Jean Baptiste de Machault D'Arnouville

Jean-Baptiste de Machault d'Arnouville, comte d'Arnouville, seigneur de Garge et de Gonesse, was born in Paris on December 13, 1701, and died on July 12, 1794 in a French Revolutionary prison. He was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

statesman, son of Louis Charles Machault d'Arnouville, lieutenant of police.

In 1721, he was counsel to the Parlement

Parlement

Parlements were regional legislative bodies in Ancien Régime France.The political institutions of the Parlement in Ancien Régime France developed out of the previous council of the king, the Conseil du roi or curia regis, and consequently had ancient and customary rights of consultation and...

of Paris, in 1728 he was maître des requêtes
Maître des requêtes
Masters of Requests are high-level judicial officers of administrative law in France and other European countries that have existed in one form or another since the Middle Ages.-Old Regime France:...

, and ten years later was made president of the Great Council; although he had opposed the court in the Unigenitus

Unigenitus

Unigenitus , an apostolic constitution in the form of a papal bull promulgated by Pope Clement XI in 1713, opened the final phase of the Jansenist controversy in France...

dispute, he was appointed intendant of Hainaut

County of Hainaut

The County of Hainaut was a historical region in the Low Countries with its capital at Mons . In English sources it is often given the archaic spelling Hainault....

in 1743. From this position, through the influence at court of his old friend the marquis d'Argenson, he was called to succeed Philibert Orry

Philibert Orry

Philibert Orry, count of Vignory and lord of La Chapelle-Godefroy, was a French statesman born in Troyes on the 22 January 1689 and who died at La Chapelle-Godefroy on 9 November 1747.-Life:...

as controller-general of the finances in December 1745. On taking office, he found that in the four years of the War of the Austrian Succession

War of the Austrian Succession

The War of the Austrian Succession – including King George's War in North America, the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear, and two of the three Silesian wars – involved most of the powers of Europe over the question of Maria Theresa's succession to the realms of the House of Habsburg.The...

the economies of Cardinal Fleury had been exhausted, and he was forced to develop the system of borrowing which was bringing French finances to the verge of bankruptcy

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

.

In 1749, he attempted a reform in the levying of direct taxes, which, if carried out, would have done much to prevent the later Revolutionary movement. He proposed to abolish the old tax of a tenth or tithe

Tithe

A tithe is a one-tenth part of something, paid as a contribution to a religious organization or compulsory tax to government. Today, tithes are normally voluntary and paid in cash, cheques, or stocks, whereas historically tithes were required and paid in kind, such as agricultural products...

(in French dîme), which was evaded by the clergy and most of the nobility, and substituted a tax of one-twentieth that would have been be levied on all without exception. The cry for exceptions, however, began at once. The clergy stood by their historical privileges, and the outcry of the nobility was too great for the minister to make headway against. Still he managed to retain his office until July 1754, when he exchanged the controllership for the ministry of marine.

Foreseeing the disastrous results of the alliance with Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, he was drawn to oppose more decidedly the schemes of Madame de Pompadour

Madame de Pompadour

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, also known as Madame de Pompadour was a member of the French court, and was the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to her death.-Biography:...

, whose personal ill-will he had gained. On 1 February 1757, Louis XV

Louis XV of France

Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...

acquiesced in her demand for his removal. Machault retired to his estate at Arnouville until the Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

broke out in 1789, when, after a period of hiding, he was apprehended in 1794 at Rouen

Rouen

Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...

and brought to Paris as a suspect. He was imprisoned in the Prison des Madelonnettes
Madelonnettes Convent
The Madelonnettes Convent was a Paris convent in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris. It was located in what is now a rectangle between 6 rue des Fontaines du Temple , rue Volta and rue du Vertbois, and part of its site is now occupied by the lycée Turgot...

, where he died after a few weeks at the age of ninety-three.

Family

His eldest son, Louis Charles de Machault d'Arnouville (1737–1820), was bishop of Amiens from 1774 until the Revolution. He was one of the most uncompromising
conservatives

Conservatism

Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

at the Estates-General of 1789

Estates-General of 1789

The Estates-General of 1789 was the first meeting since 1614 of the French Estates-General, a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the nobility, the Church, and the common people...

, where he voted consistently against every reform. He emigrated in 1791, which provoked the arrest of the members of his family still in France in 1793, when his father and his brothers Charles and Armand were arrested as parents and relatives of an émigré. Upon his return to France in 1802, he resigned his bishopric in order not to be an obstacle to Concordat of 1801

Concordat of 1801

The Concordat of 1801 was an agreement between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII, signed on 15 July 1801. It solidified the Roman Catholic Church as the majority church of France and brought back most of its civil status....

, and he retired to the ancestral château of Arnouville, where he died in 1820.

Family

Further reading