Jacques-Barthélemy Micheli du Crest

Jacques-Barthélemy Micheli du Crest

Jacques-Barthélemy Micheli du Crest (born September 28, 1690 in Geneva , † March 29, 1766 in Zofingen ) was a Geneva politician , physicist , cartographer and geodesist .

Life

The Micheli family originally came from Lucca in Italy. Since the mid-16th century, the family owned the Crest estate at Jussy GE , after which they called themselves Micheli du Crest . Jacques-Barthélemy was born in this aristocratic environment in 1690. At the age of twenty-three he became captain of a company in the service of the French king. He excelled there in fortress construction and as an engineer.

Geneva

City map "Geneva civitas", drawn by Micheli du Crest in 1725/26

In 1721 Micheli du Crest was elected to the Council of Two Hundred, the then Parliament of the Republic of Geneva. In accordance with his training, he was particularly concerned with Geneva's security policy, which was about to draw a fortification ring around the city. A city map titled Geneva civitas , which Micheli du Crest drew between 1725 and 1726, came in handy. In the opinion of Micheli du Crest, however, the planners of the city fortifications were not very professional, so that in 1728 he was prompted to violent and unrelenting criticism of the fortification methods. With that he had gone too far; he was expelled from the council in 1730 and his property was confiscated. Even his rights as a citizen of the city were revoked. Micheli du Crest fought back with various fonts that he had printed and distributed. In it he formulated enlightened , even democratic ideas, which earned him many supporters, but just as many enemies among the rulers. A rebellion threatened to break out in 1734. Micheli du Crest fled to France to avoid death by beheading. The judgment was carried out symbolically in effigy in 1735 .

Flight and Exile

Years of flight began. After another brief military service in France, he settled in Paris, where he devoted himself to scientific studies. His main focus was on the further development of the thermometer . To this end, he corresponded with scholars such as René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur and Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis . As he continued to write political justifications at the same time, he lost the support of his French friends. He spent the years 1744 to 1746 looking for help in Zurich, Bern, and again in Zurich, Basel, Strasbourg and Neuchâtel. At this last place of refuge, ill and exhausted, he was arrested and temporarily housed in Bern's Inselspital .

Aarburg

With twenty years imprisonment (1746–1766), Micheli du Crest is considered the longest incarcerated political prisoner in the history of Switzerland. He began his first period of imprisonment at the fortress of Aarburg , but at his request and under strict conditions he was transferred back to Inselspital after a few months. In July 1749, however, the conspiracy of Captain Samuel Henzi and two fellow campaigners against the Bernese authorities was uncovered. The name Micheli du Crests was also mentioned in this context. While the three ringleaders were immediately executed, Micheli du Crest came again to the fortress of Aarburg as a political prisoner for life.

Prospect géométrique des montagnes neigees (1755)

During his second imprisonment on the Aarburg, he initially dealt with barometric measurements again. He soon expanded his interest to include land surveying , for which he developed a far-sighted concept. But he soon realized that due to his situation he would not be able to implement this. Therefore, between 1754 and 1755, he switched to drawing the Alpine panorama from the Aarburg. As a prisoner, he had particular problems measuring distance and height, as well as identifying (naming) the mountains. He took the then current map of Switzerland from Johann Jakob Scheuchzer to help and, with little success, sought advice from Albrecht von Haller via correspondence . He had the panorama engraved in copper by Tobias Conrad Lotter in Augsburg in 1755 under the title Prospect géométrique des montagnes neigées (loosely translated: "Geometric view of the snow mountains") .

From the last years of Micheli du Crest's imprisonment, no further scientific works are known, as he suffered from a particularly strict fortress commander. In 1765, the Grand Council of Bern decided to transfer the sick Micheli to Bern's Inselspital because of his inability to stand in prison. Too much weakened for a long journey, he was driven to nearby Zofingen in February 1766, where he received medical care under guard and where he died shortly afterwards.

Appreciation

Micheli du Crest was a pioneer in many ways. In the political field, it was certainly his enlightenment and democratic views that were only realized half a century later in the course of the French Revolution . In the geodetic field, his concept for a national survey of Switzerland was around a hundred years ahead of history. His alpine panorama is considered to be the first scientific mountain panorama ever.

Works

• Prospect géométrique des montagnes neigées [maps]. Augsburg: Lotter, 1755.
• Kenneth Goodwin, Guillaume Poisson, Gabriella Silvestrini et Richard Whatmore (eds.): Discours en forme de lettres sur le gouvernement de Genève (1735) (=  Travaux sur la Suisse des Lumières Textes . No. 3 ). Slatkine, Genève 2011, ISBN 978-2-05-102168-5 .

literature

• Martin Rickenbacher: The Alpine panorama from Micheli du Crest - the fruit of an attempt to measure Switzerland in 1754. Murten: Cartographica Helvetica, 1995. ( Cartographica Helvetica special issue 8). Full text .
• Jacques-Barthélemy Micheli du Crest, 1690–1766, homme des Lumières. Genève: Maison Tavel, 1995. [French].
• Pirmin Meier : The loneliness of the state prisoner Micheli du Crest. Pendo Verlag, Zurich 1999. ISBN 3-85842-357-2 .

Web links

Commons : Micheli du Crest  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Jacques Barrelet / AHB: Micheli, Jacques-Barthélemy (du Crest). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Micheli du Crest, Jacques-Barthélemy (1690-1766). Lumières.Lausanne(French). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Pirmin Meier: The loneliness of the state prisoner Micheli du Crest. Pendo Verlag, Zurich 1999, page 334 ff