CHARLES FRANCCOIS

See also:

• CHARLES FRANCCOIS LEBRUN
• LEBRUN, PIERRE ANTOINE (1785–1873)
• LEBRUN, PONCE DENIS ECOUCHARD (1729-1807)

LEBRUN  , duc de Plaisance (1739-1824), French statesman, was born at St-Sauveur-Lendelin (Manche) on the ,9th of March 1739, and iii 1762 made his first appearance as a lawyer at Paris . He filled the posts successively of censeur royale (1766) and of inspector general of the domains of the crown (1768); he was also one of the chief advisers of the chancellor Maupeou, took part in his struggle against the parlements, and shared in his downfall in 1774 . He then devoted himself to literature, translating Tasso's Gerusalemme liberate; (1774), and the Iliad (1776) . At the outset of the Revolution he foresaw its importance, and in the Voix du citoyen, which he published in 1789, predicted the course which events would take . In the Constituent Assembly, where he sat as deputy for Dourdan, he professed liberal views, and was the proposer of various financial laws . He then became president of the directory of Seine-et-Oise, and in 1795 was elected as a deputy to the Council of Ancients . After the coup d'etat of the 18th Brumaire in the year VIII . (9th November 1799), Lebrun was made third consul . In this capacity he took an active part in the reorganization of finance and of the administration of the departments of France . In 1804 he was appointed arch-treasurer of the empire, and in 8o5–18o6 as governor-general of Liguria effected its annexation to France . He opposed Napoleon's restoration of the noblesse, and in 18o8 only reluctantly accepted the title of duc de Plaisance (Piacenza) . He was next employed in organizing the departments which were formed in Holland, of which he was governor-general from 1811 to 1813 .

Although to a certain extent opposed to the despotism of the

emperor, he was not in favour of his deposition, though he accepted the fait accompli of the Restoration in April 1814 . Louis XVIII. made him a peer of France; but during the Hundred Days he accepted from Napoleon the post of Grand Master of the university . On the return of the Bourbons in 1815 he was consequently suspended from the House of Peers, but was recalled in 1819 . He died at St Mesmes (Seine-et-Oise) on the 16th of June 1824 . He had been made a member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1803 . See M. de Caumont la Force, L'Architresorier Lebrun (Paris, 1907) ; M . Marie du Mesnil, Memoire sur le prince Le Brun, duc de Plaisance (Paris, 1828) ; Opinions, rapports et choix d'ecrits politiques de C . F . Lebrun (1829), edited, with a biographical notice, by his son Anne-Charles Lebrun .