Duc de Montmorency-Laval

Matthieu Jean Felicité de Montmorency-Laval, duc de Montmorency-Laval (July 10, 1766 - March 24, 1826), was a French politician, who accompanied his father, the vicomte de Laval, in America, and returned to France imbued with democratic opinions. Mathieu de Montmorency was governor of Compiegne when he was returned as deputy to the States-general in 1789, where at the opening of the French Revolution he joined the Third Estate and sat on the left of the Assembly. He moved for the abolition of coats-of-arms on June 19, 1790. The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in September 1791 set him free to join Luckner's army on the frontier early in the next year.

After the revolution of August 20 he abandoned his revolutionary principles; and he took no part in politics under the Empire. At the Restauration he was promoted marechal de camp, and accompanied Louis XVIII to Ghent during the Hundred Days. At the second restoration, 1815 he was made a peer of France, and two years later received the title of viscount.

Montmorency adopted strong reactionary and ultramontanist views, and became minister of foreign affairs under Villèle in December 1821. He recommended armed intervention to restore Ferdinand VII in Spain at the Congress of Verona in October 1822, but he resigned his post in December, being compensated by the title of duke and the cross of the Legion of Honor in the next year. He was elected to the French Academy in 1825, though he appears to have had small qualifications for the honor, and in the next year became tutor to the six-year-old Henri, duke of Bordeaux (afterwards known as the comte de Chambord) but died two months after receiving this last appointment.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.