MIRABEAU, HONORE GABRIEL RIQUETI, COMTE DE (I749-1791), French statesman, was born at Bignon, near Nemours, on March 9, 1749. The family of Riquet, or Riqueti, originally of the little town of Digne, won wealth as merchants at Marseilles, and in 157o Jean Riqueti bought the chateau and seigniory of Mirabeau, which had belonged to the Provencal family of Barras. In 1685 Honore Riqueti obtained the title of marquis de Mirabeau. His son Jean Antoine married Francoise de Castellane, and left at his death, in 1737, three sons—Victor, marquis de Mirabeau, Jean Antoine, bailli de Mirabeau, and Comte Louis Alexandre de Mirabeau. The great Mirabeau was the eldest surviving son of the marquis. When but three years old he had a virulent attack of small-pox which left his face dis figured, and contributed to his father's dislike of him. He was educated at a military school in Paris, and in 1767 received a commission in a cavalry regiment which his grandfather had commanded years before. He crossed his colonel in love, and the ensuing scandal led his father to ask for a lettre de cachet, and Mirabeau was imprisoned in the isle of Re. This was the first recorded of many affairs of the heart. On his release, the young count obtained leave to accompany as a volunteer the French expedition to Corsica. After his return, he tried to keep on good terms with his father, and in 1772 he married a rich heiress, Marie Emilie de Marignane. His wild extravagance, however, forced his father to forestall his creditors by securing his detention in semi-exile in the country, where he wrote his earliest extant work, the Essai sur le despotisme. A violent quarrel brought another lettre de cachet and imprisonment in the Château d'If. In 1775 he was removed to the castle of Joux, to which, however, he was not very closely confined, having full leave to visit in the town of Pontarlier. Here he met Marie Therese de Monnier, the Sophie of the famous letters. He escaped to Switzerland, where Sophie joined him; they then went to Holland, where he lived by hack work for the booksellers ; meanwhile Mirabeau had been con demned to death at Pontarlier for rapt et vol, and in May 1777 he was seized by the French police, and imprisoned by a lettre de cachet in the castle of Vincennes.
The early part of his confinement is marked by the indecent letters to Sophie (first published in r793), and the obscene Erotica biblion and Ma conversion, while to the later months belongs his political work, the Lettres de cachet, published after his liberation (1782). The book exhibits an accurate knowledge
of French constitutional history skilfully applied in an attempt to show that an existing actual grievance was not only philosophi cally unjust but constitutionally illegal. It shows, though in rather a diffuse and declamatory form, that application of wide historical knowledge, keen philosophical perception, and genuine eloquence to a practical purpose which was the great characteristic of Mirabeau, both as a political thinker and as a statesman.
With his release from Vincennes (August 1782) begins the second period of Mirabeau's life. He found that his Sophie was an idealized version of a rather common and ill-educated woman, and she consoled herself with the affection of a young officer, after whose death she committed suicide. Mirabeau first set to work to get the sentence of death still hanging over him reversed, and by his eloquence not only succeeded in this but got M. de Monnier condemned in the costs of the whole law proceedings.
From Pontarlier he went to Aix, where he claimed the court's order that his wife should return to him, but he lost his case by accusing his wife of infidelity, on which the court pronounced a decree of separation. He then intervened in the suit pending between his father and mother before the parlement of Paris, and attacked the ruling powers so violently that he had to leave France and again go to Holland. About this time began his connection with Mme. de Nehra, and his life was strengthened by the love of his petite horde, Mme. de Nehra, his adopted son, Lucas de Montigny, and his little dog Chico. After a period of work in Holland he went to England, where he was admitted into the best Whig literary and political society of London, through his old schoolfellow Gilbert Elliot. Among his most intimate English friends were the 1st marquess of Lansdowne, better known as Lord Shelburne, and Samuel Romilly. Romilly undertook to translate into English the Considerations sur l'ordre de Cincin natus, which Mirabeau had written in 1785.