Louis Pierre Édouard, Baron Bignon
Louis Pierre Édouard, Baron Bignon (3 January 1771 in La Mailleraye-sur-Seine – 6 January 1841) was a French diplomat and historian.[1]
Biography
Louis de Bignon was born at
After serving in the legations in Switzerland and the
The preparation of a constitution for Poland, on which he was engaged, was, however, interrupted by the events of 1812. Bignon, after a short imprisonment at the hands of the allies, returned to France in time to witness the downfall of
Bignon did not re-enter public life until 1817 when he was elected to the chamber of deputies, in which he sat until 1830, consistent in his opposition to the reactionary policy of successive governments. His great reputation and his diplomatic experience gave a special weight to the attacks which he published on the policy of the continental allies, two of his works attracting special attention, Du congrès de Troppau ou Examen des prétentions des monarchies absolues à l’égard de la monarchie constitutionnelle de Naples (Paris, 1821), and Les Cabinets et les peuples depuis 1815 jusqu’à la fin de 1822 (Paris, 1822).[2]
The
Elected deputy in 1831[3] and member of the chamber of peers in 1839, he withdrew for the most part from politics to devote himself to his great work, the Histoire de France sous Napoleon (10 vols. 1829–1838, then 4 posthumous vols., 1847–1850). This history, while suffering the limitations of all contemporaneous narratives, contains much that does not exist elsewhere, and is one of the best-known sources for the later histories of Napoleon's reign. In his will, Napoleon had granted Bignon 100,000 francs and charged him "to write the history of French diplomacy from 1792 to 1815," although the money was never delivered [2]
References
- OCLC 499498823.
- ^ a b c d e f Chisholm 1911.
- OCLC 1013962971.
On December 3, 1832, Baron Louis de Bignon, once Napoleon's minister to Warsaw and Vilna, moved an amendment to the address warmly recommending to the government the Polish cause; it was voted by a great majority.
- Attribution
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bignon, Louis Pierre Édouard". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the