Étienne-Denis Pasquier
| Étienne-Denis Pasquier | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
21 May 1767 Paris, France |
| Died | 5 July 1862 (aged 95) Paris, France |
| Occupation | French statesman |
Étienne-Denis, duc de Pasquier (21 April 1767 – 5 July 1862), Chancelier de France, (a title revived for him by Louis-Philippe in 1837), was a French statesman. In 1842, he was elected a member of the Académie française, and in the same year was created a duke by Louis-Philippe.
Born in Paris in a family of the noblesse de robe, with ancestors such as Étienne Pasquier, he was destined for the legal profession and was educated at the Collège de Juilly near Paris. He then became a counsellor of the parlement de Paris, and witnessed many of the incidents that marked the growing hostility between that body and Louis XVI of France in the years preceding the French Revolution of 1789.
His views were those of a moderate reformer, determined to preserve the House of Bourbon in a renovated France; his memoirs depict in a favorable light the actions of his parlement (an institution soon to be abolished towards the end of the year 1789, under growing revolutionary pressures).
For some time, and especially during the Reign of Terror (1793–1794), Pasquier remained in obscurity; but this did not save him from arrest nor his father from execution in the year 1794. He was incarcerated for two months in the Saint-Lazare Prison shortly before the start of Thermidorian Reaction, and released after the fall and execution of Maximilien Robespierre at the end of July 1794.
He did not re-enter the public service until the period of the First French Empire, when the arch-chancellor Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès used his influence with Napoleon I to procure for him the office of maître des requêtes to the Conseil d'État. In 1809, he became baron of the Empire, and in February 1810 counsellor of State. In October 1810, the Emperor made him prefect of police of Paris.
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