Jean-Guillaume Hyde de Neuville

Jean-Guillaume, baron Hyde de Neuville (24 January 1776 – 28 May 1857) was a French aristocrat, diplomat, and politician.

Jean-Guillaume was born at La Charité-sur-Loire (Nièvre), the son of Guillaume Hyde, who belonged to an English family which had emigrated with the Stuarts after the rebellion of 1745.

After studying in the College Cardinal Lemoine, in Paris, he entered political life at the age of sixteen. He was only seventeen when he successfully defended a man denounced by Joseph Fouché before the revolutionary tribunal of Nevers. From 1793 onwards he was an active agent of the exiled princes: he took part in the Royalist rising in Berry in 1796, and after the 18 Brumaire coup (9 November 1799), under the name of Paul Xavier, he tried to persuade Napoleon Bonaparte to recall the traditional monarchy.

During the consulate and empire, he practised medicine in Lyons under the name of Roland, and was awarded a gold medal for the propagation of vaccine. An accusation of complicity in the conspiracy of 1800–1801 was speedily retracted, but in 1806 Napoleon consented to refund Neuville's confiscated estate on condition that he should go to the United States. De Neuville settled near New Brunswick, New Jersey, where his house became a place of refuge for French exiles. In 1813 he was instrumental in helping his friend, General Moreau to accept service in the army of the emperor of Russia. He returned to France after the replacement of the French Empire by the 1814 Bourbon Restoration.

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