Nicolas René Berryer
Encyclopedia
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
- 15 August 1762, Versailles
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles , or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de Versailles....
was a French magistrate
Magistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
and politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
. He is best known for his service as Minister of Marine during the Seven Years War.
Life
Nicolas René Berryer was the son of Nicolas Berryer, procureur général to the Grand ConseilGrand Conseil
The term Grand Conseil or Great Council refers two different institutions during the Ancien Régime in France. It also is the name of parliaments in several Swiss cantons.-Part of the King's Council:...
, and Élisabeth Nicole Ursule d'Arnollet de Lochefontaine. Initially "avocat général aux requêtes de l'hôtel", in 1728 he became "avocat général des brevets" then, in 1731, "conseiller à la cinquième chambre des enquêtes du Parlement de Paris".
In 1738, he married a rich heiress, the daughter of the fermier général, Catherine Madeleine Jorts de Fribois : beautiful, likeable and witty, she contributed to her husband's advancement. In 1739, he became 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:...
then président of the Grand Conseil before being named intendant
Intendant
The title of intendant has been used in several countries through history. Traditionally, it refers to the holder of a public administrative office...
of Poitou
Poitou
Poitou was a province of west-central France whose capital city was Poitiers.The region of Poitou was called Thifalia in the sixth century....
(1743-1747).
A friend 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:...
, it was she who had him named lieutenant général de police when she became "maîtresse en titre" to 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...
. He held this role from May 1747 to October 1757. Charged with protecting the relations between the king and de Pompadour, he created a "cabinet noir
Cabinet noir
Cabinet noir was the name given in France to the office where the letters of suspected persons were opened and read by public officials before being forwarded to their destination...
" (black cabinet), in order to keep postal correspondence between their enemies under surveillance. To this cabinet has been attributed the disgrace of several enemies of madame de Pompadour, notably the comte de Maurepas and the comte d'Argenson
Marc-Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy, comte d'Argenson
Marc-Pierre de Voyer de Paulmy, comte d'Argenson was a French politician, son of the 1st Marquis d'Argenson and the younger brother of René Louis d’Argenson. d'Argenson became general lieutenant of the Paris police in 1720, 1737 Intendand of Paris and 1743 secretary of state for war...
. On the other hand, he revealed himself unable to identify the authors of heinous libels against de Pompadour.
According to Tocqueville, Berryer was "a hard, haughty, cruel man, with much ignorance and even more presumption and stubbornness" ("un homme dur, hautain, grossier, avec beaucoup d'ignorance et encore plus de présomption et d'entêtement"). His brutality won him the hatred of the people of Paris. One day, when he was summoned to parliament by the first-president, Berryer reported back that he could not cross Paris, for the mob had sworn to kill him and eat his heart.
On 1 November 1758, while still under the protection of Madame de Pompadour, and with the support of Choiseul
Étienne François, duc de Choiseul
Étienne-François, comte de Stainville, duc de Choiseul was a French military officer, diplomat and statesman. Between 1758 and 1761, and 1766 and 1770, he was Foreign Minister of France and had a strong influence on France's global strategy throughout the period...
and the marshal of Belle Isle, he was named secretary of state to the Navy. Delegating the planning of the landing in England to the secretary of state for war, he devoted himself to reforming the administration. He was instrumental in blocking the plans of Belle-Isle, his former patron, to launch an invasion of the Channel Islands
Channel Islands
The Channel Islands are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey...
. With his customary brutality, he strove to repress the abuses that he believed he saw in the administration of Canada. He worked to set up a court of enquiry that would have been competent to rule on the accusations of fraud and price increases made against his department, and in this way to punish the concussionnaires, implicated in the embezzlements and other irregularities in Canada.
On 13 October 1761, Louis XV replaced Berryer with Choiseul and, to keep him in royal service, named him garde des sceaux of France, a role he occupied until 15 September 1762.
He had only one child, a daughter called Marie Élisabeth Berryer, who married Chrétien François de Lamoignon de Basville (garde des sceaux from 1787) on 4 September 1758.