François-Xavier-Marc-Antoine de Montesquiou-Fézensac

Abbé François-Xavier-Marc-Antoine de Montesquiou-Fézensac (château de Marsan, Gers, 3 August 1757 – château de Cirey-sur-Blaise, Haute-Marne, 4 February 1832) was a French clergyman and politician.

He was a member of a very old French nobility family from Gascony. His kinsman Anne-Pierre, marquis de Montesquiou-Fézensac would serve alongside him in the National Assembly.

Montesquiou-Fézensac was named (1782) Abbé of Beaulieu, near Langres. The Abbé de Montesquieu attended the Assembly of the French clergy (1785) as Agent-General.

The Abbé was elected by the First Estate of Paris to the Estates General of 1789. He would stand out alongside the Abbé Maury by his oratory, and was elected president of the National Assembly three times. He presided over the Assembly an impressive three terms (4–18 January 1790; 28 February - 15 March 1790; 14–30 March 1791).

He opposed strongly the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and supported the monarchy. He was forced to flee to England after the Storming of the Tuileries (10 August 1792). He lived in the United States 1792-1795 during the Reign of Terror.

He returned to France after 9 Thermidor (27 July 1794) and immediately took up the royalist cause as one of the agents of Louis XVIII. He became a member of the Royalist Committee in Paris, and for his activism he was once exiled to Menton.

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