Jules, prince de Polignac
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| Prince de Polignac | |
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| In office August 8, 1829 – July 29, 1830 |
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| Preceded by | Vicomte de Martignac |
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| Succeeded by | Duc de Broglie |
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| Born | 14 May 1780 |
| Died | March 2, 1847 |
| Political party | None |
Jules Auguste Armand Marie, prince de Polignac (Versailles, 14 May 1780 – Paris, March 2, 1847[1]), was a French statesman. He played a conspicuous part in the clerical and ultra-royalist reaction after the Revolution. He was called as Prime minister by Charles X just before the 1830 July Revolution which overthrew the Bourbon Restoration.
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[edit] Biography
Jules was the son of Jules, comte de Polignac (1746-1817), who was created a duc in 1780, and Gabrielle de Polastron, comtesse de Polignac (1749-1793), governess to the children of Marie-Antoinette. The young Jules was raised in the environment of the court of Versailles. Under the empire he was implicated in the conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru (1804), and was imprisoned till 1813. After the restoration of the Bourbons he held various offices, received from the pope his title of "prince" in 1820, and in 1823 was made ambassador to the English court.
Polignac was an ultra-royalist who believed that the power in France should be given back to the monarch and the noble classes. He thought his divine mission was to accomplish this and claimed of seeing visions of the Virgin Mary promising success. As a Catholic he did not mind the church's increase in power, but he did think that God was on his side rather than the Pope's.
On August 8, 1829 he was called by Charles X to the ministry of foreign affairs, and in the following November he became president of the council. His appointment was taken as symbolical of the king's intention to overthrow the constitution, and Polignac, with the other ministers, was held responsible for the policy which culminated in the issue of the Four Ordinances which were the immediate cause of the revolution of July 1830.
On the outbreak of this he fled for his life, but, after wandering for some time among the wilds of Normandy, was arrested at Granville. His trial before the chamber of peers resulted in his condemnation to perpetual imprisonment (at Ham), but he benefited by the amnesty of 1836, when the sentence was commuted to one of exile. During his captivity he wrote Considerations politiques (1832). He afterwards spent some years in England, but finally was permitted to re-enter France on condition that he did not take up his abode in Paris.
He died at St. Germain in 1847; a month before, he had assumed the title of Duc de Polignac upon the death of his older brother.[dubious — see talk page]
Jules married twice, first to Barbara Campbell (1788-1819), and, after Barbara's death, to Maria Charlotte Parkyns (1792-1864). He fathered seven children, including Prince Alphonse de Polignac (1826-1863), inventor of the mathematical theory of twin primes; Prince Ludovic de Polignac (1827-1904), a lieutenant-colonel in the French Army who participated in the colonization of Algeria; Prince Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac (1832-1913), a major-general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War and a mathematician; and Prince Edmond de Polignac (1834-1901), a composer and theorist of the octatonic scale.
[edit] Literature
- W. Schlésinger, Les femmes du XVIIIe siècle: La duchesse de Polignac et son temps (Paris, 1889)
[edit] Notes
- ^ Some sources disagree over date of death: [1]and [2] say Paris, 2 March 1847. Another, "Duc Jean-Héracle de Polignac, La Maison de Polignac: Etude d'une évolution sociale de la noblesse, Le Puy: Editiions Jeanne d'Arc, 1975, p. 129" says Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 30 March 1847
[edit] External links
Some genealogical information concerning the Polignacs.
| Preceded by Vicomte de Martignac |
Prime Minister of France 1829-1830 |
Succeeded by Duc de Broglie |
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
| Persondata | |
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| NAME | Polignac, Prince de |
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| SHORT DESCRIPTION | |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 14 May 1780 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Versailles |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 2, 1847 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Paris |
