VILLELE, JEAN BAPTISTE GUILLAUME MARIE ANNE SERAPHIN, COMTE DE (1773-1854), French states man, was born at Toulouse on April 14, 1773 and educated for the navy. He joined the "Bayonnaise" at Brest in July 1788 and served in the West and East Indies. Arrested in the Isle of Bourbon under the Terror, he was set free by the revolution of Thermidor (July He acquired some property in the island, and married in 1799 the daughter of a great proprietor, M. Des bassyns de Richemont, whose estates he had managed. The ar rival of General Decaen, sent out by Bonaparte in 1802, restored security to the island, and five years later Villele, who had now realized a large fortune, returned to France. He was mayor of his commune, and a member of the council of the Haute-Garonne under the Empire. At the restoration of 1814 he at once declared for royalist principles. He was mayor of Toulouse in 1814-15 and deputy for the Haute-Garonne in the "Chambre Introuvable" of 1815. Villele, who before the promulgation of the charter had written some Observations sur le pro jet de constitution opposing it, as too democratic in character, naturally took his place on the extreme right with the ultra-royalists. In the new Chamber of 1816 Villele found his party in a minority, but his personal au thority nevertheless increased. He was looked on by the minis terialists as the least unreasonable of his party, and by the "ultras" as the safest of their leaders. Under the electoral law of 1817 the Abbe Gregoire, who was popularly supposed to have voted for the death of Louis XVI. in the Convention, was admitted to the Chamber of Deputies. The Conservative party gained strength from the alarm raised by this incident and still more from the shock caused by the assassination of the duc de Berri. The duc de Richelieu was compelled to admit to the cabinet two of the chiefs of the Left, Villele and Corbiere. Villele resigned within a year, but on the fall of Richelieu at the end of 1821 he became the real chief of the new cabinet, in which he was minister of finance. Although not himself a courtier, he was backed at court by Sosthenes de la Rochefoucauld and Madame du Cayla, and in 1822 Louis XVIII. gave him the title of count and made him formally prime minister.
He immediately proceeded to muzzle opposition by stringent press laws, and the discovery of minor Liberal conspiraciesafforded an excuse for further repression. Forced against his will into
interference in Spain, he reaped some credit from the campaign of 1823. Meanwhile he had persuaded Louis XVIII. to swamp the Liberal majority in the upper house by the nomination of twenty-seven new peers ; he availed himself of the temporary pop ularity of the monarchy after the Spanish campaign to summon a new Chamber of Deputies. This new and obedient legislature, to which only nineteen Liberals were returned, made itself into a septennial parliament, thus providing time, it was thought, to restore some part of the ancien regime. Villele's plans were as sisted by the death of Louis XVIII. and the accession of his bigoted brother. Prudent financial administration since 1815 had made possible the conversion of the state bonds from 5 to 4%. It was proposed to utilize the money set free by this operation to indemnify by a milliard francs the emigres for the loss of their lands at the Revolution; it was also proposed to restore their former privileges to the religious congregations. Both these propositions were, with some restrictions, secured. Sacrilege was made a crime punishable by death, and the ministry were pre paring a law to alter the law of equal inheritance, and thus create anew the great estates. These measures roused violent opposi tion in the country, which a new and stringent press law, nick named the "law of justice and love," failed to put down. The peers rejected the law of inheritance and the press law ; it was found necessary to disband the National Guard; and in Novem ber 1827 seventy-six new peers were created, and recourse was had to a general election. The new Chamber proved hostile to Villele, who resigned to make way for the short-lived moderate ministry of Martignac.
The new ministry made Villele's removal to the upper house a condition of taking office, and he took no further part in public affairs. At the time of his death, on March 13, 1854, he had ad vanced as far as 1816 with his memoirs, which were completed from his correspondence by his family as Memoires et corre spondance du comte de Villele (Paris, 5 vols., 1887-90).
See also C. de Mazade, L'Opposition royaliste (Paris, 1894) ; J. G. Hyde de Neuville, Notice sur le comte de Villele (Paris, 1899) ; and M. Chotard, "L'Oeuvre financiere de M. de Villele," in Annales des sciences politiques (vol. v., 1890).