Barthélemy de Lesseps

Jean-Baptiste Barthélemy de Lesseps (27 January 1766 in Sète – 6 April/26 April 1834 in Lisbon) was a French diplomat and writer, member of the scientific expedition of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse (1 August 1785 – January 1788) and uncle of Ferdinand de Lesseps.

His childhood was spent in Hamburg and then St. Petersburg, where his father Martin de Lesseps (1730–1807) was the French Consul General. His mother was Anna Caysergues (1730–1823). He had a sister Lise de Lesseps (1769–1840), married in 1788 to Louis Maurice Taupin de Magnitot (1757–1823), and a brother Mathieu de Lesseps (Hamburg, 4 May 1774 – Tunis, 28 December 1832), married to Catherine de Grevigné (Málaga, 11 June 1774 – Paris, 27 January 1853), the parents of Ferdinand de Lesseps.

By age 12 he spoke fluent Russian, German, Spanish and, of course, French. After studying at the Jesuit college of Versailles for five years, he returned to St. Petersburg in 1783.

He was appointed Vice-Consul of France in Kronstadt and once had to intervene with the crew of the French ship Uranie of Dunkirk who had largely deserted. Noticed by France's Ambassador to Russia, Mr de Ségur, he was entrusted to carry important news to Versailles. There he met with Paul Antoine Fleuriot de Langle, second in command of the La Pérouse expedition, who had the respect of Louis XVI. La Pérouse asked the Minister of Marine and the Colonies, Charles Eugène Gabriel de La Croix, marquis de Castries to add Lesseps to the expedition as a Russian interpreter as the intended route took them into Russian territory in the north-west Pacific Ocean. His father should have been consulted but there was no time for that, so Castries appointed him to be vice-consul to succeed his father. Instead of returning directly to St. Petersburg, Lesseps would take the much longer route with La Pérouse to the north-west Pacific and then travel overland.

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