Jean-Baptiste Gay, vicomte de Martignac

Jean-Baptiste Sylvère Gay, vicomte de Martignac

Jean-Baptiste Sylvère Gay, vicomte de Martignac (born June 20, 1778 in Bordeaux , † April 3, 1832 in Paris ) was a moderate French royalist statesman and interior minister during the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy between the end of the First French Empire and the July Revolution .

biography

In 1798 he became secretary to Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès after serving in the army for a while. He wrote some literary plays and produced plays. He was first a prosecutor in Bordeaux and then in 1818 became an advocate general at the royal court. In 1819 he became General Procurator in Limoges , in 1821 he became a member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Marmande , where he supported the ultra-royalist views of Villèle . In 1822 he became state advisor to the conseiller d'État and accompanied Louis-Antoine de Bourbon during the French invasion of Spain in 1823as a consultant to Spain. In 1824 he was appointed viscount and became directeur général de l'enregistrement et des domaines . As a result of his political experiences, his initially ultra-royalist views changed in a moderate direction. After the fall of Villèle , he was chosen by Charles X to implement the new policy of compromise. On January 4, 1828 he was appointed Minister of the Interior and was the actual head of government. As a measure of liberalization, he abolished press censorship. However, he had a difficult position between the Chamber of Deputies, which was split into numerous factions, and the monarch, especially since his position was often unclear and his opinion wavered. Martignac tried to decentralize the administration and introduce self-government for the communities and departments. But this law was rejected by the Chamber of Deputies. Because of the growing dissatisfaction of the king, he was replaced by Jules de Polignac . In 1830 he voted with a majority in the Chamber of Deputies against the so-called "Juliordonnanzen" of the king, in which the Chamber of Deputies was dissolved, the electoral census was raised and the freedom of the press was further restricted. In his last public appearance in December 1830, he defended Polignac in the chamber of peers .

Web links

• Literature by and about Jean-Baptiste Gay, vicomte de Martignac in the catalog of the German National Library

predecessor	Office	successor
Jacques Joseph Guillaume Pierre, comte de Corbière	Minister of the Interior of France January 4, 1828 - August 8, 1829	François Régis de La Bourdonnaye