Jacques Marie Armand Guerry de Beauregard
Jacques Marie Armand Guerry de Beauregard, Count of Maubreuil and Marquis of Orvault (26 May 1783 – 17 June 1868), was a French officer, condemned as a result of the so-called "Maubreuil affair".
Contents
Biography
Son of Jacques-Louis-Marie Guerry de Beauregard, chief of battalion in the Guards of Monsieur, and of Marie-Bonne-Félicité Ménardeau, lady of Maubreil.
His father remarried in 1790 to Constance-Henriette-Louise Duvergier de la Rochejaquelein, sister of Henri du Vergier de La Rochejaquelein and Louis du Vergier de La Rochejaquelein, Vendéean chiefs.
His grandfather was killed during the Chouannerie of 1793 at Sablé, his father was killed during the Chouannerie of 1815 at Aizenay, and several of his uncles died during the Vendée wars. His sister Adelaide Guerry de Beauregard married Viscount Constantin de Chabot in 18195.
Following the French Revolution, he emigrated with his father, then was recalled to France by his grandmother Ménardeau and his great-uncle Armand de Bourrigan, known as the Marquis of Orvault.
Chouannerie
At the age of fifteen, he was in the third Vendée War (1799-1800), first in the division of Machecoul under his cousin Louis de Cornullier, then in the army of Châtillon in the escort or company of Count Danès de Montardat, who was the husband of Marie-Euphémie-Désirée Tascher de la Pagerie, Marquise de Beauharnais, the aunt of Josephine de Beauharnais, Empress of France in 1804.
Maubreuil had remained intimately linked with the Count of Montardat and thus benefited from his protection. After the pacification, he was sent to the Lemoine boarding school in Paris to finish his studies.
Consulate and First Empire
In 1802, he returned to Nantes. At this time he became a close friend and squire of Jérôme Bonaparte, who became king of Westphalia in 1807. Maubreuil entered his service in the 1st regiment of light horsemen, in 1808 he was captain of the hunts of his wife, Queen Catharina of Württemberg in Kassel.
In 1809, he was a captain in the guards of the Wesphalian cavalry commanded by Baron Hammerstein, and he distinguished himself with the French forces of the First Empire during the War of Spanish Independence at the battles of Ávilla, at the crossing of the Tagus River, at Goralva, and Alcántara.
Maubreuil had a reputation as an adventurer, "a great duellist and a great gambler". He was said to be "handsome, rich, elegant, and boastful", "he threw money around, but did not drop any on his father, who returned from emigration and asked for it, then demanded it ". Following a conflict and a lawsuit with his father, he renounces to be called Guerry de Beauregard and chooses Maubreuil.
After an affair in Kassel with a mistress of Jérôme Bonaparte, he fell into disgrace and returned to Paris in 1811 where he embarked on business and speculation.
He became associated with Alexandre de Vanteaux and Geslin, former emigrants, in the military supplies; the service of food-meat for the supply of the French troops in Spain. He lost a lot when the emperor, during his return from the Russian campaign, withdrew this concession to him.
In February 1814, although he had squandered a large part of his fortune, he offered to the Minister of War to raise at his own expense two cavalry squadrons for the service of the Emperor; this offer remained without effect.
Restoration
During the first Restoration, he declared his support to Louis XVIII and wore the white cockade. Maubreuil is famous for having "gone up on the column of the Vendôme square, he deposited twenty gold coins there to make knock down by force of arms and ropes the statue which surmounted it (Napoleon)" and that "in this burst of real or simulated enthusiasm on the part of Maubreuil he went out of bounds that would proscribe moderation and wisdom; he tied his cross of honor to the tail of his horse, and walked in this state in all Paris."
Having been noticed by his exaltation, he was dragged into an ultra-royalist group: the Vanteaux committee, located on Taitbout street in the Vanteaux hotel. This committee, supported by the Count of Artois and including, among others, Jules de Polignac, the Count of Sémallé, former page to the king, Anne-Christian de Montmorency, François de Larochefoucault, the Baron of Vitrolles, but also abbots, Chouans chiefs, etc., "and finally a large number of people devoted to the Bourbon cause in body and soul."
The Maubreuil affair
On April 21, 1814, accompanied by his second-in-command, a man named Dasies, and some hussars, he was accused of having stolen near the Fossart post house in Seine-et-Marne, several boxes containing "gold and jewels", belonging to Princess Catherine of Wurtemberg, niece of Tsar Alexander.
Arrested during the Hundred Days and again after the Second Restoration, after several trials and escapes, he was condemned for "theft on the highways" on May 6, 1818 by the royal court of Douai to a correctional sentence of five years of imprisonment, ten years of disqualification from civil rights, and a fine of 500 Francs. He managed to escape to England where he waited for his sentence to expire. A part of the booty was found by a fisherman at the bottom of the Seine in Paris at the bottom of the quai de la Conférence.
However, in his defense, Maubreuil declared that he acted for the National interest and in the name of the provisional government presided over by Talleyrand. He produced five mission orders signed by the Minister of Police, Jules Anglès, the Minister of War, Pierre Dupont de l'Étang, and by Bourrienne, Director General of the Post Office, as well as by two generals of the allied armies; "which ordered the various authorities of the kingdom and of the allied armies to obey in all things the requisitions and requests of M. de Maubreuil, charged with high missions, secret missions of great importance, etc."
To "avenge his honor", he was the author of an ambush on January 20, 1827 at the Basilica of Saint-Denis, where he slaped Talleyrand. He was arrested again, and explained this gesture by revealing a new case: in 1814 he would have been commissioned by Antoine-Athanase Roux de Laborie and the provisional government to assassinate the emperor at the time of his departure for the island of Elba, and that he would have been promised in return the title of duke, 200,000 pounds of annuities and the rank of lieutenant-general. He declared to have been compromised and ruined by Talleyrand and that "Thus; France will be able finally to know which deserves more of the one who ordered the assassination of Napoleon and his son, even after the abdication, or of the one who took for him not to let execute the most infamous of all the violations of treaties."
Then, he explained that while he was supposedly on the trail of Napoleon, he would have intercepted the convoy of Catherine of Wurtemberg who was on her way to Switzerland to find her husband Jérôme Bonaparte. He thought it wise to requisition the luggage and jewels of the crown of France which the former queen was suspected of taking with her, but when the coffers were handed over to the baron de Vitrolles the provisional secretary of state in 1814, a deficit was noted.
Second Empire
In November 1866, at the age of 83, the Count of Maubreuil married Catherine Schumacher, who called herself Madame de la Bruyère.
He died on June 17, 1868 in Paris and was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (68th division).
Works
- Chateaubriand démasqué, ou Examen critique de sa brochure sur la Monarchie élective, par M. de Maubreuil (1831)
Notes
References
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