Charles, marquis de Villette

Charles was born in Paris as the heir of a financier who left him a large fortune and the nobility title of Marquis.

After taking part in the Seven Years' War, Villette returned in 1763 to his native city, where he owned an estate in Clermont.

Nonetheless, he succeeded in gaining the intimacy of Voltaire, who had known his mother and who wished to turn him into a poet; the aging philosophe is even recorded to have viewed his protégé Villette as "the French Tibullus".

The attacks were answered on Villette's behalf by his illustrious friend, Anacharsis Cloots, a Dutchman hailed as "the Spokesman for the Human Race".

He had the courage to condemn the September Massacres and to vote for the imprisonment only, and not for the death penalty, of Louis XVI (December 1792).