François Mignet

His father was a locksmith from the Vendée, who enthusiastically accepted the principles of the French Revolution and encouraged liberal ideas in his son.

[1] Mignet's Histoire de la révolution française (1824), in support of the Liberal cause, was an enlarged sketch, prepared in four months, in which more stress was laid on fundamental theories than on the facts.

In 1830, he founded Le National with Thiers and Armand Carrel, and signed the journalists' protest against the July Ordinances, however, he refused to profit from his party's victory.

He was satisfied with the modest position of Director of the Archives at the Foreign Office, where he stayed till the revolution of 1848, when he was dismissed, and retired permanently into private life.

He had been elected a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, which was re-established in 1832, and, in 1837, was made the permanent secretary.

With the exception of his description of the French Revolution, which was chiefly a political manifesto, all his early works refer to the Middle Ages.

[3] At the same time, he was commissioned to publish the diplomatic acts relating to the War of the Spanish Succession for the Collection des documents inédits.

Only four volumes of these Négotiations were published (1835–1842), and they do not go further than the Peace of Nijmegen; however, the introduction is celebrated, and Mignet reprinted it in his Mélanges historiques.