Born, March 9, 1749; died, April 2, 1791.
At the age of three he suffered from the smallpox, which disfigured
him for life and completely transformed his features. His father was a
bigoted Jansenist, despotic, harsh, and cruel to his son, whose ardent
nature and genius he did not in the least understand. He compelled
Honoré, at the age of fifteen, to enter the army. After five years with
his regiment, the young man had shown such aptitude for military study
that he was about to receive promotion, when his father discovered that
he had lost forty louis at play; was in debt, and engaged in an amorous
intrigue with a young woman of the people. The old marquis, therefore,
obtained a _lettre de cachet_, by which his son was imprisoned
in the fort of the _Ile de Rê_. Here Mirabeau wrote his famous
“Essay upon Despotism.” After his release he went with his regiment to
Corsica, where he conducted himself with so much distinction as to be
recommended for a captaincy of dragoons. But his arbitrary old father
would not consent to this, as he now wished his son to leave the army
and to embrace a rural life.
The result was a breach between father and son, though a reconciliation
was effected a few months later. The maternal grandmother of young
Mirabeau died in 1770, and left a vast fortune, which her daughter
attempted to secure entirely for herself by obtaining a separation from
her tyrannical husband. The result was a lawsuit lasting fifteen years,
during the whole of which time Mirabeau was in the painful position
of a son between two parents who furiously hated one another. In 1772
Mirabeau married, under pressure from his father, the only daughter
of the Marquis de Mariguana, a plain girl of eighteen, reputed to be
a great heiress. He never received any fortune with her, beyond an
annuity of 3000 francs, for her father survived his son-in-law twelve
years, dying in 1803.
The young couple lived for some time quietly together in the Château of
Mirabeau, but Mirabeau’s fortune was not in any way equal to his rank,
and he soon contracted heavy debts; this again excited his father’s
anger, and he caused him to be arrested in 1774. Mirabeau was therefore
reimprisoned, this time in the Château d’If, in the Gulf of Marseilles.
From the Château d’If he was transported to Fort de Jaux in the Jura.
The governor, who sympathised with him, accorded him semi-liberty, and
he was able to make acquaintances in the town of Portarlier, where
he was hospitably received by the leading families. One of these was
that of the Marquis de Monnier, an old man of seventy, with a young,
beautiful and intelligent wife. Mirabeau became her lover, and he and
she eloped, first to Switzerland, and then to Holland, where they took
up their abode in Amsterdam. The two fugitives were arrested, and
Mirabeau was imprisoned in the Castle of Vincennes, where he remained
for four years, his lengthy incarceration being the result of the
efforts of his implacable father.
He wrote in prison his _Lettres à Sophie_, and executed much
literary work. After personally conducting two law cases, one to cause
the revocation of the act against him as ravisher of Mdme. Monnier, and
the other to re-establish his conjugal rights over Mdme. Mirabeau--both
of which he won, after showing prodigious eloquence, though he had
never before spoken in public--he proceeded to London, where he printed
“Considerations upon the Order of Cincinnatus.”
When the States-General assembled, Mirabeau endeavoured to obtain a
membership; but his own order, the nobility, refused to accept him as
a candidate. He therefore hired a shop in the town of Aix in Provence,
and wrote over the door “Mirabeau, Cloth Merchant.” He was elected by
the _Tiers État_ Deputy for Aix.
After the opening of the States-General, Mirabeau soon became the most
noted orator in the Assembly, and although on the side of liberty and
freedom he showed much moderation and common sense. It is probable that
had he lived France might have enjoyed the benefits of a constitutional
monarchy, and all the horrors of the Revolution been averted; but his
irregular life had destroyed even his robust constitution, and he
expired on April 2, 1791, aged forty-two.