JOSEPH

See also:

• MICHEL
• MICHEL, CLAUDE
• MICHEL, FRANCISQUE XAVIER (1809-1887)

MICHEL

See also:

• ANTOINE, ANDRE (1858- )

ANTOINE

See also:

• SERVAN (or SERVANDO known as SERVANDONI), JEAN NICOLAS (1695–1766)
• JOSEPH MICHEL ANTOINE SERVAN (1737-1807)

SERVAN (1737-1807)  , French publicist, was born at Romans (Dauphine) on the 3rd of November 1737 . After studying law he was appointed avocat-general at the parlement of Grenoble at the age of twenty-seven . In his Discours sur la justice criminelle (1766) he made an eloquent protest against legal abuses and the severity of the criminal code . In 1767 he gained great repute by his defence of a Protestant woman who, as a result of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, had been abandoned by her Catholic husband . In 1772, how-ever, on the parlement refusing to accede to his request that a present made by a grand seigneur to a singer should be annulled on the ground of immorality, he resigned, and went into retirement . He excused himself on the score of ill-health from sitting in the States General of 1789, to which he had been elected deputy, and refused to take his seat in the Corps Legislatif under the Empire . Among his writings may be mentioned Reftexions sur les Confessions de J.-J . Rousseau (1783) and Essai sur la formation des assemblees nationales, provinciales, et municipales (1789) . His tEuvres choisies and Euvres inedites have been published by De Portets . His brother JOSEPH SERVAN DE GERBEY (1741–1808) was war minister in the Girondist ministry of 1792 . See " Lettres inedites de Servan," in Souvenirs et memoires (vol. iv., Paris, 1900) .