacement, for the Rake proposal, the prohibition of the clubs, the Forwarding of Rome and against the amnesty of transported. The November 4th 1848, it voted against the whole of the Constitution.

He was re-elected by the department of the Rhone delta the May 13rd 1849 within the legislative Assemblée and continued to make countryside with the line for the idea monarchist, but without supporting carried out Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. At the time of the Coup d'etat of December 2nd, 1851, it was with the number of the representatives who, joined together with the town hall of Xe district, voted the forfeiture of the Prince-President. Decree, it was led to the barracks of the Quai of Orsay and, from there, to Vincennes.

Given in freedom, it withdrew then political life and refused to be presented to the elections with the legislative Body: “By taking this resolution, he with a friend wrote the February 5th 1852, I obeyed not the resentment of the events of December 2nd. But what would I make in the new legislative Body from where the political life is entirely withdrawn, where I would find neither the public action nor independence that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 had not charmed us? ”

He was elected member of the French Academy in 1852 but was accepted only in 1855. On this occasion, he wrote with Jean-François Constant Mocquard, principal private secretary of the Emperor and his “former fellow-member”, to be exempted obligatory visit with the Head of the State: “I believe to have acquired, fifteen years ago, the right to abstain from today a formality whose achievement would not be painful for me only. ” Mocquard answered that the Emperor regretted “that in Mr. Berryer, the inspirations of the politician carried it on the duties of the academician Mr. Berryer is perfectly free to obey so that the use or prescribes to him so that its loathings advise to him. ”

Since 1851, Berryer had touched with the policy only by its participation in the attempts at fusion between the two branches of the house of Bourbon. June 1st 1863, it accepted, with the favor of the liberal evolution of the Second Empire, returning a little being able with the legislative Body, to be carried like candidate of opposition to the legislative elections in the 1st district of the Rhone delta (Marseilles), and it was elected. It often spoke with the Room and could there be made listen. The November 27th 1863, it spoke against bad management about public finances and protested against the increase in the deficit of the budget. In 1865, it was invited on the other side of the channel by his/her English colleagues, in particular Lord Brougham and, at the time of a banquet given in its honor in London, it celebrated the benefits of monarchy. The May 6th 1865, it supported the request for disarmament presented by the opposition, adding that France paid its glory expensive and that it was time to return its freedom to him. In June of the same year, he spoke against the law on the accounts - checks, “opposite with the French commercial practices”. The July 23rd 1867, it considered not very honest the attitude of the government in the business of the Mexican loans.

In 1868, it supported his/her young colleague of the bar Jules Ferry, which had denounced in a series of virulent articles published in the newspaper Time , the destruction of the Paris old man by the prefect of the Seine, the baron Haussmann. The same year, it adhered to the Baudin subscription and died the November 29th 1868 in its ground of Augerville where it had been withdrawn, feeling sick. A few days before (November 18th), a letter which he addressed to the count de Chambord testified to its inalterable fidelity to the legitimist cause:

O Monseigneur,

O my King, one says to me that I touch at my last hour.

I die with the pain not to have seen the triumph of your hereditary rights, devoting the development of freedoms which France needs. I carry this wish to the Sky for Your Majesty, for His Majesty the Queen, our dear France.

So that it is less unworthy to be exaucé by God, I leave the life armed with all the helps of our Holy Religion.

Adieu Lord, that God protects you and saves France.

Your faithful and devoted subject,

Berryer.

Its funeral took place with Augerville with a great solemnity, in the middle of delegations of the bodies to which it had belonged. The French Academy, in spite of its rule not to take share with the ceremonies of this nature which take place apart from the capital, was made there represent. An open subscription to raise a monument to him produced 100.000 francs in a few days.

Homages and judgments

Posthumous homages

the Conférence Berryer (Official site) pays homage to Pierre-Antoine Berryer.
the Street Berryer , in the 8 {{E}} district of Paris, in the past street of the Stables of Artois , received its current denomination by decree of the November 10th 1877.

Judgments

“Since Mirabeau, nobody equalized Mr. Berryer. ” (Cormenin)
“There is far from the careful eloquence and of the skill tactician of Mr. Berryer, of his skilful questions, its skilful interpellations, of its sensitivity, with the colossal good sense of Mirabeau, its striking down left, this dictatorial word which controlled the first tests of the Revolution. There is far from passions as one needs honourable Mr. Berryer, with the tempestueuses madnesses of this race of Riquetti whose count de Mirabeau was the male more accentuated. To the place of Mr. de Cormenin, I would have said Barnave instead of Mirabeau, and without anything to remove with Mr. Berryer of his value, I would have deviated perhaps less from the truth. ” (Hippolyte Castille)

References

Internal bonds

Conference Berryer

External bonds

Pierre Antoine Berryer , on www.berruyer.com
Biographical note of the French Academy
Marc Nadaux, Pierre Antoine Berryer , on www.19 {{E}} .org

Sources

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