Hervé Clérel de Tocqueville

Hervé-Louis-François-Bonaventure Clérel, comte de Tocqueville (3 August 1772 – 9 June 1856) was a French politician.

Biography

Hervé Clérel de Tocqueville was born at Menou in Nivernais, the son of Bernard-Bonaventure Clérel, Comte de Tocqueville, camp-master of cavalry, major of the Régiment Commissaire Général cavalerie, knight of the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis, and of Catherine de Damas-Crux, Hervé Clérel de Tocqueville was the nephew of Louis-Étienne-François de Damas-Crux, François de Damas-Crux and Étienne-Charles de Damas-Crux.

He was orphaned at the age of 13, received an education from a private tutor, Abbé Lesueur, and entered the army as a replacement lieutenant in the Vexin regiment in 1787.

At the beginning of the Terror, he emigrated to Brussels, but returned to Paris after a month to join the Constitutional Guard of King Louis XVI.

On March 12, 1793, he married Louise Le Peletier de Rosanbo, daughter of Louis Le Peletier de Rosambo and granddaughter of Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, advocate to Louis XVI. They had three children: Hippolyte, Édouard and Alexis.

On December 17, 1793, Malesherbes and his family were arrested and imprisoned in Port-Royal. Rosanbo was guillotined on April 20, 1794. On April 22, Malesherbes, his daughter, Mme de Rosanbo, his granddaughter, Mme de Chateaubriand and her husband, brother of the writer François-René de Chateaubriand, were guillotined. Hervé de Tocqueville, his wife Louise, Mme d'Aunay his sister-in-law, Louis de Rosanbo, his brother-in-law escaping the scaffold the day before their scheduled execution, by the fall of Robespierre on the 9th of Thermidor.

Hervé settled with his family in the castle of Verneuil-sur-Seine after their liberation and became mayor of the commune in 1804 despite his opposition to the Empire.

With his son Hippolyte, he participated, at the fall of Napoleon, in the royalist demonstrations in favor of the restoration of the Bourbons within the horse guard. On June 18, 1814, he was appointed prefect of Maine-et-Loire. Removed from office during the Hundred Days, he was appointed on July 13, 1815, prefect of Oise, then of the Côte-d'Or in 1816, of Moselle in 1817, of the Somme in 1823, and of Seine-et-Oise in 1826.

On November 4, 1827, he was named honorary gentleman of the King's Chamber and peer of France. He spoke several times in the Upper House, from which he was excluded after the July Monarchy (1830), by virtue of article 68 of the new Charter. He then retired to Clairoix.

Works

• De la Charte Provinciale (1829)
• Pétition aux Deux Chambres, Relatives à Mme la Duchesse de Berry (1832)
• Du Crédit Agricole (1838)
• Histoire Philosophique du Règne de Louis XV (1847; 2 volumes)
• Coup d'œil sur le Règne de Louis XVI (1850)
• Mémoires d'Hervé Clérel, comte de Tocqueville, 1772-1856 (2019)

References

• Blic, Emmanuel de (1951). Hervé Clérel, Comte de Tocqueville: Pair de France, Préfet de la Restauration, sa Descendance, Tocqueville, Blic, La Bourdonnaye, Thuisy. Dijon: Imprimerie Darantière
• Palmer, R.R. (1987). The Two Tocquevilles, Father and Son: Hervé and Alexis de Tocqueville on the Coming of the French Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

External links

• Works by Hervé Clérel de Tocqueville at Gallica