Mathieu de Montmorency
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Mathieu Jean Felicité, duc de Montmorency-Laval (July 10, 1766 - March 24, 1826), French politician, was born in Paris.
He served with his father, the vicomte de Laval, in America, and returned to France imbued with democratic opinions. Mathieu de Montmorency was governor of Compiègne when he was returned as deputy to the States-general in 1789, where&mdah;at the opening of the French Revolution—he joined the Third Estate and sat on the left of the Assembly. He moved the abolition of coats-of-arms on June 19, 1790. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in September 1791 set him free to join Lückner's army on the frontier early in the next year. After the revolution of the 20th of August he abandoned his revolutionary principles; and he took no part in politics under the Empire.
At the Restoration he was promoted maréchal de camp, and accompanied Louis XVIII to Ghent during the Hundred Days. At the second restoration, in 1815, he was made a peer of France, and two years later received the title of viscount. He adopted strong reactionary and ultramontane views, and became minister of foreign affairs under Villèle in December 1821. He recommended armed intervention in Spain, to restore Ferdinand VII, at the Congress of Verona in October 1822, but he resigned his post in December, being compensated by the title of duke and the cross of the Legion of Honour in the next year.
He was elected to the French Academy in 1825, though he appears to have had small qualifications for the honour, and in the next year became tutor to the six-year-old Henri, duke of Bordeaux (afterwards known as the comte de Chambord). He died two months after receiving this last appointment, on the 24th of March 1826.
See Vétillard, Notice sur la vie de M. le due Mathieu de Montmorency (Le Mans, 1826), and, for his curious relations with Mme de Staël, P Gautier, Mathieu de Montmorency et Mme de Staël, d'après les lettres inedités de M. de Montmorency a Mme Necker de Saussure (1908).
| Preceded by: Félix-Julien-Jean Bigot de Préameneu | Seat 37 Académie française | Succeeded by: Alexandre Guiraud |