Germain-Hyacinthe de Romance

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Adèle Romanée , known as Romany (1769–1846): La collation du marquis de Romance Mesmon (“The snack of the Marquis of Romance Mesmon”), second half of the 18th century.

Germain-Hyacinthe de Romance, marquis de Mesmon (born November 23, 1745 in Paris , † March 2, 1831 in Neuilly-sur-Seine ) was a French officer, publicist and writer.

life and work

Youth and service in the royal guard

Germain de Romance came from a noble family from the Ardennes. Born as Chevalier de Romance , he later took on the title of his uncle, Marquis de Mesmon-en-Porcien (today's Mesmont in the Ardennes department ) in addition to his title as the third Marquis de Romance . In his youth page at the royal stables of the French king, he served in the guard regiment of Louis XVI. where he achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel of the cavalry until the outbreak of the revolution . During his service in 1782 he was accepted into the Masonic lodge Saint-Jean-d'Écosse du Contrat social .

Emigration to Germany

Signature of the Marquis de Mesmon in a letter to the Hamburg merchant Caspar Zeller from 1796.

After the outbreak of the French Revolution, he first served in the emigre army of the Prince of Condé , where he achieved the rank of major general . Then he settled in Hamburg . There he ran a flourishing delicatessen together with the Comtesse d'Asfeld. However, he gained particular fame through his work as a publicist. He wrote articles for the emigre newspaper Spectateur du Nord and published the weekly journal Le Réveil and finally Le Censeur . For criticism directed against Napoleon , he was arrested at the instigation of the Hamburg Senate in August 1800.

At the tsar's court

At the mediation of the Russian envoy in Hamburg , de Romance was released after a month in prison and then went to Russia. Tsar Paul I appointed him Imperial Russian Councilor with the rank of major general. During his time in Russia, he held various positions in the Russian Ministry of Education and Foreign Affairs and was awarded the Russian Order of Saint Anne . Under Tsar Alexander I , he resigned from his posts to return to France.

Return to France and last years

After his return home he was during the restoration of the Bourbons by Louis XVIII. Retired with the rank of maréchal de camp . Blinded in the last few years, he died in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris in 1831 .

Works (selection)

In addition to his work as an author of magazine articles, de Romance published a number of independent writings and worked as a translator of several English-language works:

Standalone fonts

  • Éloge du docteur Quesnai (1775)
  • Éloge du Suger (1779)
  • Oraison funèbre de ma petite chienne (Bruxelles 1784)
  • Portrait de Cléobuline et la Maison de Myrtho (1785)
  • Recherches philosophiques sur le sens moral de la fable de Psyché et de Cupidon (Hamburg 1798)
  • De la Liberté de pensée et de la Presse (Paris 1817)

As translator

  • William Dalrymple, Voyage en Espagne et en Portugal dans l'année 1774 (Bruxelles 1783) <Original title: Travels through Spain and Portugal in 1774>
  • Henry Lloyd , Introduction à l'histoire de la guerre en Allemagne en 1756… , Volume 1 (London 1784) <Original title: History of the late war…>

literature

swell

  • The "Series T" of the Archives nationales , Paris , contains a number of holdings of private papers that were confiscated during the Revolution, including: T 51, Papiers de Germain Hyacinthe de Romance, marquis de Mesmon .

Representations

  • JV: Mesmon (Germain-Hyacinthe de Romance, marquis de) , in: Jean Chrétien Ferdinand Hoefer , Nouvelle biographie générale, Volume 35: Mérat - Monnier, Paris 1861
  • Romance (Germain-Hyacinthe de) , in: Jean Baptiste Joseph Boulliot, Biographie ardennaise, Volume 2, Paris 1830

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mesmon (Germain Hyacinthe de Romance, marquis de) , in: Michel Gaudart de Soulages / Hubert Lamant, Dictionnaire des Francs-Maçons Français, Paris 1981, p. 398.
  2. ↑ Pierre Jeannin: Hamburg and the French Revolution - Effects on everyday life in the city before the “French era” , in: ders., Ruffled, powdered, with impeccable grace. Hamburg and the French Revolution, pp. 7–36, here p. 24.
personal data
SURNAME Romance, Germain-Hyacinthe de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Marquis de Mesmon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French officer, publicist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1745
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1831
Place of death Neuilly-sur-Seine