Claude-François Bertrand de Boucheporn
Claude-François Bertrand Boucheporn is a French magistrate and intendant of the Old Regime, born November 4, 1741 in Metz (Moselle). He was advocate in the parliament of Metz (1761) and General Counsel (1768-1771), Maître des Requêtes to the King's Council (from 1772 to the Revolution), intendant of Corsica (1775-1785), intendant of the Generality of Pau, Bayonne and Auch (from 1785 to the Revolution).
The British historian Peter Jones would summarize the role of intendants in France towards the end of the Ancien Régime: «Turgot, Bertier fils, Antoine Chaumont de La Galaizière and Bertrand de Boucheporn were all intendants who became impatient with the stop-go politics of reform. Rather than wait upon events, they pushed on with practical measures hoping to convert ministers along the way. In many respects they were men ahead of their time: advocates of some form of power sharing rather than diligent instruments of traditional absolute monarchy ».[1]
As he was newly installed as intendant of Navarre, in southern France, Boucheporn declared to the parlementaires at Pau: « We no longer live in times when men consider that mode of governance to be perfect which is most complicated and most shrouded in mystery, or which endeavors to distract or altogether to deceive the people ».[2]
During his Corsican stay Boucheporn, welcomed home Pierre Baillot (1771 - 1842) a young violinist and an orphan at twelve years of a magistrate in Bastia, and « treated him with all the tenderness of a son ». He sent him to Rome with his own children, to study with the musician Pollani, who was himself a student of the violinist and composer Pietro Nardini). Baillot was to become one of the most famous French violinists.[3]
Under the Terror, as two of his sons had emigrated, Boucheporn was « tried on a charge of sending money abroad ».[4] He was sentenced to death and beheaded on the Place de la Liberté [5] in Toulouse on 2d Ventôse, Year II (February 20, 1794), at the age of 53.
References
- ↑ P.M. Jones - Reform and Revolution in France: The Politics of Transition, 1774-1791 - Cambridge University Press, 1995 - page 126
- ↑ Bailey Stone - The genesis of the French Revolution - Cambridge University Press, 1994 - page 165
- ↑ A new Biographical Dictionary - 2d edition, volume I, part I - Geo. B. Whittaker - London, 1865 - page 81
- ↑ P.M. Jones - Reform and Revolution in France: The Politics of Transition, 1774-1791 - Cambridge University Press, 1995 - page 127
- ↑ Today: Place du Capitole
Further reading
- Maurice Bordes – Un intendant éclairé de la la fin de l'Ancien Régime: Claude-François Bertrand de Boucheporn - In: Annales du Midi : Revue archéologique, historique et philologique de la France méridionale - Tome 74, N°58 - Toulouse, 1962 - pages 177-194
- P.M. Jones - Reform and Revolution in France: The Politics of Transition, 1774-1791 - Cambridge University Press - 1995
- Sylvie Nicolas - Les derniers maîtres des requêtes de l’Ancien Régime (1771 - 1789) - École des Chartes - Paris, 1998 - (Mémoires et Documents de l'École des Chartes)