François Dominique de Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier

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Francois Dominique de Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier (1755-1838), French publicist, was born at Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme) on the 16th of April 1755, the youngest of a large family belonging to the poorer nobility. He was returned in 1791 to the Constituent Assembly, where he sat on the Royalist side, and he emigrated on its dissolution in September 1791. He was received into the emigrant army at Coblenz after some protest against the Liberal leanings he had shown in the Assembly. After the cannonade of Valmy, he withdrew to Hamburg, and thence to London, where he avoided English society, moving exclusively among the French exiles.

In his Courrier de Londres, published in London, he advocated moderation and the abandonment by the exiles of any idea of revenge. He was recalled to Paris in 1801, with permission to publish his paper in London. The Courrier was soon suppressed, nevertheless, its editor being compensated by a comfortable sinecure in the ministry of foreign affairs. Next year he sold his pen to the government to edit the violent anti-English Bulletin de Paris. At Napoleon's request he undertook an account of the ancient monarchy of France, which should serve as a justification for the empire. After four years' labor Montlosier submitted his work to a specially appointed committee, by which it was rejected because of the stress laid on the feudal limitations of the royal authority. The work De la monarchic française . . . ou recherches sur les anciennes institutions françaises . . . et sur les causes qui ont amene la revolution . . . appeared in 1814 in three volumes, a fourth and supplementary volume in the next year containing a preface hostile to Napoleon. His views were no more acceptable to Louis XVIII than they had been to the emperor, and he devoted himself to agriculture until he was roused by the clerical and reactionary policy of Charles X. His anti-clerical Memoire a consulter sur un systems religieux, politique . . . (1826) rapidly passed through eight editions. He had no part in the revolution of 1830, but supported Louis Philippe's government and entered the House of Peers in 1832. He died on the 9th of December 1838 at Blois. Ecclesiastical burial was denied him because he had refused to abjure his anti-clerical writings.