Background
François Mignet was born on May 8, 1796, in Aix-en-Provence, France. His father was a locksmith from the Vendée, who enthusiastically accepted the principles of the French Revolution and encouraged liberal ideas in his son.
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François Mignet was born on May 8, 1796, in Aix-en-Provence, France. His father was a locksmith from the Vendée, who enthusiastically accepted the principles of the French Revolution and encouraged liberal ideas in his son.
Mignet was educated at Avignon.
He became professor there in 1815; he returned to Aix for his law studies and was called to the bar in 1818. His first work, the Essai sur les institutions de Saint Louis, was acclaimed by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres in 1821, but Mignet left academic life to enter political journalism in Paris. He worked first on the staff of the Courrier Français, a journal that opposed the restoration of the monarchy, and then, with Thiers and Armand Carrel, he founded Le National in 1830. This newspaper was instrumental in precipitating the July Revolution, which resulted in the accession of Louis-Philippe as French king. Mignet gave up politics and journalism for historical work, and he was appointed keeper of the archives at the Foreign Ministry, holding this post until his resignation in 1848. Mignet was also elected to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 1832, became its permanent secretary in 1837, and in 1836 was elected to the French Academy.
Mignet’s writings include Histoire de la révolution française, 2 vol. (1824; "History of the French Revolution"); Antonio Perez et Philippe II (1845); Histoire de Marie Stuart, 2 vol. (1851; "History of Mary Stuart"), which made use of important unpublished documents; and the Histoire de la rivalité de François I et Charles-Quint (1875; "History of the Rivalry Between Francis I and Charles V"). A collection of diplomatic documents, Négociations relatives à la succession d’Espagne sous Louis XIV, 4 vol. (1835–42; "Negotiations Relating to the Spanish Succession under Louis XIV"), remains unfinished, but it contains an important introductory essay, reprinted in Mémoires historiques (1843; "Historical Memoirs").
François Mignet died on March 24, 1884, in Paris, at age 87.
Quotations: "I am about to take a rapid review of the history of the French Revolution, which began the era of new societies in Europe, as the English Revolution had begun the era of new governments. This revolution not only modified the political power, but it entirely changed the internal existence of the nation. The forms of the society of the Middle Ages still remained. The land was divided into hostile provinces, the population into rival classes. The nobility had lost all their powers, but still retained all their distinctions: the people had no rights, royalty no limits; France was in an utter confusion of arbitrary administration, of class legislation and special privileges to special bodies. For these abuses the revolution substituted a system more conformable with justice, and better suited to our times. It substituted law in the place of arbitrary will, equality in that of privilege; delivered men from the distinctions of classes, the land from the barriers of provinces, trade from the shackles of corporations and fellowships, agriculture from feudal subjection and the oppression of tithes, property from the impediment of entails, and brought everything to the condition of one state, one system of law, one people. "
In 1876, François Mignet became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
