Joseph de Villèle OLH, KOHS, KOGF, KOSL |
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5th Prime Minister of France | |
In office 14 December 1821 – 4 January 1828 |
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Monarch |
Louis XVIII Charles X |
Preceded by | Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis de Richelieu |
Succeeded by | Jean Baptiste de Martignac |
Member of the Chamber of Deputies for Haute-Garonne |
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In office 5 October 1816 – 5 July 1830 |
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Preceded by | Louis Emmanuel Dupuy |
Succeeded by | Blaise Vezian de Saint-André |
Constituency | Toulouse |
Mayor of Toulouse | |
In office 1815–1818 |
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Preceded by | Raymond Lanneluc |
Succeeded by | Guillaume de Bellegarde |
Personal details | |
Born |
Toulouse, Languedoc, France |
14 April 1773
Died | 13 March 1854 Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, French Empire |
(aged 80)
Political party | Ultra-royalist |
Spouse(s) | Mélanie Panon Desbassayns (m. 1799; d. 1854) |
Children | 5 |
Profession | Land owner |
Jean-Baptiste Guillaume Joseph Marie Anne Séraphin, 1st Count of Villèle (14 April 1773 – 13 March 1854), better known simply as Joseph de Villèle /vɪˈlɛl/, was a French statesman. Several time Prime minister, he was a leader of the Ultra-royalist faction during the Bourbon Restoration.
He was born in Toulouse, France and brought up to go into the navy. He joined the "Bayonnaise" at Brest in July 1788. He served in the West and East Indies. Arrested in the Isle of Bourbon (now Réunion) under the Terror, he was freed by the Thermidorian Reaction (July 1794). He acquired some property in the island, and in 1799 he married the daughter of M. Desbassyns de Richemont, whose estates he had managed. His apprenticeship to politics was served in the Colonial Assembly of Bourbon, where he fought successfully to preserve the colony from the consequences of perpetual interference from the authorities in Paris, and on the other hand to prevent local malcontents from appealing to the English for protection.
The arrival of General Decaen, appointed by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, restored security to the island, and five years later Villèle, who had now accumulated a large fortune, returned to France. He was mayor of his commune, and a member of the council of the Haute-Garonne under the Empire.
At the Bourbon Restoration of 1814 he at once declared for the royalist principles. He was mayor of Toulouse in 1814–15 and deputy for the Haute-Garonne in the ultra-royalist Chambre introuvable of 1815.