Honore Mirabeau
From Philosopedia
Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel Riquetti [Comte de] (9 March 1749 - 2 April 1791)
Mirabeau was a famed French statesman and orator. He inherited from his family a passionate nature, a frank strong will, generous temper, and a mind of prodigious activity. He entered the army in 1767 but, by an amorous intrigue that provoked the ire of his father, was imprisoned. In fact, he was jailed several times on the request of his father, Victor de Mirabeau, with whom he carried on a public quarrel.
In 1783 his Erotika Biblion anonymously appeared and dealt with the Bible’s obscenity. In 1785 he fled to England in exile, where he moved in Whig circles.
When sent in 1786 on a secret mission to Prussia, he betrayed his government’s trust by publishing his unedited reports to Paris, containing accounts of scandal and intrigue in the Prussian court and leading many to regard him as having an unsavory reputation. When the king ordered the States-General to leave the hall after the day’s session was declared closed, Mirabeau replied (with words which have been variously reported): “We shall not leave our places save by the force of bayonets.” The assembly remained in session and adopted Mirabeau’s motion that its members were inviolable.
In 1791 Mirabeau was chosen President of the National Assembly and became leader of the Revolution. He actually had sought to create a strong constitutional monarchy on the British model, which would permit him to play a decisive role as prime minister. However, members of the Assembly were barred for cabinet posts by a 1789 decree specifically directed against him. Mirabeau then began secret dealings with the court, entered the pay of the king and queen, and his political position became untenable. He advocated the abolition of the double aristocracy of lords and bishops as well as the spoliation of the church and the national guard.
Thomas Carlyle called him “far the strongest, best practical intellect of that time.”
In January, 1791, he sat as President of the Assembly, with his neck bandaged after the application of leeches. Foote reports that at parting Mirabeau said to Dumont, “I am dying, my friend; dying as by slow fire.”
On the 27th of March he stood in the tribune for the last time. Four days later he was on his death-bed. Crowds beset the street, anxious but silent, and stopping all traffic so that their hero might not be disturbed. A bulletin was issued every three hours. “On Saturday, the second day of April,” says Carlyle, “Mirabeau feels that the last of the Days has risen for him; that on this day he has to depart and be no more. His death is Titanic, as his life has been. Lit up, for the last time, in the glare of the coming dissolution, the mind of the man is all glowing and burning; utters itself in sayings, such as men long remember. He longs to live, yet acquiesces in death, argues not with the inexorable.”
Although Mirabeau is sometimes classed as a deist, Joseph McCabe wrote, “Carlyle tells in his French Revolution that when he was dying he said, pointing to the sun, ‘If that isn’t God it is at least his Cousin.’ He rejected the idea of immortality and seems rather to have been an atheist.”
Power of speech gone, Mirabeau made signs for paper and pen, and wrote the word dormir, “to sleep.” Pierre Cabanis, the great physician, who stood beside him, pretended not to understand this passionate request for opium. Thereupon, writes the doctor, “He made a sign for the pen and paper to be brought to him again, and wrote, ‘Do you think that Death is dangerous?’ Seeing that I did not comply with his demand, he wrote again, ‘How can you leave your friend on the wheel, perhaps for days?’ ” Cabanis and Dr. Petit decided to give him a sedative. While it was sent for “the pains became atrocious.” Recovering speech a little under the torture, he turned to M. de la Marek, saying, “You deceive me.” “No,” replied his friend, “we are not deceiving you, the remedy is coming, we all saw it ordered.” “Ah, the doctors, the doctors!” he muttered. Then, turning to Cabanis, with a look of mingled anger and tenderness, he said, “Were you not my doctor and my friend? Did you not promise to spare me the agonies of such a death? Do you wish me to expire with a regret that I trusted you?” “Those words,” says Cabinis, “the last that he uttered, ring incessantly in my ears. He turned over on the right side with a convulsive movement, and at half-past eight in the morning he expired in our arms.” Dr. Petit, standing at the foot of the bed, said, “His sufferings are ended.” “So dies,” wrote Carlyle, “a gigantic Heathen and Titan; stumbling blindly, undismayed, down to his rest.”
Upon his death in 1791, impressive manifestations of public sorrow and respect were shown, for he had gained wide popularity with the masses. A procession a league in length wended its way. The Church of Sainte-Geneviève was turned into a Pantheon, and he was buried in the Panthéon. But when his dealings with the court were discovered, the Freemason's body was later removed.
