François Dominique de Reynaud de Montlosier

François Dominique de Reynaud de Montlosier , Comte de Montlosier, (born April 16, 1755 in Clermont-Ferrand , † December 9, 1838 in Blois ) was a French politician, historian and geologist.

François Dominique de Reynaud, Comte de Montlosier

Life and role as historian and politician

De Montlosier came from a poorly wealthy family of the lower nobility, went to the Augustinian college in Clermont-Ferrand and in 1779 was a lieutenant in the artillery. From 1789 he was elected deputy for the nobility in the Estates General for Clermont-Ferrand in Paris and was a member of the Club des Impartiaux . From 1791 he was then a royalist in the National Assembly , where he played an active role. . After its dissolution, he emigrated to Germany and joined the exiled royalist army in Koblenz. In 1792 he went to London via Hamburg. There he advocated a moderate policy among the exiles and published the magazine Courrier de Londres .

At the invitation of Napoleon Bonaparte , he returned to Paris in 1802 and was commissioned to write a history of the monarchy, which should serve to point out the triggers of the revolution and to justify Napoleon's own empire . However, the work did not turn out to the satisfaction of the emperor, as it represented the theory that the revolution was a consequence of the claims to power of the monarchs, who broke away from the increasingly constitutional counterbalance of the nobility and used the bourgeoisie and the Third Estate in the Estates General to further restrict the power of the nobility.

The work was published in three volumes in 1814, followed by another volume the following year (De la monarchie française), with a foreword critical of Napoleon. Even with Louis XVIII. he found little approval with his ideas.

De Montlosier withdrew to his estates and devoted himself to agriculture. In 1826 ( Memoire à consulter sur un système religieux, politique ) and 1829 ( De l'origine, de la nature, et des progrés de la puissance écclesiastique en France ) he published anti-clerical pamphlets in which he described the reactionary politics under Charles X and attacked the Jesuits , who he believed had infiltrated French society and politics.

In 1829 his Memoires sur la revolution française, le consulat, l'empire, la restoration, et les principaux evenements qui l'ont suivie appeared in two volumes. Under Louis Philippe he became a Peer of France and Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1832. In 1830 he became General Conseiller in the Puy-de-Dôme department .

Before his death he refused to deny his anti-clerical writings and therefore did not receive a church funeral. His funeral was nevertheless attended by a large crowd and because of this unyielding attitude there were rallies in the Auvergne against the Catholic Church.

Montlosier as a geologist

It also plays a role in the history of volcanology through a treatise from 1788/89 on the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne (Essai sur la théorie des volcans d'Auvergne). They were in his home region and he had studied them there for years in the wild, rugged landscape of the Auvergne. The geologist Jean-Étienne Guettard recognized its volcanic nature in 1756, and Nicolas Desmarest recognized the volcanic nature of basalt in the Auvergne (1774). Montlosier explained the formation of the Auvergne landscape through lava flows and erosion, developed a theory of the formation of volcanoes, comparing recent and fossil volcanoes and comparing the formation of a volcano with the formation of molehills, in which the lava also on the flanks and the Base emerged, in which other processes also played a role (formation of a lava dome as in the Puy de Dôme ). He rejected the theory of formation through burning coal or bitumen in the subsoil, which was still common at the time (as did Déodat de Dolomieu later in 1797/98 ). His essay fits into the dispute between Neptunists ( Abraham Gottlob Werner ) and Plutonists ( James Hutton ) in geology at the end of the 18th century. Montlosier's book contained many observations that were ahead of their time. The next great advances in volcanology were not achieved until the 19th century ( Leopold von Buch and others).

The immediate reason for publication was Monlosier's anger at a travelogue by Legrand d'Aussy in the Auvergne, which he found frivolous, full of errors and degrading the population.

In the 1830s he was an opponent of the elevation crater theory of Leopold von Buch and Elie de Beaumont , since he believed that there were more types of volcanoes (such as explosion craters). At that time there was a controversy between the two camps of volcanologists. Friedrich Hoffmann and Constant Prévost were also on the side of the critics of Buch .

The management of the Volcans d'Auvergne Natural Park is now in his former castle .

Works

• Essai sur l'art de constituer des peuples. Ou examen des opérations constitutionelles de l'Assemblée nationale de France. Paris 1790. Digitized

literature

• François-Dominique de Larouzière: Le Comte de Montlosier. Une vision originale of the volcans d'Auvergne à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Cofrhigeo, 2003 ( online ).