Charles de Rémusat

Charles François Marie, Comte de Rémusat (ʃaʁl fʁɑ̃swa maʁi kɔ̃t də ʁemyza, 13 March 1797 – 6 June 1875), was a French politician and writer. He was born in Paris. His father, Auguste Laurent, Comte de Rémusat, whose family came from Toulouse, was chamberlain to Napoleon Bonaparte, but acquiesced in the restoration and became prefect first of Haute Garonne, and then of Nord. Charles' mother was Claire Élisabeth Jeanne Gravier de Vergennes, Madame de Rémusat. He developed political views more liberal than those of his parents, and having been brought up for a career in law, he published in 1820 a pamphlet on trial by jury. He was an active journalist, showing in philosophy and literature the influence of Victor Cousin, and is said to have furnished to no small extent the original of Honoré de Balzac's character, Henri de Marsay . He signed the journalists' protest against the Ordinances of July 1830, and in the following October was elected deputy for Haute Garonne. Becoming a Doctrinaire, he supported most of those measures of restriction on popular liberty which made the July monarchy unpopular with French Radicals. In 1836 he became for a short time undersecretary of state for the interior. He then became an ally of Adolphe Thiers, and in 1840 held the ministry of the interior for a brief period. In the same year he became an Academician. For the rest of Louis Philippe's reign he was in opposition until he joined Thiers in his attempt at a ministry in the spring of 1848. During this time Rémusat constantly spoke in the chair here, but was still more active in literature, especially on philosophical subjects, the most remarkable of his works being his book on Pierre Abélard (2 vols., 1845). He had to leave France after the coup d'état; nor did he re-enter political life during the Second Empire until 1869, when he founded a moderate opposition journal at Toulouse. Neither the Revolution of 1848 nor the Second Empire was to his taste.