title: Alfred the Great

texts:
 Luton), from there extend in a straight line to Bedford, and from Bedford follow the River Ouse to Watling Street.<mask> succeeded to Ceolwulf's kingdom consisting of western Mercia, and Guthrum incorporated the eastern part of Mercia into an enlarged Kingdom of East Anglia (henceforward known as the Danelaw). By terms of the treaty, moreover, <mask> was to have control over the Mercian city of London and its mints—at least for the time being. In 825, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle had recorded that the people of Essex, Sussex, Kent and Surrey surrendered to Egbert, <mask>'s grandfather. From then until the arrival of the Great Heathen Army, Essex had formed part of Wessex. After the foundation of Danelaw, it appears that some of Essex would have been ceded to the Danes, but how much is not clear. 880s

With the signing of the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, an event most commonly held to have taken place around 880 when Guthrum's people began settling East Anglia, Guthrum was neutralised as a threat. The Viking army, which had stayed at Fulham during the winter of 878–879, sailed for Ghent and was active on the continent from 879 to 892.There were local raids on the coast of Wessex throughout the 880s. In 882, <mask> fought a small sea battle against four Danish ships. Two of the ships were destroyed, and the others surrendered. This was one of four sea battles recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, three of which involved <mask>. Similar small skirmishes with independent Viking raiders would have occurred for much of the period as they had for decades. In 883, Pope Marinus exempted the Saxon quarter in Rome from taxation, probably in return for <mask>'s promise to send alms annually to Rome, which may be the origin of the medieval tax called Peter's Pence. The pope sent gifts to <mask>, including what was reputed to be a piece of the True Cross.After the signing of the treaty with Guthrum, <mask> was spared any large-scale conflicts for some time. Despite this relative peace, the king was forced to deal with a number of Danish raids and incursions. Among these was a raid in Kent, an allied kingdom in South East England, during the year 885, which was possibly the largest raid since the battles with Guthrum. Asser's account of the raid places the Danish raiders at the Saxon city of Rochester, where they built a temporary fortress in order to besiege the city. In response to this incursion, <mask> led an Anglo-Saxon force against the Danes who, instead of engaging the army of Wessex, fled to their beached ships and sailed to another part of Britain. The retreating Danish force supposedly left Britain the following summer. Not long after the failed Danish raid in Kent, <mask> dispatched his fleet to East Anglia.The purpose of this expedition is debated, but Asser claims that it was for the sake of plunder. After travelling up the River Stour, the fleet was met by Danish vessels that numbered 13 or 16 (sources vary on the number), and a battle ensued. The Anglo-Saxon fleet emerged victorious, and as Huntingdon accounts, "laden with spoils". The victorious fleet was surprised when attempting to leave the River Stour and was attacked by a Danish force at the mouth of the river. The Danish fleet defeated <mask>'s fleet, which may have been weakened in the previous engagement. A year later, in 886, <mask> reoccupied the city of London and set out to make it habitable again. <mask> entrusted the city to the care of his son-in-law Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia.The restoration of London progressed through the latter half of the 880s and is believed to have revolved around a new street plan; added fortifications in addition to the existing Roman walls; and, some believe, the construction of matching fortifications on the south bank of the River Thames. This is also the period in which almost all chroniclers agree that the Saxon people of pre-unification England submitted to <mask>. In 888, <mask>, the archbishop of Canterbury, also died. One year later Guthrum, or <mask> by his baptismal name, <mask>'s former enemy and king of East Anglia, died and was buried in Hadleigh, Suffolk. Guthrum's death changed the political landscape for <mask>. The resulting power vacuum stirred other power-hungry warlords eager to take his place in the following years. The quiet years of <mask>'s life were coming to a close.Viking attacks (890s)
After another lull, in the autumn of 892 or 893, the Danes attacked again. Finding their position in mainland Europe precarious, they crossed to England in 330 ships in two divisions. They entrenched themselves, the larger body at Appledore, Kent, and the lesser under Hastein, at Milton, also in Kent. The invaders brought their wives and children with them, indicating a meaningful attempt at conquest and colonisation. <mask>, in 893 or 894, took up a position from which he could observe both forces. While he was in talks with Hastein, the Danes at Appledore broke out and struck north-westwards. They were overtaken by <mask>'s eldest son, Edward and were defeated at the Battle of Farnham in Surrey.They took refuge on an island at Thorney, on the River Colne between Buckinghamshire and Middlesex, where they were blockaded and forced to give hostages and promise to leave Wessex. They then went to Essex and after suffering another defeat at Benfleet, joined with Hastein's force at Shoebury. <mask> had been on his way to relieve his son at Thorney when he heard that the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes were besieging Exeter and an unnamed stronghold on the North Devon shore. <mask> at once hurried westward and raised the Siege of Exeter. The fate of the other place is not recorded. The force under Hastein set out to march up the Thames Valley, possibly with the idea of assisting their friends in the west. They were met by a large force under the three great ealdormen of Mercia, Wiltshire and Somerset and forced to head off to the north-west, being finally overtaken and blockaded at Buttington.(Some identify this with Buttington Tump at the mouth of the River Wye, others with Buttington near Welshpool.) An attempt to break through the English lines failed. Those who escaped retreated to Shoebury. After collecting reinforcements, they made a sudden dash across England and occupied the ruined Roman walls of Chester. The English did not attempt a winter blockade but contented themselves with destroying all the supplies in the district. Early in 894 or 895 lack of food obliged the Danes to retire once more to Essex. At the end of the year, the Danes drew their ships up the River Thames and the River Lea and fortified themselves  north of London.A frontal attack on the Danish lines failed but later in the year, <mask> saw a means of obstructing the river to prevent the egress of the Danish ships. The Danes realised that they were outmanoeuvred, struck off north-westwards and wintered at Cwatbridge near Bridgnorth. The next year, 896 (or 897), they gave up the struggle. Some retired to Northumbria, some to East Anglia. Those who had no connections in England returned to the continent. Military reorganisation

The Germanic tribes who invaded Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries relied upon the unarmoured infantry supplied by their tribal levy, or fyrd, and it was upon this system that the military power of the several kingdoms of early Anglo-Saxon England depended. The fyrd was a local militia in the Anglo-Saxon shire in which all freemen had to serve; those who refused military service were subject to fines or loss of their land.According to the law code of King Ine of Wessex, issued in about 694,

Wessex's history of failures preceding <mask>'s success in 878 emphasised to him that the traditional system of battle he had inherited played to the Danes' advantage. While the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes attacked settlements for plunder, they employed different tactics. In their raids the Anglo-Saxons traditionally preferred to attack head-on by assembling their forces in a shield wall, advancing against their target and overcoming the oncoming wall marshalled against them in defence. The Danes preferred to choose easy targets, mapping cautious forays to avoid risking their plunder with high-stake attacks for more. <mask> determined their tactic was to launch small attacks from a secure base to which they could retreat should their raiders meet strong resistance. The bases were prepared in advance, often by capturing an estate and augmenting its defences with ditches, ramparts and palisades. Once inside the fortification, <mask> realised, the Danes enjoyed the advantage, better situated to outlast their opponents or crush them with a counter-attack because the provisions and stamina of the besieging forces waned.The means by which the Anglo-Saxons marshalled forces to defend against marauders also left them vulnerable to the Vikings. It was the responsibility of the shire fyrd to deal with local raids. The king could call up the national militia to defend the kingdom but in the case of the Viking raids, problems with communication and raising supplies meant that the national militia could not be mustered quickly enough. It was only after the raids had begun that a call went out to landowners to gather their men for battle. Large regions could be devastated before the fyrd could assemble and arrive. Although the landowners were obliged to the king to supply these men when called, during the attacks in 878 many of them abandoned their king and collaborated with Guthrum. With these lessons in mind <mask> capitalised on the relatively peaceful years following his victory at Edington with an ambitious restructuring of Saxon defences.On a trip to Rome <mask> had stayed with <mask> Bald, and it is possible that he may have studied how the Carolingian kings had dealt with Viking raiders. Learning from their experiences he was able to establish a system of taxation and defence for Wessex. There had been a system of fortifications in pre-Viking Mercia that may have been an influence. When the Viking raids resumed in 892 <mask> was better prepared to confront them with a standing, mobile field army, a network of garrisons and a small fleet of ships navigating the rivers and estuaries. Administration and taxation
Tenants in Anglo-Saxon England had a threefold obligation based on their landholding: the so-called "common burdens" of military service, fortress work, and bridge repair. This threefold obligation has traditionally been called trinoda necessitas or trimoda necessitas. The Old English name for the fine due for neglecting military service was .To maintain the burhs, and to reorganise the fyrd as a standing army, <mask> expanded the tax and conscription system based on the productivity of a tenant's landholding. The hide was the basic unit of the system on which the tenant's public obligations were assessed. A hide is thought to represent the amount of land required to support one family. The hide differed in size according to the value and resources of the land and the landowner would have to provide service based on how many hides he owned. Burghal system

The foundation of <mask>'s new military defence system was a network of burhs, distributed at tactical points throughout the kingdom. There were thirty-three burhs, about  apart, enabling the military to confront attacks anywhere in the kingdom within a day. <mask>'s burhs (of which 22 developed into boroughs) ranged from former Roman towns, such as Winchester, where the stone walls were repaired and ditches added, to massive earthen walls surrounded by wide ditches, probably reinforced with wooden revetments and palisades, such as at Burpham in West Sussex.The size of the burhs ranged from tiny outposts such as Pilton in Devon, to large fortifications in established towns, the largest being at Winchester. A document now known as the Burghal Hidage provides an insight into how the system worked. It lists the hidage for each of the fortified towns contained in the document. Wallingford had a hidage of 2,400, which meant that the landowners there were responsible for supplying and feeding 2,400 men, the number sufficient for maintaining  of wall. A total of 27,071 soldiers were needed, approximately one in four of all the free men in Wessex. Many of the burhs were twin towns that straddled a river and were connected by a fortified bridge, like those built by <mask> Bald a generation before. The double-burh blocked passage on the river, forcing Viking ships to navigate under a garrisoned bridge lined with men armed with stones, spears or arrows.Other burhs were sited near fortified royal villas, allowing the king better control over his strongholds. The burhs were connected by a road system maintained for army use (known as herepaths). The roads allowed an army quickly to be assembled, sometimes from more than one burh, to confront the Viking invader. The road network posed significant obstacles to Viking invaders, especially those laden with booty. The system threatened Viking routes and communications making it far more dangerous for them. The Vikings lacked the equipment for a siege against a burh and a developed doctrine of siegecraft, having tailored their methods of fighting to rapid strikes and unimpeded retreats to well-defended fortifications. The only means left to them was to starve the burh into submission but this gave the king time to send his field army or garrisons from neighbouring burhs along the army roads.In such cases, the Vikings were extremely vulnerable to pursuit by the king's joint military forces. <mask>'s burh system posed such a formidable challenge against Viking attack that when the Vikings returned in 892 and stormed a half-built, poorly garrisoned fortress up the Lympne estuary in Kent, the Anglo-Saxons were able to limit their penetration to the outer frontiers of Wessex and Mercia. <mask>'s burghal system was revolutionary in its strategic conception and potentially expensive in its execution. His contemporary biographer Asser wrote that many nobles balked at the demands placed upon them even though they were for "the common needs of the kingdom". English navy
<mask> also tried his hand at naval design. In 896 he ordered the construction of a small fleet, perhaps a dozen or so longships that, at 60 oars, were twice the size of Viking warships. This was not, as the Victorians asserted, the birth of the English Navy.Wessex had possessed a royal fleet before this. <mask>'s older brother sub-king <mask> of Kent and Ealdorman Ealhhere had defeated a Viking fleet in 851 capturing nine ships and <mask> had conducted naval actions in 882. The year 897 marked an important development in the naval power of Wessex. The author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle related that <mask>'s ships were larger, swifter, steadier and rode higher in the water than either Danish or Frisian ships. It is probable that, under the classical tutelage of Asser, <mask> used the design of Greek and Roman warships, with high sides, designed for fighting rather than for navigation. <mask> had seapower in mind; if he could intercept raiding fleets before they landed, he could spare his kingdom from being ravaged. <mask>'s ships may have been superior in conception, but in practice they proved to be too large to manoeuvre well in the close waters of estuaries and rivers, the only places in which a naval battle could be fought.The warships of the time were not designed to be ship killers but rather troop carriers. It has been suggested that, like sea battles in late Viking age Scandinavia, these battles may have entailed a ship coming alongside an opposing vessel, lashing the two ships together and then boarding the craft. The result was a land battle involving hand-to-hand fighting on board the two lashed vessels. In the one recorded naval engagement in 896, <mask>'s new fleet of nine ships intercepted six Viking ships at the mouth of an unidentified river in the south of England. The Danes had beached half their ships and gone inland. <mask>'s ships immediately moved to block their escape. The three Viking ships afloat attempted to break through the English lines.Only one made it; <mask>'s ships intercepted the other two. Lashing the Viking boats to their own, the English crew boarded and proceeded to kill the Vikings. One ship escaped because <mask>'s heavy ships became grounded when the tide went out. A land battle ensued between the crews. The Danes were heavily outnumbered,

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title: Alfred the Great

type: original

texts:
 but as the tide rose, they returned to their boats which, with shallower drafts, were freed first. The English watched as the Vikings rowed past them but they suffered so many casualties (120 dead against 62 Frisians and English) that they had difficulty putting out to sea. All were too damaged to row around Sussex, and two were driven against the Sussex coast (possibly at Selsey Bill).The shipwrecked crew were brought before <mask> at Winchester and hanged. Legal reform

In the late 880s or early 890s, <mask> issued a long domboc or law code consisting of his own laws, followed by a code issued by his late seventh-century predecessor King Ine of Wessex. Together these laws are arranged into 120 chapters. In his introduction <mask> explains that he gathered together the laws he found in many "synod-books" and "ordered to be written many of the ones that our forefathers observed—those that pleased me; and many of the ones that did not please me, I rejected with the advice of my councillors, and commanded them to be observed in a different way". <mask> singled out in particular the laws that he "found in the days of Ine, my kinsman, or Offa, king of the Mercians, or King Æthelberht of Kent who first among the English people received baptism". He appended, rather than integrated, the laws of Ine into his code and although he included, as had Æthelbert, a scale of payments in compensation for injuries to various body parts, the two injury tariffs are not aligned. Offa is not known to have issued a law code, leading historian Patrick Wormald to speculate that <mask> had in mind the legatine capitulary of 786 that was presented to Offa by two papal legates.About a fifth of the law code is taken up by <mask>'s introduction which includes translations into English of the Ten Commandments, a few chapters from the Book of Exodus, and the Apostolic Letter from the Acts of the Apostles (15:23–29). The introduction may best be understood as <mask>'s meditation upon the meaning of Christian law. It traces the continuity between God's gift of law to Moses to <mask>'s own issuance of law to the West Saxon people. By doing so, it linked the holy past to the historical present and represented <mask>'s law-giving as a type of divine legislation. Similarly <mask> divided his code into 120 chapters because 120 was the age at which Moses died and, in the number-symbolism of early medieval biblical exegetes, 120 stood for law. The link between Mosaic law and <mask>'s code is the Apostolic Letter which explained that Christ "had come not to shatter or annul the commandments but to fulfill them; and he taught mercy and meekness" (Intro, 49.1). The mercy that Christ infused into Mosaic law underlies the injury tariffs that figure so prominently in barbarian law codes since Christian synods "established, through that mercy which Christ taught, that for almost every misdeed at the first offence secular lords might with their permission receive without sin the monetary compensation which they then fixed".The only crime that could not be compensated with a payment of money was treachery to a lord "since Almighty God adjudged none for those who despised Him, nor did Christ, the Son of God, adjudge any for the one who betrayed Him to death; and He commanded everyone to love his lord as Himself". <mask>'s transformation of Christ's commandment, from "Love your neighbour as yourself" (Matt. 22:39–40) to love your secular lord as you would love the Lord Christ himself, underscores the importance that <mask> placed upon lordship which he understood as a sacred bond instituted by God for the governance of man. When one turns from the domboc's introduction to the laws themselves, it is difficult to uncover any logical arrangement. The impression is of a hodgepodge of miscellaneous laws. The law code, as it has been preserved, is singularly unsuitable for use in lawsuits. In fact, several of <mask>'s laws contradicted the laws of Ine that form an integral part of the code.Patrick Wormald's explanation is that <mask>'s law code should be understood not as a legal manual but as an ideological manifesto of kingship "designed more for symbolic impact than for practical direction". In practical terms the most important law in the code may well have been the first: "We enjoin, what is most necessary, that each man keep carefully his oath and his pledge" which expresses a fundamental tenet of Anglo-Saxon law. <mask> devoted considerable attention and thought to judicial matters. Asser underscores his concern for judicial fairness. <mask>, according to Asser, insisted upon reviewing contested judgments made by his ealdormen and reeves and "would carefully look into nearly all the judgements which were passed [issued] in his absence anywhere in the realm to see whether they were just or unjust". A charter from the reign of his son Edward the Elder depicts <mask> as hearing one such appeal in his chamber while washing his hands. Asser represents <mask> as a Solomonic judge, painstaking in his own judicial investigations and critical of royal officials who rendered unjust or unwise judgments.Although Asser never mentions <mask>'s law code he does say that <mask> insisted that his judges be literate so that they could apply themselves "to the pursuit of wisdom". The failure to comply with this royal order was to be punished by loss of office. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, commissioned at the time of <mask>, was probably written to promote unification of England, whereas Asser's The Life of King <mask> promoted <mask>'s achievements and personal qualities. It was possible that the document was designed this way so that it could be disseminated in Wales because <mask> had acquired overlordship of that country. Foreign relations
Asser speaks grandiosely of <mask>'s relations with foreign powers but little definite information is available. His interest in foreign countries is shown by the insertions which he made in his translation of Orosius. He corresponded with Elias III, the patriarch of Jerusalem, and embassies to Rome conveying the English alms to the pope were fairly frequent.Around 890, Wulfstan of Hedeby undertook a journey from Hedeby on Jutland along the Baltic Sea to the Prussian trading town of Truso. <mask> personally collected details of this trip. <mask>'s relations with the Celtic princes in the western half of Great Britain are clearer. Comparatively early in his reign, according to Asser, the southern Welsh princes, owing to the pressure on them from North Wales and Mercia, commended themselves to <mask>. Later in his reign, the North Welsh followed their example and the latter cooperated with the English in the campaign of 893 (or 894). That <mask> sent alms to Irish and Continental monasteries may be taken on Asser's authority. The visit of three pilgrim "Scots" (i.e., Irish) to <mask> in 891 is undoubtedly authentic.The story that, in his childhood, he was sent to Ireland to be healed by Saint Modwenna may show <mask>'s interest in that island. Religion, education and culture

In the 880s, at the same time that he was "cajoling and threatening" his nobles to build and man the burhs, <mask>, perhaps inspired by the example of Charlemagne almost a century before, undertook an equally ambitious effort to revive learning. During this period, the Viking raids were often seen as a divine punishment, and <mask> may have wished to revive religious awe in order to appease God's wrath. This revival entailed the recruitment of clerical scholars from Mercia, Wales and abroad to enhance the tenor of the court and of the episcopacy; the establishment of a court school to educate his own children, the sons of his nobles, and intellectually promising boys of lesser birth; an attempt to require literacy in those who held offices of authority; a series of translations into the vernacular of Latin works the king deemed "most necessary for all men to know"; the compilation of a chronicle detailing the rise of <mask>'s kingdom and house, with a genealogy that stretched back to Adam, thus giving the West Saxon kings a biblical ancestry. Very little is known of the church under <mask>. The Danish attacks had been particularly damaging to the monasteries. Although <mask> founded monasteries at Athelney and Shaftesbury, these were the first new monastic houses in Wessex since the beginning of the eighth century.According to Asser, <mask> enticed foreign monks to England for his monastery at Athelney because there was little interest for the locals to take up the monastic life. <mask> undertook no systematic reform of ecclesiastical institutions or religious practices in Wessex. For him, the key to the kingdom's spiritual revival was to appoint pious, learned, and trustworthy bishops and abbots. As king, he saw himself as responsible for both the temporal and spiritual welfare of his subjects. Secular and spiritual authority were not distinct categories for <mask>. He was equally comfortable distributing his translation of Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care to his bishops so that they might better train and supervise priests and using those same bishops as royal officials and judges. Nor did his piety prevent him from expropriating strategically sited church lands, especially estates along the border with the Danelaw, and transferring them to royal thegns and officials who could better defend them against Viking attacks.Effect of Danish raids on education
The Danish raids had a devastating effect on learning in England. <mask> lamented in the preface to his translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care that "learning had declined so thoroughly in England that there were very few men on this side of the Humber who could understand their divine services in English or even translate a single letter from Latin into English: and I suppose that there were not many beyond the Humber either". <mask> undoubtedly exaggerated, for dramatic effect, the abysmal state of learning in England during his youth. That Latin learning had not been obliterated is evidenced by the presence in his court of learned Mercian and West Saxon clerics such as Plegmund, Wæferth, and Wulfsige. Manuscript production in England dropped off precipitously around the 860s when the Viking invasions began in earnest, not to be revived until the end of the century. Numerous Anglo-Saxon manuscripts burnt along with the churches that housed them. A solemn diploma from Christ Church, Canterbury, dated 873, is so poorly constructed and written that historian Nicholas Brooks posited a scribe who was either so blind he could not read what he wrote or who knew little or no Latin."It is clear", Brooks concludes, "that the metropolitan church [of Canterbury] must have been quite unable to provide any effective training in the scriptures or in Christian worship". Establishment of a court school
<mask> established a court school for the education of his own children, those of the nobility, and "a good many of lesser birth". There they studied books in both English and Latin and "devoted themselves to writing, to such an extent ... they were seen to be devoted and intelligent students of the liberal arts". He recruited scholars from the Continent and from Britain to aid in the revival of Christian learning in Wessex and to provide the king personal instruction. Grimbald and John the Saxon came from Francia; Plegmund (whom <mask> appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 890), Bishop Wærferth of Worcester, <mask>tan, and the royal chaplains Werwulf, from Mercia; and Asser, from St David's in southwestern Wales. Advocacy of education in English

<mask>'s educational ambitions seem to have extended beyond the establishment of a court school. Believing that without Christian wisdom there can be neither prosperity nor success in war, <mask> aimed "to set to learning (as long as they are not useful for some other employment) all the free-born young men now in England who have the means to apply themselves to it".Conscious of the decay of Latin literacy in his realm <mask> proposed that primary education be taught in English, with those wishing to advance to holy orders to continue their studies in Latin. There were few "books of wisdom" written in English. <mask> sought to remedy this through an ambitious court-centred programme of translating into English the books he deemed "most necessary for all men to know". It is unknown when <mask> launched this programme but it may have been during the 880s when Wessex was enjoying a respite from Viking attacks. <mask> was, until recently, often considered to have been the author of many of the translations but this is now considered doubtful in almost all cases. Scholars more often refer to translations as "Alfredian" indicating that they probably had something to do with his patronage but are unlikely to be his own work. Apart from the lost Handboc or Encheiridio, which seems to have been a commonplace book kept by the king, the earliest work to be translated was the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, a book greatly popular in the Middle Ages.The translation was undertaken at <mask>'s command by Wærferth, Bishop of Worcester, with the king merely furnishing a preface. Remarkably, <mask> – undoubtedly with the advice and aid of his court scholars – translated four works himself: Gregory the <mask>'s Pastoral Care, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, St. Augustine's Soliloquies and the first fifty psalms of the Psalter. One might add to this list the translation, in <mask>'s law code, of excerpts from the Vulgate Book of Exodus. The Old English versions of Orosius's Histories against the Pagans and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People are no longer accepted by scholars as <mask>'s own translations because of lexical and stylistic differences. Nonetheless the consensus remains that they were part of the Alfredian programme of translation. Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge suggest this also for Bald's Leechbook and the anonymous Old English Martyrology. The preface of <mask>'s translation of Pope Gregory the <mask>'s Pastoral Care explained why he thought it necessary to translate works such as this from Latin into English.Although he described his method as translating "sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense", the translation keeps very close to the original although, through his choice of language, he blurred throughout the distinction between spiritual and secular authority. <mask> meant the translation to be used, and circulated it to all his bishops. Interest in <mask>'s translation of Pastoral Care was so enduring that copies were still being made in the 11th century. Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy was the most popular philosophical handbook of the Middle Ages. Unlike the translation of the Pastoral Care the Alfredian text deals very freely with the original and, though the late Dr. G. Schepss showed that many of the additions to the text are to be traced not to the translator himself but to the glosses and commentaries which he used, still there is much in the work which is distinctive to the translation and has been taken to reflect philosophies of kingship in <mask>'s milieu. It is in the Boethius that the oft-quoted sentence occurs: "To speak briefly: I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after, my memory in good works." The book has come down to us in two manuscripts only.In one of these the writing is prose, in the other a combination of prose and alliterating verse. The latter manuscript was severely damaged in the 18th and 19th centuries. The last of the Alfredian works is one which bears the name Blostman ('Blooms') or Anthology. The first half is based mainly on the Soliloquies of St Augustine of Hippo, the remainder is drawn from various sources. The material has traditionally been thought to contain much that is <mask>'s own and highly characteristic of him. The last words of it may be quoted; they form a fitting epitaph for the noblest of English kings. "Therefore, he seems to me a very foolish man, and truly wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear."<mask> appears as a character in the twelfth- or 13th-century poem The Owl and the Nightingale where his wisdom and skill with proverbs is praised. The Proverbs of Alfred, a 13th-century work, contains sayings that are not likely to

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title: Alfred the Great

texts:
 have originated with <mask> but attest to his posthumous medieval reputation for wisdom. The Alfred jewel, discovered in Somerset in 1693, has long been associated with King <mask> because of its Old English inscription AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN ('<mask> ordered me to be made'). The jewel is about  long, made of filigreed gold, enclosing a highly polished piece of quartz crystal beneath which is set in a cloisonné enamel plaque with an enamelled image of a man holding floriate sceptres, perhaps personifying Sight or the Wisdom of God. It was at one time attached to a thin rod or stick based on the hollow socket at its base. The jewel certainly dates from <mask>'s reign. Although its function is unknown it has been often suggested that the jewel was one of the æstels – pointers for reading – that <mask> ordered sent to every bishopric accompanying a copy of his translation of the Pastoral Care.Each æstel was worth the princely sum of 50 mancuses which fits in well with the quality workmanship and expensive materials of the <mask> jewel. Historian Richard Abels sees <mask>'s educational and military reforms as complementary. Restoring religion and learning in Wessex, Abels contends, was to <mask>'s mind as essential to the defence of his realm as the building of the burhs. As <mask> observed in the preface to his English translation of Gregory the <mask>'s Pastoral Care, kings who fail to obey their divine duty to promote learning can expect earthly punishments to befall their people. The pursuit of wisdom, he assured his readers of the Boethius, was the surest path to power: "Study wisdom, then, and, when you have learned it, condemn it not, for I tell you that by its means you may without fail attain to power, yea, even though not desiring it". The portrayal of the West-Saxon resistance to the Vikings by Asser and the chronicler as a Christian holy war was more than mere rhetoric or propaganda. It reflected <mask>'s own belief in a doctrine of divine rewards and punishments rooted in a vision of a hierarchical Christian world order in which God is the Lord to whom kings owe obedience and through whom they derive their authority over their followers.The need to persuade his nobles to undertake work for the 'common good' led <mask> and his court scholars to strengthen and deepen the conception of Christian kingship that he had inherited by building upon the legacy of earlier kings including Offa, clerical writers including Bede, and Alcuin and various participants in the Carolingian renaissance. This was not a cynical use of religion to manipulate his subjects into obedience but an intrinsic element in <mask>'s worldview. He believed, as did other kings in ninth-century England and Francia, that God had entrusted him with the spiritual as well as physical welfare of his people. If the Christian faith fell into ruin in his kingdom, if the clergy were too ignorant to understand the Latin words they butchered in their offices and liturgies, if the ancient monasteries and collegiate churches lay deserted out of indifference, he was answerable before God, as Josiah had been. <mask>'s ultimate responsibility was the pastoral care of his people. Appearance and character

Asser wrote of <mask> in his Life of King <mask>,

It is also written by Asser that <mask> did not learn to read until he was 12 years old or later, which is described as "shameful negligence" of his parents and tutors. <mask> was an excellent listener and had an incredible memory and he retained poetry and psalms very well.A story is told by Asser about how his mother held up a book of Saxon poetry to him and his brothers, and said; "I shall give this book to whichever one of you can learn it the fastest." After excitedly asking, "Will you really give this book to the one of us who can understand it the soonest and recite it to you?" <mask> then took it to his teacher, learned it, and recited it back to his mother. <mask> is noted as carrying around a small book, probably a medieval version of a small pocket notebook, that contained psalms and many prayers that he often collected. Asser writes: these "he collected in a single book, as I have seen for myself; amid all the affairs of the present life he took it around with him everywhere for the sake of prayer, and was inseparable from it." An excellent hunter in every branch of the sport, <mask> is remembered as an enthusiastic huntsman against whom nobody's skills could compare. Although he was the youngest of his brothers, he was probably the most open-minded.He was an early advocate for education. His desire for learning could have come from his early love of English poetry and inability to read or physically record it until later in life. Asser writes that <mask> "could not satisfy his craving for what he desired the most, namely the liberal arts; for, as he used to say, there were no good scholars in the entire kingdom of the West Saxons at that time". Family

In 868, <mask> married Ealhswith, daughter of a Mercian nobleman, Æthelred Mucel, Ealdorman of the Gaini. The Gaini were probably one of the tribal groups of the Mercians. Ealhswith's mother, Eadburh, was a member of the Mercian royal family. They had five or six children together, including Edward the Elder who succeeded his father as king; Æthelflæd who became lady of the Mercians; and Ælfthryth who married Baldwin II, Count of Flanders.<mask>'s mother was Osburga, daughter of Oslac of the Isle of Wight, Chief Butler of England. Asser, in his Vita Ælfredi asserts that this shows his lineage from the Jutes of the Isle of Wight. Osferth was described as a relative in King <mask>'s will and he attested charters in a high position until 934. A charter of King Edward's reign described him as the king's brother – mistakenly according to Keynes and Lapidge, and in the view of Janet Nelson, he probably was an illegitimate son of King <mask>. Death and burial

<mask> died on 26 October 899 at the age of 50 or 51. How he died is unknown, but he suffered throughout his life with a painful and unpleasant illness. His biographer Asser gave a detailed description of <mask>'s symptoms, and this has allowed modern doctors to provide a possible diagnosis.It is thought that he had either Crohn's disease or haemorrhoids. His grandson King Eadred seems to have suffered from a similar illness. <mask> was temporarily buried at the Old Minster in Winchester with his wife Ealhswith and later, his son Edward the Elder. Before his death he ordered the construction of the New Minster hoping that it would become a mausoleum for him and his family. Four years after his death, the bodies of <mask> and his family were exhumed and moved to their new resting place in the New Minster and remained there for 211 years. When <mask> Conqueror rose to the English throne after the Norman conquest in 1066, many Anglo-Saxon abbeys were demolished and replaced with Norman cathedrals. One of those unfortunate abbeys was the very New Minster abbey where <mask> was laid to rest.Before demolition, the monks at the New Minster exhumed the bodies of <mask> and his family to safely transfer them to a new location. The New Minster monks moved to Hyde in 1110 a little north of the city, and they transferred to Hyde Abbey along with <mask>'s body and those of his wife and children, which were interred before the high altar. In 1536, many Roman Catholic churches were vandalized by the people of England spurred by disillusionment with the church during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. One such Catholic church was the site of <mask>'s burial, Hyde Abbey. Once again, <mask>'s place of rest was disturbed for the now 3rd time. Hyde Abbey was dissolved in 1538 during the reign of Henry VIII, the church site was demolished and treated like a quarry, as the stones that made up the abbey were then re-used in local architecture. The stone graves housing <mask> and his family stayed underground, and the land returned to farming.These graves remained intact until 1788 when the site was acquired by the county for the construction of a town jail. Before construction began, convicts that would later be imprisoned at the site were sent in to prepare the ground, to ready it for building. While digging the foundation trenches, the convicts discovered the coffins of <mask> and his family. The local Catholic priest, Dr. Milner recounts this event:Thus miscreants couch amidst the ashes of our Alfreds and Edwards; and where once religious silence and contemplation were only interrupted by the bell of regular observance, the chanting of devotion, now alone resound the clank of the captives chains and the oaths of the profligate! In digging for the foundation of that mournful edifice, at almost every stroke of the mattock or spade some ancient sepulchre was violated, the venerable contents of which were treated with marked indignity. On this occasion a great number of stone coffins were dug up, with a variety of other curious articles, such as chalices, patens, rings, buckles, the leather of shoes and boots, velvet and gold lace belonging to chasubles and other vestments; as also the crook, rims, and joints of a beautiful crosier double gilt.The convicts broke the stone coffins into pieces, the lead, which lined the coffins, was sold for two guineas, and the bones within scattered around the area. The prison was demolished between 1846 and 1850.Further excavations were inconclusive in 1866 and 1897. In 1866, amateur antiquarian John Mellor claimed to have recovered a number of bones from the site which he said were those of <mask>. These came into the possession of the vicar of nearby St Bartholomew's Church who reburied them in an unmarked grave in the church graveyard. Excavations conducted by the Winchester Museums Service of the Hyde Abbey site in 1999 located a second pit dug in front of where the high altar would have been located, which was identified as probably dating to Mellor's 1866 excavation. The 1999 archeological excavation uncovered the foundations of the abbey buildings and some bones, suggested at the time to be those of <mask>; they proved instead to belong to an elderly woman. In March 2013, the Diocese of Winchester exhumed the bones from the unmarked grave at St Bartholomew's and placed them in secure storage. The diocese made no claim that they were the bones of <mask>, but intended to secure them for later analysis, and from the attentions of people whose interest may have been sparked by the recent identification of the remains of King Richard III.The bones were radiocarbon-dated but the results showed that they were from the 1300s and therefore not of <mask>. In January 2014, a fragment of pelvis that had been unearthed in the 1999 excavation of the Hyde site, and had subsequently lain in a Winchester museum store room, was radiocarbon-dated to the correct period. It has been suggested that this bone may belong to either <mask> or his son Edward, but this remains unproven. Legacy

Though Henry VI of England attempted unsuccessfully to have <mask> canonized by Pope Eugene IV in 1441, he was venerated sometimes in the Catholic Church. The current "Roman Martyrology" does not mention <mask>. The Anglican Communion venerates him as a Christian hero, with a Lesser Festival on 26 October, and he may often be found depicted in stained glass in Church of England parish churches. <mask> commissioned Bishop Asser to write his biography, which inevitably emphasised <mask>'s positive aspects.Later medieval historians such as Geoffrey of Monmouth also reinforced <mask>'s favourable image. By the time of the Reformation, <mask> was seen as a pious Christian ruler who promoted the use of English rather than Latin, and so the translations that he commissioned were viewed as untainted by the later Roman Catholic influences of the Normans. Consequently, it was writers of the 16th century who gave <mask> his epithet as "the Great", not any of <mask>'s contemporaries. The epithet was retained by succeeding generations who admired <mask>'s patriotism, success against barbarism, promotion of education, and establishment of the rule of law. A number of educational establishments are named in <mask>'s honour:
 The University of Winchester created from the former King Alfred's College, Winchester (1928 to 2004)
 Alfred University and Alfred State College in Alfred, New York; the local telephone exchange for Alfred University is 871 in commemoration of the year of <mask>'s ascension to the throne. Additionally, the mascot of Alfred University is named Lil' Alf and is modeled after the king
 The University of Liverpool created a King <mask> Chair of English Literature

 King <mask>'s Academy, a secondary school in Wantage, Oxfordshire, the birthplace of Alfred
 King's Lodge School in Chippenham, Wiltshire, so named because King <mask>'s hunting lodge is reputed to have stood on or near the site of the school
 The King Alfred School and Specialist Sports Academy, Burnham Road, Highbridge, so named due to its rough proximity to Brent Knoll (a Beacon site) and Athelney
 The King Alfred School in Barnet, North London, UK
 King <mask>'s house in Bishop Stopford's School at Enfield
 King Alfred Swimming Pool & Leisure complex in Hove, Brighton UK

The Royal Navy named one ship and two shore establishments HMS King Alfred, and one of the early ships of the U.S. Navy was named USS Alfred in his honour. In 2002, Alfred was ranked number 14 in the BBC's list of the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote.Statues

Southwark
A statue of <mask> <mask> located in Trinity Church Square, Southwark is considered to be the oldest outdoor statue in London, and part of it has been found to date to Roman times. The sculpture was thought medieval until 2021 conservation work. The lower half was then discovered to be Bath Stone and part of a colossal ancient sculpture dedicated to the goddess Minerva. It is typical of the 2nd Century, dating to around the reign of Hadrian. The older half is likely to have been carved by a continental craftsman used to working with British stone. Winchester

A bronze statue of <mask> Great stands at the eastern end of The Broadway, close to the site of Winchester's medieval East Gate. The statue was designed by Hamo Thornycroft, cast in bronze by Singer & Sons of Frome and erected in 1899 to mark one thousand years since <mask>'s death.The statue is placed on a pedestal consisting of two immense blocks of grey Cornish granite. Pewsey

A prominent statue of King <mask> <mask> stands in the middle of Pewsey. It was unveiled in June 1913 to commemorate the coronation of King George V.

Wantage
A statue of <mask> <mask>, situated in the Wantage market place, was sculpted by Count Gleichen, a relative of Queen Victoria, and unveiled on 14 July 1877 by the Prince and Princess of Wales. The statue was vandalised on New Year's Eve 2007, losing part of its right arm and axe. After the arm and axe were replaced, the statue was again vandalised on Christmas Eve 2008, losing its axe. Alfred University, New York

The centerpiece of Alfred University's quad is a bronze statue of the king, created in 1990 by then-professor William Underhill. It features the king as a young man, holding a shield in his left hand and an open book in his right.Cleveland, Ohio
A marble statue of <mask> <mask> stands on the North side of the Cuyahoga County Courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio. It was sculpted by Isidore Konti in 1910. Chronology

Notes

Citations

Sources

  — "Note: This electronic edition [of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle] is a collation of material from nine diverse extant versions of the Chronicle. It contains primarily the translation of Rev. James Ingram, as published in the [1847] Everyman edition". It was "Originally compiled on the orders of King <mask> <mask>, approximately A.D. 890, and subsequently maintained and added to by generations of anonymous scribes until the middle of the 12th Century".

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840s births
899 deaths
Year of birth uncertain
9th-century Christians
9th-century English monarchs
9th-century rulers in Europe
9th-century translators
Boat and ship designers
English Christians
House of Wessex
Medieval legislators
Monarchs of England before 1066
Patrons of literature
People from Wantage
Translators from Latin
Translators of philosophy
West Saxon

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title: Mike Temwanjera

texts:
<mask>  (born 21 May 1982) is a Zimbabwean former professional footballer who usually played as a centre forward, but also as a second striker. A member of FC Vaslui from January 2007 until summer 2014, he was one of the team's longest serving players, second in scoring during Vaslui's spell in Liga I, with 39 goals. He also appeared once for the Zimbabwe national team. Club career
Temwanjera was born Harare, Zimbabwe. CAPS United
Until 2003 Temwanjera played with CAPS United, traditionally one of the strongest teams in the Zimbabwe Premier Soccer League. FK Javor
In 2003 Temwanjera came to Serbia for trials with FK Javor Ivanjica, a club that six months earlier had imported two of his CAPS United colleagues, Leonard Tsipa and Blessing Makunike. The season that he arrived, Javor had just been relegated from the top league, so Temwanjera played in the Serbian Second League during his first two seasons.It was at the end of the 2004–05 season that Javor returned to the First League of Serbia and Montenegro. In the 2005–06 season, Temwanjera played 26 matches and scored 3 goals. However, the club finished 12th and was relegated again. Borac Čačak
In the summer of 2006, the league in Serbia was renamed the SuperLiga. FK Javor was playing in the Serbian First League, formerly known as Second League. Temwanjera's performances in the previous season has caught the attention of some top league clubs, and in July he signed with FK Borac Čačak. By the end of the first half of the 2006–07 Serbian SuperLiga, Temwanjera had played 16 matches and scored 3 goals, and the club was having a mediocre season.During one march, discontented supporters shouted racially abusive remarks at Temwanjera, who decided to leave the club immediately afterwards. The quickest one to react was Romanian Liga I club SC Vaslui that brought him in that 2006–07 winter transfer window. Vaslui
In February 2007, Temwanjera completed his move to Vaslui on a four-and-a-half-year contract for an undisclosed fee. On 27 January, while he was still on trial, Temwanjera made his unofficial debut for Vaslui, against FCM Bârlad, scoring three times in the process. On 24 February, Temwanjera made his competitive debut for Vaslui, in a 1–1 away draw against Farul Constanţa. Two weeks later, he scored the equaliser, in the 1–1 draw against FC Argeş, counting his first Liga I goal. On 6 April, he scored twice in the home league match against Gloria Bistriţa, once for his own team, and once in his own net.Vaslui eventually won the game with 3–2. In the 2006–07 campaign, he played every single match for Vaslui, scoring three times and helping his team to finish 8th in Liga I, competition best at the time for the Moldavian team. On 27 July 2007, Temwanjera scored his team's second goal, in Vaslui's opening match against UTA Arad. Nine days later, he provided his first assist from the new season, helping Adrian Gheorghiu to score for 2–0, against Dinamo București. On 31 October, Vaslui won against arch rivals Politehnica Iaşi, thanks to Temwanjera's only goal from the 50th minute. Following a 1–0 loss against Steaua București, and due to his low goal-per-match rate, Temwanjera was put on the transfer list, alongside many other teammates. However, on 7 May 2008, he was not for sale any more, following his two goals scored against Rapid București.He finished 7th with his team in Liga I, thus qualifying in the European Competitions, for the first time. Although in July 2008, it was rumoured that Metalurh Donetsk was interested in Temwanjera, he eventually remained in Vaslui. On 26 July, he scored his first European goal in UEFA Intertoto's Third Round, against Neftchi Baku, helping his team to advance in the UEFA Cup, for the first time. One week later, he scored the equaliser in the Moldavian Derby against Politehnica Iaşi, match eventually won by Vaslui with 3–1. In August, he provided six points for his team, scoring Vaslui's winning goals against Gloria Bistriţa and Oţelul Galaţi. On 5 October, he scored his first cup goal, in his first Romanian Cup appearance against Politehnica Iaşi. On 28 November, he scored his sixth league goal against Universitatea Craiova, surpassing his own personal tally from the previous season.On 18 April 2009, he scored Vaslui's third in a 4–3 home win against Politehnica Timişoara. On 6 May, he scored his last goal of the season, against Pandurii Târgu Jiu, taking his tally of goals to 11. Despite Vaslui's up and down season, he managed to finish 5th with his team, securing its spot for UEFA Europa League, for the second year in a row. Temwanjera started the 2009–10 season with a double in Vaslui's opening game against Omonia Nicosia. On 23 August, he scored his first league goal against Gloria Bistriţa, giving his team a 2–1 lead. Vaslui eventually won with 3–1. On 23 September, he scored his second double from the season, in the cup match against Chimia Brazi.On 3 October, Temwanjera scored his team's second goal in Marius Lăcătuş's first competitive match as manager, in Vaslui's 3–1 home win over Astra Ploieşti. On 7 November, he scored the winning goal against Ceahlăul Piatra Neamţ. On 23 November, Temwanjera scored Vaslui's first goal, from the 2–0 home league win against CFR Cluj, helping his team winning the eighth match in a row. On 27 February 2010, he suffered a meniscal laceration, in the 2–1 home league win against Pandurii Târgu Jiu, which forced him out from the field for almost nine months. On 4 November 2010, <mask> was awarded "Sportsman of the Year in Vaslui", for his entire activity for the club. After being sidelined for nine months, he returned for Vaslui's 3–1 league win over Pandurii Târgu Jiu on 26 November, coming as a late substitute for Yero Bello. On 12 April 2011, he was in the startup team against Gloria Bistriţa, for the first time since February 2010, and he managed to score Vaslui's only goal.Late in April, following his Romanian citizenship request, he stated "My future is tied with this town. I am happy here, and I want to end my career in the yellow-green shirt, when the time will come." On 9 May, in a league game against Astra Ploieşti, he was sent off for a bad foul on Alexandru Măţel. He was punished with a two-match ban with two rounds to spare, meaning that <mask>'s season was over. On 24 July 2011, played his 100th Liga I match, in Vaslui's opening game against Rapid București. He is only the second Vaslui player, to achieve this feat, joining Bogdan Buhuş. On 18 August, Temwanjera scored his first goal of the season as he netted Vaslui's first in a 2–0 home win over Sparta Prague, helping his team qualifying for the first time in the UEFA Europa League's Group Stages.Three days later, he scored his first league goal of the season, in a 2–1 home defeat against newly promoted Ceahlăul Piatra Neamţ. One week later, he scored the 2–1 winning goal for Vaslui, against FC Braşov. On 11 September, he scored the equaliser against Dinamo București, counting his third league goal in a row. Vaslui went on winning with 3–1. Four days later, he won a penalty that gave Vaslui a 2–1 lead in the first match from the group stages of UEFA Europa League against Lazio, after Wesley converted from the spot. The game eventually ended a 2–2 draw. He scored his second goal in UEFA Europa League against FC Zurich in 2–2 draw.On 7 May 2012, he scored a hattrick against Gaz Metan Mediaş.He ended the season with a total of 7 goals in Liga I. International career
Temwanjera made his debut for the Zimbabwe national team in 2005 while playing with FK Javor in a friendly game against Zambia. It remained his only international appearance. Personal life
His brother David and Jealous Wilson, are also footballers too. Career statistics

Club

Honours
Vaslui
Liga I Runner-up: 2011–12
Cupa României Runner-up: 2009–10
UEFA Intertoto Cup Winner: 2008

References

External links

1972 births
Living people
Sportspeople from Harare
Association football forwards
Zimbabwean footballers
Zimbabwe international footballers
CAPS United players
FK Javor Ivanjica players
FK Borac Čačak players
FC Vaslui players
<mask>a
Serbian SuperLiga players
Liga I players
<mask>a
Zimbabwean expatriate footballers
Expatriate footballers in Serbia
Expatriate footballers in Romania
Zimbabwean expatriate sportspeople in Romania
Expatriate footballers in Thailand
Zimbabwean expatriate sportspeople in Thailand

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title: Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau

texts:
<mask>, Count of Mirabeau (9 March 17492 April 1791) was a leader of the early stages of the French Revolution. A noble, he had been involved in numerous scandals before the start of the Revolution in 1789 that had left his reputation in ruins. Nonetheless, he rose to the top of the French political hierarchy in the years 1789–1791 and acquired the reputation of a voice of the people. A successful orator, he was the leader of the moderate position among revolutionaries by favoring a constitutional monarchy built on the model of Great Britain. When he died (of natural causes), he was a great national hero, even though support for his moderate position was slipping away. The later discovery that he was in the pay of King Louis XVI and the Austrian enemies of France beginning in 1790 brought him into posthumous disgrace. Historians are deeply split on whether he was a great leader who almost saved the nation from the Terror, a venal demagogue lacking political or moral values, or a traitor in the pay of the enemy.Family history

The family of Riqueti, with possible distant origins in Italy, became wealthy through merchant trading in Marseilles. In 1570, Jean Riqueti bought the château and seigniory of Mirabeau, which had belonged to the great Provençal family of Barras. In 1685, <mask> Riqueti obtained the title "marquis de Mirabeau". His son, Jean Antoine, grandfather of <mask> <mask>, served with distinction through all the later campaigns of the reign of Louis XIV. At the Battle of Cassano (1705), he suffered a neck wound so severe that he had to wear a silver stock ever after. Because he tended to be blunt and tactless, he never rose above the rank of colonel. On retiring from the service, he married Françoise <mask>, with whom he had three sons: Victor (marquis de Mirabeau), Jean Antoine (bailli de Mirabeau) and Louis Alexandre (comte de Mirabeau).<mask> <mask>, comte de Mirabeau, was the son of Victor. Early life
<mask>-<mask> was born at Le Bignon, near Nemours, the eldest surviving son of the economist <mask> Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, and his wife Marie-Geneviève <mask>. He was also the fifth child and second son of the couple. When he was three years old, a virulent attack of smallpox left his face disfigured. This, combined with Mirabeau's resemblance to his maternal ancestors and his fondness for his mother, contributed to his father's dislike of him. At the age of five, his father had him sent to the strict boarding school of Abbé Choquart in Paris by the false name of "Pierre-Buffière" according to estate possessed by his mother. Destined for the army, at age eighteen, he entered the military school in Paris in the regiment of Berri-Cavaleria at Saints.Of this school, which had Joseph-Louis Lagrange for its professor of mathematics, there is an amusing account in the life of Gilbert Elliot, who met Mirabeau there. On leaving school in 1767, he received a commission in a cavalry regiment that his grandfather had commanded years before. Mirabeau's love affairs are well-known, owing to the celebrity of the letters to Marie Thérèse <mask>, his "Sophie". In spite of his disfigurement (or perhaps because of it), he won the heart of the lady to whom his colonel was attached; this led to such scandal that his father obtained a lettre de cachet, and Mirabeau was imprisoned in the Île de Ré. On being released, the young nobleman obtained leave to accompany the French expedition to Corsica as a volunteer. During the Corsican expedition, Mirabeau contracted several more gambling debts and engaged in another scandalous love affair. However, he proved his military genius in the Corsican expedition, and also conducted a thorough study of the island during his stay.The study was most likely factually incorrect, but his desire to learn of a country that had been previously unstudied emphasizes <mask>'s endless curiosity and inquisitiveness, particularly into the traditions and customs of society. Mirabeau learned the value of hard work in the French army. This aspect of Mirabeau's personality contributed to his popular success in later years, during the Revolution. After his return, he tried to keep on good terms with his father, and in 1772 he married a rich heiress, Marie–Marquerite–Emilie <mask>, daughter of the marquis de Marignane. Emilie, who was 18 years old, was apparently engaged to a much older nobleman, the Comte <mask>. Nonetheless, Mirabeau pursued her for several months, expecting that their marriage would benefit from the money that the couple would receive from their parents. After several months of failed attempts at being introduced to the heiress, Mirabeau bribed one of the young lady's maids to let him into her residence, where he pretended to have had a sexual encounter with Emilie.To avoid losing face, her father saw that they got married just a couple of days afterwards. <mask> received a small allowance of 6,000 livres from his father, but never received the expected dowry from the marquis. Mirabeau, who was still facing financial trouble and increasing debt, could not keep up with the expensive lifestyle to which his wife was accustomed, and their extravagances forced his father to send him into semi-exile in the country, where he wrote his earliest extant work, the Essai sur le despotisme. The couple had a son who died early, mostly due to the poor living conditions they were experiencing at that time. Then his wife asked for judicial separation in 1782. She was defended by Jean-Étienne-Marie Portalis, who later became one of the editors of the Civil Code. Mirabeau defended his own cause in this trial but lost, holding resentment against Portalis forever.Mirabeau's violent disposition led him to quarrel with a country gentleman who had insulted his sister, and his exile was changed by lettre de cachet into imprisonment in the Château d'If in 1774. In 1775 he was transferred to the castle of Joux, where he was not closely confined, having full leave to enter the town of Pontarlier. In a house of a friend he met Marie Thérèse <mask>, known as "Sophie", and the two fell in love. He escaped to Switzerland, where Sophie joined him; they then went to the United Provinces, where he lived by writing hack work for the booksellers; meanwhile Mirabeau had been condemned to death at Pontarlier for sedition and abduction, and in May 1777 he was seized by the Dutch police, sent to France and imprisoned by a lettre de cachet in the castle of Vincennes. The early part of his confinement is marked by indecent letters to Sophie (first published in 1793 by Pierre Louis Manuel), and the obscene Erotica biblion and Ma conversion. In Vincennes, he met the <mask> Sade, who was also writing erotic works; however the two disliked each other intensely. It was in these writings, however, that Mirabeau developed experience as an orator.He learned how to curb his natural eloquence and his dialectic became firm, commanding and moving. The prison in which he was held was the first platform to hear his voice. Later during his confinement, he wrote Des Lettres de Cachet et des prisons d'état, published after his liberation (1782). It exhibits an accurate knowledge of French constitutional history, skillfully marshaled to demonstrate that the system of lettres de cachet was not only philosophically unjust but constitutionally illegal. It shows, though in a rather diffuse and declamatory form, wide historical knowledge, keen philosophical perception, and genuine eloquence, applied to a practical purpose, which was the great characteristic of Mirabeau, both as a political thinker and as a statesman. Before the French Revolution

His release from Vincennes in August 1782 began the second period of Mirabeau's life. Mirabeau not only succeeded in reversing the sentence of death against him, but also got an order for Sophie's husband to pay the costs of the whole legal proceedings.It was thought <mask> would come out of the lawsuit in Aix ruined:  his past convictions in prison, scandalous relationships with women, and the bad relationship with his father the Marquis all gave him a terrible reputation among judges and adversaries. However, despite being condemned by the judge, his reputation was greatly enhanced in the eyes of the public. He had withered his opponents, crushed the opposing lawyer and turned the cards in his favor regarding the death sentence. From this day forward, <mask> became regarded as a man of the people. Upon his release, he found that his Sophie had consoled herself with a young officer, after whose death she had committed suicide. From Pontarlier he went to Aix-en-Provence, where he claimed the court's order said that his wife should return to him. She naturally objected, and he finally lost in the third appeal of the case when Emilie's father produced to the court compromising letters from Mirabeau addressed to the marquess.Mirabeau then intervened in the suit between his father and mother before the parlement of Paris and attacked the ruling powers so violently that he had to leave France and return to the Dutch Republic, where he tried to live by writing. For a period he was employed by the publisher Marc-Michel Rey. About this time he met <mask> Nehra, the daughter of Willem van Haren, a Dutch statesman and political writer. She was an educated, refined woman capable of appreciating Mirabeau's good points. His life was strengthened by the love of Mme <mask>, his adopted son, <mask> Montigny, and his little dog Chico. After a time in the Dutch Republic he went to England, where his treatise on lettres de cachet was much admired after it was translated into English in 1787. He was soon admitted into the best Whig literary and political society of London through his old school friend Gilbert Elliot, who had become a leading Whig member of parliament.Of all his English friends, none seem to have been as close to him as Lord Shelburne and Sir Samuel Romilly. Romilly was introduced to <mask> by Sir Francis D'Ivernois, who undertook the translation of Mirabeau's Considérations sur l'ordre de Cincinnatus into English. The Considérations was one of several works that Mirabeau wrote in the year 1785, and it is a good specimen of his method. He had read a pamphlet published in America attacking the order, founded in 1783 as a bond of association between officers who had fought in the American Revolutionary War against Britain. The arguments struck him as true and valuable, so he rearranged them in his own fashion, and rewrote them in his own oratorical style. He supplemented the work with materials provided personally by Benjamin Franklin, who shared Mirabeau's opinions on the topic, but was not in a position to criticize the "noble order" espoused by the Society of the Cincinnati directly, because he was serving as the United States Minister to France at the time. Several other pamphlets Mirabeau wrote in 1785 attacked financial speculation.Among those, De La Caisse d'Escompte was prescient in that it correctly predicted the risky nature and ultimate demise of the French "Discount Bank." This book, which condemned the fiscal politics of the state as going against the interest of the public, was among the influential literature critical of the French government in the years leading up to the French Revolution. He soon found that such work did not pay enough to keep his retinue, and so he sought employment from the French foreign office, either as a writer or a diplomat. He first sent Mme <mask> to Paris to make peace with the authorities, and then returned himself with hopes of getting a job through an old literary collaborateur of his, Durival, who was at this time director of finance at the department of foreign affairs. One of this official's functions was to subsidize political pamphleteers, and Mirabeau hoped to be so employed. However, he ruined his chances with a series of writings on financial questions. On his return to Paris he had become acquainted with Étienne Clavière, the Genevese exile, and a banker named Panchaud.From them he learnt about the abuse of stock-jobbing, and seizing their ideas he began to regard stock-jobbing, or agiotage (known in English as "arbitrage"), as the source of all evil, and to attack in his usual vehement style the Banque de St-Charles and the Compagnie des Eaux. This pamphlet brought him into controversy with Pierre Beaumarchais, who certainly did not get the best of it, but it lost him any chance of employment with the government. His abilities were too great, however, to be overlooked by the foreign minister Charles Gravier, Comte <mask>gennes. After a preliminary trip to Berlin in early 1786, he was dispatched that July on a mission to the royal court of Prussia. Upon his return in January, Mirabeau published a full account in his Secret History of the Court of Berlin (1787). This account denounced the Prussian court as scandalous and corrupt, described the dying King <mask> the Great as weak and overly emotional, and labeled Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of <mask> the Great and a guest of the French court, as narrow-minded and incompetent. He also wrote contemptuously of Prussia's principal ministers Ewald Friedrich, Count von Hertzberg, and Joachim von Blumenthal.The resulting uproar was an extreme embarrassment for the French government, which quickly censored the book, but could not prevent its widespread notoriety. <mask>'s episode provided inspiration to many more radical publishers who came to regard Mirabeau as a leader of the coming revolution. During his journey to Germany, he had made the acquaintance of Jakob Mauvillon, an expert on Prussia whose expertise Mirabeau made use of in his De la monarchie prussienne sous Frédéric le Grand (London, 1788). In 1788, Mirabeau was approached and asked to offer himself as a candidate for secretary to the Assembly of Notables, which the King Louis XVI had just convened as a method to circumvent the opposition of the parlements to crown initiatives seeking to reform France's tax structure. His chance to be a leading voice in France as it faced political ferment seemed to be fading as he turned down the crown offer, explaining his reasoning in a letter of 18 April 1788 to the minister Montmorin. In this affair he had sought to bring his name before the public by publishing another financial work, the Dénonciation de l'agiotage, however, it had contained diatribes that harmed his chance to serve as secretary, and led him to retire to Tongeren. He further injured his prospects by publishing the reports he had sent back to France during his secret mission to Berlin.But 1789 was at hand; the Estates-General was summoned, and the French Revolution broke out soon afterward. As a result, Mirabeau was able to exploit a completely new set of political circumstances to expand exponentially his political influence. The French Revolution

1789
On hearing of the king's decision to summon the Estates-General, Mirabeau went to Provence, and offered to assist at the preliminary conference of the nobility of his district (the local representatives of the Second Estate), but was rejected. He appealed instead to the Third Estate and was elected to the Estates-General in both Aix and Marseilles. He chose to accept the seat for the former city, and was present at the opening of the Estates-General on 4 May 1789. From this time onward, Mirabeau took a very prominent role in the deliberations of the National Constituent Assembly. Among a large crowd of unfamiliar politicians in the Estates General, Mirabeau was one figure who stood out.He was widely known to the French public, and not only did the people place great faith in him, they feared him. His great capacity for work and extensive knowledge were easily seen, but the scandals of his private life with women, time in prison, and extensive debt could not be overlooked. At every important crisis his voice was heard, though his advice was not always followed. He possessed both logical acuity and passionate enthusiasm. From the beginning, he recognized that government should exist to allow the population to pursue its daily work in peace, and that for a government to be successful it must be strong. At the same time, he thoroughly understood that for a government to be strong, it must be in harmony with the wishes of the majority of the people. He had studied the British system of government, and he hoped to establish in France a system similar in principle, yet still distinct.In the first stages of the meetings of the Estates-General, Mirabeau was soon recognized as a leader, because he always knew his own mind and was prompt in emergencies. He is attributed with the successful consolidation of the National Assembly out of the membership of the Estates-General. During the royal session of 23 June 1789 of the National Assembly, Mirabeau replied to the king's envoy who had come to bring the order to dissolve this Assembly : "Tell those who send you that we are here by the will of the people and will leave only by the force of bayonets !". After the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, Mirabeau warned the Assembly of the futility of passing fine-sounding decrees and urged the necessity of action. Although the cause of liberty had triumphed, Mirabeau foresaw that the intervention of armed mobs would only drive the path of Revolution further and further along a destructive path of violence. He declared that the night of 4 August (when members of the Constituent Assembly took an oath to end feudalism) accomplished nothing other than to give the people immense theoretical liberty while providing them no practical freedom and overthrowing the old régime before a new one could be constituted. His failure to control the theorists demonstrated to Mirabeau that his eloquence could not enable him to guide the Assembly by himself, and that he must get additional support.He wished to establish a strong ministry in the manner of an English ministry. In his view, it should be responsible to an assembly chosen to represent the people of France better than the British House of Commons represented the common people of Great Britain. According to a story contained in the Mémoires of the duchesse d'Abrantes, Mirabeau's first thought of becoming a minister can be traced to May 1789, when Queen Marie Antoinette allegedly tried to bribe him. He refused the bribe, but expressed his wish to be a minister. The indignation with which the queen rejected the

masks:
Honoré Gabriel Riqueti
Honoré
Honoré
Gabriel Riqueti
de Castellane
Honoré
Gabriel Riqueti
Honoré
Gabriel Mirabeau
Victor de
de Vassan
de Monnier
Mirabeau
de Covet
de Valbelle
Mirabeau
de Monnier
Marquis de
Mirabeau
Mirabeau
Madame de
de Nehra
Lucas de
Mirabeau
de Nehra
de Ver
Frederick
Frederick
Mirabeau


texts:
 idea may have made him consider the Duke of Orléans, a cousin of Louis XVI, as a possible constitutional king, because his title would of necessity be parliamentary. But the weakness of the Duke of Orléans was too palpable, and Mirabeau expressed his utter contempt for him. He also attempted to form an alliance with the <mask> la Fayette, but the two could not agree on a personal level, and Lafayette had his own theories about a new French constitution.Mirabeau tried for a time to act with Jacques Necker, the French finance minister, and obtained the sanction of the Assembly for Necker's financial scheme, not because it was good, but because, as he said, "no other plan was before them, and something must be done." The Comte de la Marck was a close friend of the queen, and had been elected a member of the Estates-General. His acquaintance with Mirabeau, begun in 1788, ripened during the following year into a friendship, which La Marck hoped to turn to the advantage of the court. After The March on Versailles of 5 October 1789, he consulted Mirabeau as to what measures the king ought to take, and Mirabeau, delighted at the opportunity, drew up his recommendations. His Mémoire offers insight into Mirabeau's genius for politics. The main position was that the king was not free in Paris; he must therefore depart Paris for a provincial capital in the French interior, and there he must appeal to the people and summon a great convention. It would be ruin to appeal to the nobility, as the queen advised.At this great convention the king must show himself ready to recognize that great changes had taken place, that feudalism and absolutism had forever disappeared, and that a new relationship between king and people must arise, which must be loyally observed on both sides in the future. To establish this new constitutional position between king and people would not be difficult, because the indivisibility of the monarch and his people is anchored in the heart of the French people. This was Mirabeau's programme, from which he never diverged, but which was far too statesmanlike to be understood by the king, and far too assertive of the altered condition of the monarchy to be palatable to the queen. Mirabeau followed up his Mémoire with a scheme for a great ministry containing all the most notable men: Necker would be prime minister, "to render him as powerless as he is incapable, and yet preserve his popularity for the king"; the Duc de la Rochefoucauld; La Marck; Charles Maurice <mask>eyrand, Bishop of Autun; Mirabeau, without portfolio; Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target, mayor of Paris; Lafayette, as generalissimo of the army; Louis Philippe, comte de Ségur, as foreign minister; Jean Joseph Mounier; and Isaac René Guy le Chapelier. This scheme was leaked, then ruined by a decree of the Assembly of 7 November 1789, such that no member of the Assembly could become a minister. This decree destroyed any chance of the sort of harmony between ministers and parliament that existed in England and dashed Mirabeau's hopes. The queen utterly refused to take Mirabeau's counsel saying, "I hope that we shall never sink so low that we shall have to ask for aid from Mirabeau.", and La Marck left Paris. However, in April 1790, La Marck was suddenly recalled by the comte <mask>-Argenteau, the Austrian ambassador to Paris, and became the queen's most trusted political adviser. From this time to Mirabeau's death, he was the bearer of almost daily communications between Mirabeau and the queen. Mirabeau at first attempted to make an alliance with Lafayette, but it was useless, for Lafayette was not a strong man himself. Besides his schemes to become a minister, Mirabeau also assisted the Assembly in drafting civil rights legislation. In August 1789, he played an important role in drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. 1790–1791

In June 1790, Mirabeau met the captive Queen Marie Antoinette in Saint Cloud, where she was less watched and confined than in Paris (where her jailers followed her every step, even in her bedroom).Mirabeau retained a close connection with the queen, and drew up many state papers for her. In return, the king used money from Austria to secretly pay his debts and provide him with a monthly allowance of six thousand francs, with promises of a million or more. Some historians argue Mirabeau was not the traitor that many believed him to be because he continued to uphold his political beliefs and tried to make possible a bridge between the king and the revolutionaries. Mirabeau focused his efforts on two main issues: changing the ministry and dealing with impending civil war. His attempts to form political alliances with Lafayette and Necker failed and resulted in open hostility. Necker disappeared from the French court after September 1790 and no longer posed a threat. Lafayette, however, was very powerful due to his control of the military and the National Guard.At first, Mirabeau attempted to undermine Lafayette's power, but decided to solve the problem of the ministry, and maintain stability, by removing all ministers and placing the ministry entirely under Lafayette. In effect, Mirabeau suggested that the king distance himself from politics and let the revolution run its course, because it would inevitably destroy itself through its contradictory nature. Furthermore, Mirabeau proposed that, if his plan should fail, Paris should no longer be the capital of France, showing a conservative line of thinking: the only way to end the revolution would be to destroy its place of birth. In a meeting with the king and queen, Mirabeau maintained that not only was civil war inevitable, it was necessary for the survival of the monarchy. Mirabeau believed that the decision to go to war, even civil war, must come only from the king. In a letter of confidence to Mirabeau, Louis wrote that, as a Christian king, he could not declare war on his own subjects. However, that would not stop him from reacting in kind if his subjects declared war first.In order to avoid provoking a civil war, the king refrained from confronting the Constituent Assembly, and hoped instead for a constitution that he could agree to. Once the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790 destroyed this hope, Louis adopted a strategy of strengthening royal authority and the church's position, and accepted the use of force to accomplish this. Mirabeau's involvement with the court is as interesting for the insights it provides into the mind of Louis XVI as it is for the effects it produced in the Revolution. On the question of the royal veto, Mirabeau took a practical view and, seeing that the royal power was already considerably weakened, declared for the king's absolute veto and against the suspensive veto. He knew from his British experience that such a veto would be impractical unless the king knew the people were on his side, and that if it were used unjustifiably, the power of the purse possessed by the representatives of the people could bring about a bloodless revolution. The difference between the suspensive veto and the absolute was simple: the absolute veto gave the king the power to stop any law for an indefinite period of time. The suspensive veto, on the other hand, put limitations on the powers of the king.The final compromise was to allow the king a suspensive veto for a period of two years. On the subject of peace and war, Mirabeau supported the king's authority with some success. Again, almost alone in the Assembly, he held that the soldier ceased to be a citizen when he became a soldier; he must submit to the deprivation of his liberty to think and act and must recognize that a soldier's first duty is obedience. With such sentiments, it is no wonder that he approved of the vigorous conduct of the marquis de Bouillé at Nancy, which was to his credit, as Bouillé was opposed to him. Lastly, in matters of finance, he attacked Necker's "caisse d'escompte", which was to have the whole control of the taxes, as usurping the Assembly's power of the purse, and heartily approved of the system of assignats, with the reservation that the issue should be limited to no more than one-half the value of the lands to be sold. He saw that much of the National Assembly's inefficiency arose from the members' inexperience and their incurable verbosity. To establish some system of rules, he got his friend Samuel Romilly to draw up a detailed account of the rules and customs of the British House of Commons, which he translated into French, but which the Assembly refused to use.Jacobin Club

In addition to his place in the National Assembly, <mask> also served as a member of the Jacobin Club until his death. However, historian Charles Kuhlmann believed that "he was a Jacobin in name only and regarded the society as one of the chief obstacles in the way of his plans for the restoration of royal authority." In the end, the Jacobins would stand in his way of restoring royal authority, but in the early years of the revolution, Mirabeau was actually a leading figure in the Jacobin Club. Mirabeau reached the height of his influence within the club when he was elected its president in December 1790. During his time in the Jacobin Club, he would have a lasting impact on the selling of church land, the slave trade, and the determination of which citizens could serve in the National Guard. Mirabeau argued for the selling of church lands to private individuals in order to rescue the country from its financial troubles. This argument would be strongly supported by his fellow Jacobins.Although Mirabeau argued for the abolition of slavery, it must be said that, "in spite of their oft-expressed devotion for liberty and equality, the clubs long remained indifferent to the horrors of slavery and the slave trade" until later in the revolution, after Mirabeau's death. As for the National Guard, the National Assembly passed a decree on 6 December 1790 stating that only active citizens could serve on the National Guard. Due to "an article of the electoral law of October, 1789, only persons whose annual tax amounted to the equivalent of three days' work were recognized as active citizens," leaving the decree of 6 December to restrict the right to bear arms to the middle and upper classes. The decree of 6 December led to heated debates within the clubs of the Jacobins, especially in Paris. It also pitted Maximilien Robespierre, a rising political figure, against Mirabeau. The evening after the decree was passed, Robespierre would attempt to give a speech against the decree at the Jacobins club in Paris only to be stopped by Mirabeau. He "attempted to stop him on the grounds that no one was allowed to challenge a decree already rendered" by the National Assembly; however, after an hour and a half of uproar Robespierre was allowed to finish.Historians believe that <mask> tried to stop Robespierre because he had begun to notice the change in the revolution to a more radical form led by the radical members of the Jacobin party. <mask> would serve as a member of the more moderate group called the Société des amis de la Révolution de Paris, which was formed in November 1789. This group would disappear by 1790 due to conflict within the Jacobin Club. After <mask>'s death, there would be no greater place of mourning than in the Jacobin Clubs throughout Paris. It is said that at "Alençon tears ran from every eye and members fainted" over hearing the news of his death. The mourning of Mirabeau as a Jacobin hero would not last long, however. After the deposing of the monarchy in 1792, the French republic would find letters written by Mirabeau to the king about trying to save the monarchy.This would lead to the destruction of his bust in the Jacobin Club and to his denunciation by Robespierre as "an intriguer and political charlatan unworthy of the honor of lying in the Pantheon." Foreign affairs

In foreign affairs, he held that the French people should conduct their revolution as they wished, and that no foreign nation had any right to interfere with the country's internal affairs. But he knew that neighboring nations were disturbed by the progress of the revolution, feared its influence on their own peoples, and that foreign monarchs were being importuned by French émigrés to intervene on behalf of the French monarchy. To prevent this intervention, or rather to give no pretext for it, was the guiding principle in his foreign policy. He was elected a member of the comité diplomatique of the Assembly in July 1790, and in this capacity he was able to prevent the Assembly from doing much harm with regard to foreign affairs. He had long known Armand Marc, comte de Montmorin, the foreign secretary, and, as matters became more strained, he entered into daily communication with the minister, advising him on every point, and, while dictating his policy, defended it in the Assembly. Mirabeau's exertions in this respect showed him to be a statesman; his influence is best demonstrated by the confused state of affairs in this area after his death.Death

Mirabeau's health had been damaged by the excesses of his youth and his strenuous work in politics, and in 1791, he contracted pericarditis. With the continuous medical attention paid to him by his friend and physician Pierre Jean George Cabanis, Mirabeau survived to perform his duties as president of the National Assembly until his death on 2 April 1791 in Paris. Even close to the end, he directed debates with eloquence that further increased his popularity. The people of Paris cherished him as one of the fathers of the Revolution. During the Trial of Louis XVI in 1792, Mirabeau's dealings with the royal court were brought to light, and he was largely discredited by the public after it became known that he had secretly acted as an intermediary between the monarchy and the revolutionaries and had taken payment for it. Historians in the 21st century discovered secret documents in the archives of Vienna that demonstrate that the Austrian ambassador orchestrated the meetings with the king and queen. Florimond-<mask>, comte de Mercy-Argenteau, the ambassador, was the queen's political advisor, with advice tailored to the needs of Austria, not France.He received a grand burial, and it was for him that the Panthéon in Paris was created as a burial place for great Frenchmen. The street where he died (rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin) was renamed rue Mirabeau. In 1792, his secret dealings with the king were uncovered, and in 1794 his remains were removed from the Panthéon and were replaced with those of Jean-Paul Marat. His remains were then buried anonymously in the graveyard of Clamart. In spite of searches performed in 1889, they were not found. With <mask>'s death the task of saving the monarchy became much more difficult, as the king was less reconciled than he had ever been with the Revolution, and thus revolutionary leaders became less willing to share power with a king who proved so unwilling to compromise. Some historians, such as Francois Furet, however, believe that even had he lived, there would have been a similar outcome, as it would have been extremely difficult to remake the old monarchy in harmony with the growing democratic ideals of the age.Mirabeau proved himself as one of the strongest early leaders of the revolution. His energy captivated his audience, his leadership was often the lead of the revolutionary ideas, while his work with the king stained his image. Mirabeau's early life, though filled with the ideas of a young man revolting against a stern father, helped give him these qualities. Collaborators

His first literary work written after the bombastic, but eloquent Essai sur le despotisme (Neufchâtel, 1775) was a translation of Robert Watson's Philip II, done in Amsterdam with the help of Nicolas-Luton Durival. His Considerations sur l'ordre de Cincinnatus (London, 1788) was based on a pamphlet by Aedanus Burke of South Carolina, who opposed the aristocratic tendencies of the Society of the Cincinnati, and the notes to it were by Gui-Jean-Baptiste Target. His financial writings were suggested by the Genevese exile Étienne Clavière. During the Revolution, he received yet more help; men were proud to labour for him, and did not murmur because he absorbed all the credit and fame.Étienne Dumont, Clavière, Antoine-Adrien Lamourette and Étienne Salonion Reybaz were but a few of the most distinguished of his collaborators. Dumont was a Genevese exile and old friend of Romilly who willingly prepared the famous addresses that Mirabeau used to make to the Assembly marked by sudden bursts of eloquent declamation; Clavière helped him in finance and not only worked out his figures, but also wrote his financial discourses; Lamourette wrote the speeches on the Civil Constitution of the Clergy; Reybaz not only wrote for him his famous speeches on the assignats, the organization of the national guard, and others, which Mirabeau read word for word at the tribune, but also even the posthumous speech on succession to the estates of intestates, which Talleyrand read in the Assembly as the last work of his dead friend. In popular culture
He was played by Sir Peter Ustinov in the 1989 film La Révolution française. He was also portrayed in the popular video game Assassin's Creed Unity as an Assassin and one of the main characters. Notes

References

Further reading
 Epstein, David M. "Mirabeau and The French Revolution: A Reappraisal," The Historian (1970) 32#4 pp 576–594 DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6563.1970.tb00379.x online
 Furet, François and Mona Ozouf, eds. A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989), pp. 264–72
 Luttrell, Barbara.Mirabeau (Southern Illinois University press, 1990), scholarly biography
 Price, Munro. "Mirabeau and the Court: Some New Evidence," French Historical Studies (2006) 29#1 pp 37–75, online
 Warwick, Charles F. <mask> and the French revolution (Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2005)
 von Guttner-Sporzynski, Darius. The French Revolution   (2015). In French

, valuable primary sources

External links

1749 births
1791 deaths
18th-century French male writers
Burials at the Panthéon, Paris
Christian abolitionists
Counts of Mirabeau
French abolitionists
French Freemasons
French Roman Catholics
Jacobins
Les Neuf Sœurs
Marquesses of Mirabeau
Members of the National Constituent Assembly
Newspaper publishers (people) of the French Revolution
People from Loiret
People imprisoned by lettre de

masks:
Marquis de
de Tall
de Mercy
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Mirabeau
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Claude
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