André Boniface Louis Riqueti de Mirabeau
André Boniface Louis Riqueti, Vicomte de Mirabeau (30 November 1754 – 15 September 1792), brother of the orator Honoré Mirabeau, was one of the reactionary leaders at the opening of the French Revolution.
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Life
Known as Barrel Mirabeau (Mirabeau-Tonneau) because of his voluminous taste for drink, he was sent to the army in Malta in 1776, and spent part of his two years there in prison for insulting a religious procession. He served as a colonel, commanding the Touraine Regiment under the comte de Rochambeau in the American Revolution.[1] During the war, he was in several sea-fights with the English and witnessed the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.[2]
In the following year, he had two narrow escapes from drowning. With his debts paid up by his father, he was elected by the noblesse of Limoges a deputy to the States General. Unlike his brother, he opposed the French Revolution. He was a violent conservative and opposed everything that threatened the old régime. and in 1790 left France to join the royalist counter-revolutionary forces in Germany. He was not very successful in his efforts to form a regiment from French exiles and deserters, and died of a stroke in Freiburg two years later.[2]
To Mirabeau is attributed a statement otherwise associated with Voltaire, <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
Other states possess an army; Prussia is an army which possesses a state.[3]
He shared fully in the eccentric family pride; and boasted of his brother's genius even when bitterly opposing him. He emigrated about 1790 and raised a legion which was to bear his name; but his insolence alienated the German princes and his command was taken from him. He died in August 1792 of apoplexy or from a duel in Freiburg im Breisgau. He wrote some verse as well as various pamphlets.[2]
Notes
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- Attribution
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
- Kurzbiogramm Mirabeau-Tonneau - Biography of "Barrel Mirabeau" in German
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- ↑ Wilson & Fiske 1900.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Chisholm 1911.
- ↑ Wayne C. Thompson, Nordic, Central, and Southeastern Europe 2015-2016, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015 p.186
- Pages with reference errors
- Use dmy dates from September 2013
- Pages with broken file links
- Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from Appleton's Cyclopedia
- Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference
- 1754 births
- 1792 deaths
- French Navy officers
- Viscounts of Mirabeau
- People of the French Revolution
