Jacques Claude Beugnot

Jacques Claude Beugnot

Jacques Claude Beugnot , partly also Charles Claude , (born July 25, 1761 in Bar-sur-Aube , † June 24, 1835 in Bagneux (Hauts-de-Seine) ) was a French politician. He was a member of parliament during the French Revolution . At the time of Napoleon he played a leading role in the Kingdom of Westphalia and in the Grand Duchy of Berg . After the defeat of the emperor in 1814, he entered the service of Louis XVIII.

Life

He used to be a lawyer in Champagne . In 1791 he was a member of the Constituent Assembly and later the National Legislative Assembly . Beugnot was a supporter of the constitutional monarchy and attacked Jean Paul Marat . Hence he became known as an opponent of the Jacobins . He was arrested in 1793 and released during the 9th Thermidor in 1794. After that, he initially withdrew from politics.

He became a confidante and advisor to Lucien Bonaparte . After Napoleon's coup in 1799, he became Prefect of the Seine-Inferieur department in Rouen . Napoleon also appointed him a Council of State in 1806 .

In 1807 he became Minister of Finance in the government of the Kingdom of Westphalia. From 1808 he was commissioner, finance minister and de facto governor of Napoleon in the Grand Duchy of Berg . He held this office until 1813. His official seat there was the governor's palace in Düsseldorf. Beugnot rejected hasty reforms, which is why there was never a written constitution in the Grand Duchy . In 1810 Napoleon raised him to the rank of count , which is why he is also known as Comte de Beugnot .

After the end of the Grand Duchy he became prefect of a department and after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814 he became interior minister of the provisional government. He was also director general of the police under King Louis XVIII. He was instrumental in drafting the Charte constitutionnelle issued by the King in 1814 . The programmatic preamble essentially came from Beugnot.

For a short time he was Minister of the Navy in 1815 before, after the second restoration, he held the offices of Director General of the Post, Minister of State and a member of the Privy Council . In 1815 he was also elected deputy of the Marne department . In parliament he was the rapporteur on the state budget. He gave up the seat of parliament in 1824. He left memoirs that his grandson Albert Beugnot published in 1866.

Honors

• June 1804 Chevalier of the Legion of Honor
• December 30, 1809 Officer of the Legion of Honor
• June 30, 1811 Commander of the Legion of Honor
• April 24, 1817 Grand Officier of the Legion of Honor
• May 1, 1821 Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor

Fonts

• Albert Beugnot (ed.): Mémoires du comte Beugnot. 1779-1815 . Hachette, Paris 1959 (EA Paris 1866).

literature

• Jacques-Claude Beugnot . In: The Universal Dictionary of Biography and Mythology, Vol. 1 . London 1887, p. 350.
• Albert de Broglie (Ed.): Memoirs of the Prince de Talleyrand . Paris u. a. 1895, p. 17.
• Conversation Lexicon / New Series, First section of the first volume . Brockhaus, Leipzig 1822, p. 337.
• Wilhelm Ribhegge: Prussia in the West. Struggle for parliamentarism in Rhineland and Westphalia, 1789–1947 . Aschendorff, Münster 2008, p. 34. ISBN 978-3-402-05489-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Martin Kirsch: Monarch and Parliament in the 19th Century. Monarchical constitutionalism as a European type of constitution; France in comparison . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-525-35465-7 , pp. 300-302 (also dissertation, Humboldt University Berlin 1997).