MIRABEAU, Gabriel Honore Riquetti, gi-bre-el 6-n6-r3 re-ket-te or milli Up, Comm DE, French orator and Revolutionary leader: b. Bignon, near Nemours, 9 March 1749 d. Paris, 2 April 1791. In 1767 he en tered the Berry cavalry regiment, was pro moted 2d lieutenant, but on account of miscon duct was later imprisoned on the island of RE until March 1769. He then joined the expedi tion to Corsica, in 1771 was commissioned cap tam of dragoons and in 1773 was married. In 1774 he was imprisoned in the Castle of If, owing to debts and quarrels with his wife and father, and the next year was transferred to the Castle of Joux, near Pontarlier. Here he fell in love with the young wife of the Marquis de Monnier; trouble ensued and Mirabeau finally escaped to Switzerland, where he was joined by his mistress, Sophie, as he called her, and in October 1776 they settled in Amsterdam. In May 1777, however, they were arrested, brought to Paris and Mirabeau was imprisoned for three years and a half at Vincennes, being released in December 1780. After Mirabeau had forsaken Sophie committed suicide in 1789. Having secured the revocation of the death sentence imposed upon him for the seduc tion of Sophie, and being legally separated (1783) from his wife, he left France for a few months.
Upon Mirabeau's return he began his life long intimacy with Henrietta van Haren, known as Mme. de Nehra, whose influence was undoubtedly exerted to his great benefit In August 1784 he was forced to flee to London to allow more trouble to blow over, and while there wrote the 'Considerations sur l'ordre de Cincinnatus.) About 1784 he began to devote himself to politics, visited London, was en trusted by Calonne with a secret mission to Prussia, and published various treaties, which made him sufficiently well known to the isfr; hat to be elected by the town of Aix to be its representative in the States-General of 1789. Here he speedily eclipsed all the other orators of the Assembly, and became the centre round which gathered all the men of greatest mark and force of character in the third estate. He was the immediate cause of the Ftench Revolu tion, by the resistance which he offered to the demand of the king after the royal sitting of 23 June 1789, that the third estate should vote separately from the other two orders. It was on this occasion that he gave the vigorous reply to the grand-master of • ceremonies, who had communicated to the Assembly the royal will, concluding with the words, ((Go and tell your master that we are here by the will of the peo ple, and that no one shall drive us out except by the force of bayonets.* Both before and
after this occasion he delivered many eloquent speeches, which obtained for him the title of the (French Demosthenes? Among the most remarkable of these are his address to the king demanding the removal of the troops encamped at Versailles, speeches on the national bank ruptcy, on the civil constitution of the' clergy, on the royal sanction, on the right of peace and war, and his reply to the Abbe Maury on eccle siastical property. After having shown himself a bold reformer, and the most dangerous ad versary of the court, Mirabeau by offer ing his support to the throne; the court paid his debts and supplied him with funds, although he continued to make a show of opposition to royalty in order to uphold his popularity. This state of matters dates from May 1790. It ap pears to be true that in this change of position he acted from conviction, foreseeing the im minence of a great catastrophe, which he de- i sired if possible to avert. Whatever may have been his motives, this conduct, when it became known, naturally raised up against him numer ous enemies. But on 30 November he was elected president of the Jacobin Club, and on 29 Jan. 1791 of the National Assembly. His remains were buried with great pomp in Sainte Genevieve Church (the Pantheon), but three years later they were exhumed to make room for those of Marat. Mirabeau's aim was tb make France a constitutional monarchy after the English pattern, Statesmanship and oratorical powers were marvelously combined in him. Mme. de Stael said of him that his speech was ((like a powerful hammer, wielded by a skilful artist, and fashioning men to his will?' His speeches, however, were not his own altogether: a group of his friends united to supply him with the framings, and these he suffused and sublimated with his own genius.
Bibliography.— (Memoires biographiques, litteraires et politiques de Mirabeau,> by his adopted son, Lucas de Montigny (1834-35) ; and (Correspondance entre le Comte de Mira beau et le Comte de la Marck pendant les an flees (1851). Other important works on Mirabeau are Merilhou, (Essai sur la vie et les ouvrages de Mirabeau) (1827) • Reynald, (Mirabeau et la Constituante) (1872) , Louis and Charles de Lomenie 'Les Mirabeaut (1878 and 1889). Aulard, (1882); A. Stern, (Das leben Mirabeaus> (1889; Fr. trans. 1895) ; Mezieres, (Vie de Mirabeau) (1892) ; (Carlyle, Revolution) and 'Es says on Mirabeau); Willert, (Mirabean) (1898) ; Tallentyre, of (1908) ; Trowbridge, the Demigod' (1907), and the bibliography in the translation from the French of Louis Barthon's 'Mirabeau' (1913).