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Pierre Seguier

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PIERRE SEGUIER (1588-1672), chancellor of France, was born in Paris on the 28th of May 1588, of a famous legal family originating in Quercy. His grandfather, Pierre Seguier (1504-1580), was president a mortier in the parlement of Paris from 1554 to 1576, and the chancellor's father, Jean Seguier, a seigneur d'Autry, was civil lieutenant of Paris at the time of his death in 1596. Pierre was brought up by his uncle, Antoine Seguier, president a mortier in the parlement, and became master of requests in 1620. From 1621 to 1624 he was intendant of Guienne, where he became closely allied with the duc d'Epernon. In 1624 he succeeded to his uncle's charge in the parlement, which he filled for nine years. In this capacity he showed great independence with regard to the royal authority; but when in 1633 he became keeper of the seals under Richelieu, he proceeded to bully and humiliate the parlement in his turn. He became allied with the cardinal's family by the marriage of his daughter Marie with Richelieu's nephew, Cesar du Cambout, marquis de Coislin,' and in December 1635 he became chancellor of France. In 1637 Seguier was sent to examine the papers of the queen, Anne of Austria, at Val de Grace. According to Anquetil, the chancellor saved her by warning her of the projected inquisition. In 1639 Seguier was sent to punish the Normans for the insurrection of the Nu-Pieds, the military chief of the expedition, Gassion, being placed under his orders. He put down pillage with a strong hand, and was sufficiently disinterested to refuse a gift of confiscated Norman lands. He was the submissive tool of Richelieu in the prosecutions of Cinq-Mars and Francois Auguste de Thou in 1642. His authority survived the changes following on the successive deaths of Richelieu and Louis XIII., and he was the faithful servant of Anne of Austria and of Mazarin. His resolute attitude towards the parlement of Paris made the chancellor one of the chief objects of the hatred of the Frondeurs. On the 25th of August 1648, Seguier was sent to the parlement to regulate its proceedings. On the way he was assailed by rioters on the Pont-Neuf, and sought refuge in the house of Louis Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes. In the course of the concessions made to the Fronde in 1650, Seguier was dismissed from his office of keeper of the seals. He spent part of his retirement at Rosny, with his second daughter Charlotte and her husband, the duke of Sully. 2 He was recalled in April 1651, but six months later, on the king's attaining his majority, Seguier was again disgraced, and the seals were given to President Mathieu

Mole, who held them with a short interval till his death in 1656, when they were returned to Seguier. Seguier lived for some time in extreme retirement in Paris, devoting himself to the affairs of the academy. When Paris was occupied by the princes in 1652, he was for a short time a member of their council, but he joined the king at Pontoise in August, and became president of the royal council. After Mazarin's death in 1661 Seguier retained but a shadow of his former authority. He showed a great violence in his conduct of the case against Fouquet, voting for the death of the prisoner. In 1666 he was placed at the head of a commission called to simplify the police organization, especially that of Paris; and the consequent ordinances of 1667 and 1670 for the better administration of justice were drawn up by him. He died at St Germain on the 28th of January 1672.

Seguier was a man of great learning, and throughout his life a patron of literature. In December 1642 he succeeded Richelieu as official "protector" of the Academy, which from that time until his death held its sessions in his house. His library was one of the most valuable of his time, only second, perhaps, to the royal collection. It contained no less than 4000 MSS. in various languages, the most important section of them being the Greek MSS. A catalogue was drawn up in Latin and in French (1685-1686) by the 1 Mme de Coislin became a widow, and in 1644 married clandestinely Guy de Laval, chevalier de Bois-dauphin, afterwards marquis of Laval.

She afterwards contracted a second marriage with Henri de Bourbon, duke of Verneuil, a grandson of Henry IV.

duc de Coislin. The chancellor's great-grandson, Henri Charles du Cambout de Coislin, bishop of Metz, commissioned Bernard de Montfaucon, a learnedBenedictine of St Maur, to prepare a catalogue of the Greek MSS. with commentaries. This work was published in folio 1715, as Bibliotheca Coisliniana, ohm Segueriana. . The greater part of the printed books were destroyed by fire, in the abbey of St Germain-des-Pres, in 1794

See F. Duchesne, Hist. des chanceliers de France (fol. 1680); for the affair of Val de Grace, Catalogue de documents historiques.. relatifs au regne de Louis XIII (Paris, 1847); also R. Kerviler, Le Chancelier P. Seguier (Paris, 1874). Great part of his correspondence is preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

The name of a French family, the first member of which to attain distinction was FRANCOIS DE Segur, better known as the seigneur de Sainte-Aulaye (d. c. 1605), who professed the reformed religion, and was closely associated with Henry IV., becoming in 1576 president of his council. Jean-Isaac, marquis de Segur (d. 1707), fought in most of the campaigns of the France of his time, and remained loyal throughout the troubles of the Fronde. His son, Henri Joseph, marquis de Segur(1661-1737),was lieutenant-general of Champagne and Brie, governor of Foix. In his youth he was the hero of an episode of gallantry with Anne of Beauvilliers, abbess of La Joye, which led to the suggestion that she was none other than the Portuguese nun of the famous Letters. His son, Henri Franccois, comte de Segur (1689-1751), was colonel at seventeen, when he succeeded to the command of the Segur regiment which his father had raised. In 1718 he began a thirty years' tenure of the lieutenantgeneralship of Champagne and Brie. He had married in that year Angelique de Froissy, a natural daughter of the regent, Philip of Orleans, but the death of his father-in-law a few years later prevented his reaping special advancement from his marriage, though Mme de Segur belonged to the inner circle of Louis XV.'s intimates. Segur served in Italy during the war of the Polish Succession under Marshal Villars, and became, in 1736, inspectorgeneral of cavalry. In 1738 he was sent to Nancy as lieutenantgeneral under Marshal Belle-Isle, and to Bohemia in 1741 with the French troops allied with the Bavarians. But in September 1741 he was compelled by the imperial troops to surrender at Linz. In 1744 he was again sent to Bavaria, and defeated the Austrians at Lichtenau on the 28th of January 1745. He served throughout the Flemish campaigns of 1746 and 1747, and was commandant of Metz at the time of his death (18th of June 1751). His son, Philippe Henri, marquis de Segur (1724-1801), marshal of France, his grandson, Louis Philippe, comte de Segur (1753-1830), and Louis Philippe's son Philippe Paul, comte de Segur (1780-1873), are separately noticed.

Joseph Alexandre Pierre, vicomte de Segur (1756-1805), second son of the marshal, quitted the army at the outbreak of the Revolution to devote himself to literature. He edited the Mdmoires of Besenval in 1795 from the MS. which, originally in his possession, had been surreptitiously placed with the printer during Segur's imprisonment under the Terror. These were printed in 1804-1805. Between 1790 and 1800 he produced a number of pieces at the Comedic Frangaise and the Opera Comique. He published in 1802 a selection from his works entitled Comedies, chansons et proverbes, and in 1801 appeared Les Femmes, leurs mceurs ... (3 vols.), which has often been reprinted, but is of doubtful authorship.

Octave-Henri Gabriel De Segur (1778-1818), elder son of Louis Philippe de Segur, served in the later Napoleonic campaigns, and remained in the army under the Restoration. He threw himself into the Seine on the 15th of August 1818. The domestic unhappiness that led to his suicide is retailed by the comtesse de Boigne in her Mdmoires (vol. i., 1907). His elder son, Eugene, comte de Segur, succeeded his grandfather in the peerage in 1830. He married Sophie Rostopchine (1799-1894), daughter of Count Feodor Rostopchine, governor of Moscow. The countess of Segur wrote some famous books for children, the most familiar of which are perhaps the Malheurs de Sophie and the Mdmoires d'un dne, and many tales in the Bibliotheque rose. Her letters to her daughter and son-in-law, the count and countess de Simard de Petray, were published in 1891, and those to her grandson in 1898.

Raymond Joseph Paul, comte de Segur d'Aguesseau (1803-1889), third son of Octave de Segur, took his mother's family name in addition to his own. He studied law at Aix and Paris. As procureur general of Amiens he gave in March 1830 a decision on the question of the electoral lists which pleased the liberal party, but late in the year, as substitute in the royal court of Paris, he ordered the suppression of certain liberal journals, and in other civil appointments was accused of reactionary administration. He gave his adhesion to Prince Louis Napoleon, and became a member of the consultative commission in 1851, and of the senate in 1852. After the fall of the empire he retired into private life.

Louis Gaston Adrien De Segur (1820-1881), son of Eugene de Segur and Sophie Rostopchine, became a prelate of the papal court, and canon-bishop of Saint-Denis. He was a champion of the ultra-montane party and wrote a number of Catholic works, collected in ten volumes (Paris, 1876-1877). His life was written by his brother Anatole, who edited two collections of his letters in 1882 and 1899.

Anatole Henri Philippe De Segur (1823-1902), Gaston's brother, became councillor of state in 1872, serving until 1879. His works include the life of his grandfather Count Rostopchine (1872), Fables (1879), Un Episode de la Terreur (1864), Paul Marie Charles Bernard (1875).

His son, Pierre Marie Maurice Henri, marquis de Segur (b. 1853), wrote a life (1895) of the marshal de Segur, which was crowned by the French Academy. His book on Madame Geoffrin, Le Royaume de la rue Saint-Honors (1897), also received a prize. His principal work is the three volumes devoted to Marshal Luxemburg - La Jeunesse du mardchal de Luxembourg, 1628-1668 (1900); Le Marechal de Luxembourg et le prince d'Orange, 1668-1678 (1902); Le Tapissier de Notre-Dame. Dernieres annees du mardchal de Luxembourg, 1678-1695 (1904); Julie de Lespinasse (1905); English Transl., 1907; and Au couchant de la monarchie Louis XVI et Turgot, 1774-1776 (Paris, 1910). He was elected to the French Academy in 1907.

There is much general information on the family of Segur in A. de Segur's Le Marechal de Segur, 1724 -1801 (Paris, 1895), and in L. P. de Segur's Recueil de famille (1826).