Vincent-Marie Viénot Count of Vaublanc |
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31st Minister of the Interior (France) | |
In office 26 September 1815 – 7 May 1816 |
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Monarch | Louis XVIII |
Preceded by | Étienne-Denis, baron Pasquier |
Succeeded by | Joseph, vicomte Lainé |
Personal details | |
Born |
Fort-Dauphin, Saint-Domingue |
March 2, 1756
Died | August 21, 1845 Paris, Kingdom of France |
(aged 89)
Nationality | French |
Political party |
Friends of the Monarchist Constitution (1789–1791) Feuillants Club (1791–1793) Clichy Club (1794–1797) Independent (1797–1815) Ultra-royalist (1815–1830) Legitimist (1830–1845) |
Spouse(s) | Mademoiselle de Fontenelle |
Vincent-Marie Viénot, Count of Vaublanc (2 March 1756 – 21 August 1845) was a French royalist politician, writer and artist. He was a deputy for the Seine-et-Marne département in the French Legislative Assembly, served as President of the same body, and from 26 September 1815 to 7 May 1816, he was the French Minister of the Interior.
His political career had him rubbing shoulders with Louis XVI, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Count of Artois (the future Charles X of France), and finally Louis XVIII. He was banished and recalled four times by different regimes, never arrested, succeeding each time in regaining official favour. In a long and eventful career, he was successively a monarchist deputy during the Revolution and under the Directoire, an exile during the Terror, a deputy under Napoleon, Minister of the Interior to Louis XVIII and eventually, at the end of his political career, a simple ultra-royalist deputy.
He is remembered now for the fiery eloquence of his speeches, and for his controversial reorganisation of the Académie française in 1816 while Minister of the Interior. A man of order, he was a moderate supporter of the Revolution of 1789 and ended his political life under the Restoration as a radical counterrevolutionary.
Born and raised at Fort-Dauphin, Saint-Domingue (now Fort-Liberté, Haiti), into an aristocratic family from Bourgogne, he was the eldest son of Vivant-François Viénot de Vaublanc, commanding officer of Fort Saint-Louis in Fort-Dauphin. He saw Metropolitan France for the first time at the age of seven.