François Mignet

François Auguste Marie Mignet (8 May 1796 – 24 March 1884) was a French journalist and historian of the French Revolution.

He was born in Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône), France. His father was a locksmith from the Vendée, who enthusiastically accepted the principles of the French Revolution and encouraged liberal ideas in his son. François had brilliant success at Avignon in the lycée where he became a teacher in 1815. He returned to Aix to study law, and in 1818 was called to the bar, where his eloquence would have ensured his success had he not been more interested in the study of history. His abilities were shown in an Éloge de Charles VII, which was honoured by the Académie de Nîmes in 1820, and a memoire on Les Institutions de Saint Louis, which in 1821 was honoured by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres.

He then went to Paris, where he was soon joined by his friend and compatriot Adolphe Thiers, the future president of the French Republic. He was introduced by Jacques-Antoine Manuel, formerly a member of the Convention, to the Liberal paper, Le Courrier français, where he became a member of the staff which carried on a fierce pen-and-ink warfare against the Restoration. He acquired his knowledge of the men and intrigues of the Napoleonic epoch from Talleyrand.

Mignet's Histoire de la révolution française (1824), in support of the Liberal cause, was an enlarged sketch, prepared in four months, in which more stress was laid on fundamental theories than on the facts. In 1830, he founded Le National with Thiers and Armand Carrel, and signed the journalists' protest against the July Ordinances, however, he refused to profit from his party's victory. He was satisfied with the modest position of Director of the Archives at the Foreign Office, where he stayed till the revolution of 1848, when he was dismissed, and retired permanently into private life. He had been elected a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, which was re-established in 1832, and, in 1837, was made the permanent secretary. He was elected a member of the Académie française in 1836, and sought no further honours.

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