Jean-Jacques Lefranc, Marquis de Pompignan

Jean-Jacques Lefranc (also Le Franc), Marquis de Pompignan (10 August 1709 – 1 November 1784) was a French man of letters and erudition, who published a considerable output of theatrical work, poems, literary criticism, and polemics; treatises on archeology, nature, travel and many other subjects; and a wide selection of highly regarded translations of the classics and other works from several European languages including English.

His life and career, as well as his literary and other works are noteworthy today because of their location at the very center of the French Enlightenment; and although some of the positions he took are also considered to have been formative contributions to the counter-Enlightenment tendencies that were being articulated in parallel, he remains, in many respects, the typical Enlightenment man.

The prolific volumes of literary works are now of academic interest only, mainly to flesh out aspects of the culture of the time, which embraced a period in which tensions that were to explode in the French Revolution five years after his death were still held in check. Lefranc is remembered today, if he is at all, as a consequence of the maiden speech he gave at the Académie française in 1760, which led to him becoming forever known and defined as "the enemy of Voltaire".

His library of some 25,000 volumes was sold after his death by his son, and became founding collections for no less than three learned institution in Toulouse. He built a neo-classical chateau at Pompignan, and over a period of thirty-five years created one of the earliest and most extensive parcs à fabriques (or French landscape garden).

The chateau stands in good order today, and although the park and its follies have been neglected, the extensive hydrological system still functions. In May 2011 the decision was taken to route the planned Bordeaux-Toulouse TGV and high-speed freight rail lines through the center of the Lefranc's landscape park.

Jean-Jacques' father, Jacques Lefranc, was the third of the name to become president of the Cour des Aides, and he was to be followed by his eldest son and grandson. The family retained the seat at Cayx, and the beautifully sited old chateau was where Jean-Jacques and his brother were reared; as a young man he styled himself Lefranc de Caix. His mother, born Mademoiselle de Caulet, was of the same millieu, her father serving as a "president of the morter" - a judicial rank - at the Parlement de Toulouse, where Jean-Jacques was also to have a brief tenure.

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