FAVRAS, THOMAS DE MAHY, MARQUIS DE (1744 1790), French royalist, was born on March 26, 1744, at Blois. In 1772 he became first lieutenant of the Swiss guards of the count of Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII.) . He retired in and married in 1776 Victoria Hedwig Caroline, princess of Anhalt-Bernburg-Schaumburg, whose mother, deserted by her husband Prince Carl Ludwig in 1749, had found refuge with her daughter in the house of Marshal Soubise. After his marriage he went to Vienna to press the restitution of his wife's rights, and spent some time in Warsaw. In 1787 he was authorized to raise a patriotic legion to help the Dutch against the stadtholder William IV. and his Prussian allies. Returning to Paris at the outbreak of the Revolution, he became implicated in schemes for the escape of Louis XVI. He was commissioned by the count of Provence, through the comte de la Chatre, to negotiate a loan of two million francs from the bankers Schaumel and Sartorius. Favras was betrayed; and, with his wife, he was arrested on Christmas Eve 1789. In the course of a trial of nearly two months' duration the witnesses disagreed, and even the editor of the Revolutions de Paris (No. 3o) admitted that the evidence was insufficient, but an armed attempt of the Royalists on the Chatelet on Jan. 26, which was defeated by La Fayette, sealed his fate. He was hanged on the Place de Greve on Feb. 19, 1790. Favras was generally regarded as a martyr to his refusal to im plicate the count of Provence, and Madame de Favras was pen sioned by Louis XVI.
The official dossier of Favras's trial for high treason against the nation disappeared from the Chatelet, but its substance is pre served in the papers of a clerk.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-For particulars see A. Tuetey, Repertoire general Bibliography.-For particulars see A. Tuetey, Repertoire general des sources manuscrites de l'histoire de Paris pendant la Revolution Francaise (vol. i., 189o, pp. 175-177) ; M. Tourneux, Bibl. de l'histoire de Paris pendant la Revolution Francaise (vol. i. pp. 196-198, 189o) . See also a memoir by Eduard, Freiherr v. Stillfried Ratenic (Vienna 1881) , and an article by Alexis de \Talon in the Revue des deux mondes (June 15, 1851) .