Background
He was born in Paris at the Hôtel Selvois on January 16, 1675. His father, Claude de Rouvroy (1607–93), was raised to the nobility by Louis XIII in 1635.
He was born in Paris at the Hôtel Selvois on January 16, 1675. His father, Claude de Rouvroy (1607–93), was raised to the nobility by Louis XIII in 1635.
Like his father a favorite of Louis XIII, he determined to make his career in the service of the king.
As a young aristocrat, he studied horsemanship and fencing as much as letters and entered the elite King's Musketeers at the age of 16.
Saint-Simon fought in a couple more military campaigns, although not under Luxembourg.
After several campaigns under Louis XIV, which did not bring him the expected promotion, he resigned, convinced that he had been the victim of an injustice. He resigned his commission in 1702, thereby incurring Louis XIV's displeasure. He kept his position at court but only with difficulty, and then immersed himself in court intrigue at Versailles, tapping a collection of informants, the likes of dukes as well as servants, which later yielded him the benefit of an extraordinary amount of privileged information.
Saint-Simon, for his own part, appears to have played only an intermediate role in court life. Having previously served in London, he was nominated as ambassador to Rome in 1705, but the appointment was cancelled before he departed. At last he attached himself to Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, Louis XIV's nephew and the future regent. Though this was hardly likely to ingratiate him with Louis, it at least gave him the status of belonging to a definite party and it eventually placed him in the position of friend to the acting chief of state. He also allied himself with Louis, Duke of Burgundy, the Dauphin's son and next heir to the French throne.
Saint-Simon loathed "the bastards, " Louis XIV's illegitimate children, and not, apparently, entirely because they were accorded ceremonial precedence above France's peers. The Saint-Simon that is revealed through the Mémoires had many enemies, and a hatred reciprocated by many courtiers. However, it should be remembered that these reminiscences were written 30 years after the facts, by a disappointed man, and that Saint-Simon had maintained congenial or at least courteous relations with the majority of his fellow courtiers.
After the death of Louis XIV in 1715, Saint-Simon played an important role as public and private counselor to the regent, Philippe II d'Orléans, retiring upon the death of the latter in 1723. The death of Louis XIV seemed to have given Saint-Simon a chance of realizing his hopes. The Duke of Orleans became regent and Saint-Simon was appointed to his Regency Council. But no steps were taken to carry out his "preferred vision" of a France ruled by the noble élite, exposing how little real influence he had with the Regent. He was somewhat gratified by the degradation of "the bastards" in 1718 and, in 1721, he was appointed ambassador extraordinary to Spain so as to facilitate the marriage of Louis XV and Infanta Mariana Victoria of Spain (which, however, never took place). Whilst in Spain he did, however, secure a grandeeship(which later devolved upon his second son) and, despite having caught smallpox, he was quite satisfied with his efforts there:two ducal titles (grandees were recognised in France as dukes). Saint-Simon was not eager, unlike most other nobility, to acquire profitable functions, and he did not use his influence to repair his finances, which were even further diminished by the extravagance of his embassy.
After his return to France he had little to do with public affairs. His own account of the cessation of his intimacy with Orléans and Guillaume Dubois, the latter having never been his friend, is, like his account of some other events of his own life, rather vague and dubious. But there can be little doubt that he was eclipsed, and even expelled from the château de Meudon by Cardinal Dubois. He survived for more than thirty years; but little is known of the rest of his life. His wife died in 1743, his eldest son a little later; he had other family troubles, and he was loaded with debt; the dukedom in which he took such pride ended with him, and his only granddaughter was childless.
After spending several years on such other historical projects as his Notes on the Dukedoms and Peerages and his Additions to the Marquis of Dangeau's Journal, he began revising and writing out his Memoirs in 1739.
In the Memoirs, Saint-Simon's observations allowed him to describe vividly both the elegance and the corruption of the court of Versailles.
Saint-Simon's intensely written accounts of court intrigues and such events as the deaths of the Grand Dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy, and Louis XIV himself-as well as his incisive word portraits of his fellow courtiers-make him perhaps the world's greatest writer on the prestige, the ambitions, the uncertainties, and the ironies of public life.
He completed his Memoirs in 1752.
A discontented courtier all his life, whose career, in spite of high protection, had been a failure, Saint-Simon is often partial, distorting facts and representing people according to his likes and dislikes.
However, no writer has given a more vivid and, psychologically, a more accurate account of his time.
He did not pretend to be a writer.
In fact, as a duc et pair de France he had nothing but disdain for the profession of letters.
His grammar is often faulty, his style lacks orderliness and restraint, but it has pith and conveys a sharp sense of life.
He died in Paris on 2 March 1755, having almost entirely outlived his own generation and exhausted his family's wealth, though not its notoriety: A distant relative, Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, born five years after the Duke's death, is remembered as an intellectual forerunner of socialism.
All his possessions, including his writings, were seized by the Crown on his death, and it is thought a large part of his Mémoires disappeared.
It can be said that the actual events of Saint-Simon's life, long as it was and exalted as was his position, are neither numerous nor noteworthy. Yet he posthumously acquired great literary fame. He was an indefatigable writer, and he began very early to record all the gossip he collected, all his interminable legal disputes over precedence, and a vast mass of unclassified material. Most of his manuscripts were retrieved by the Crown and it was long before their contents were fully published: partly in the form of notes in the marquis de Dangeau's Journal, partly in both original and independent memoirs, partly in scattered and multifarious extracts, he had committed to paper an immense amount of material.
In 1695 he married Marie-Gabrielle de Durfort, daughter of Guy-Aldonce, duc de Lorges, a marshal of France, later serving under the Duke's command. He seems to have regarded her with a respect and affection unusual between husband and wife in that era. They had three children.
