Nicolas René Berryer

Nicolas René Berryer, comte de La Ferrière (4 March 1703 – 15 August 1762) was a French politician who served as Secretary of State for the Navy from 1758 to 1761.

In 1738, he married a rich heiress, the daughter of the fermier général, Catherine Madeleine Jorts de Fribois : beautiful, likeable and witty, she contributed to her husband's advancement.

According to Tocqueville, Berryer was "a hard, haughty, cruel man, with much ignorance and even more presumption and stubbornness" ("un homme dur, hautain, grossier, avec beaucoup d'ignorance et encore plus de présomption et d'entêtement").

He worked to set up a court of enquiry that would have been competent to rule on the accusations of fraud and price increases made against his department, and in this way to punish the concessionnaires, implicated in the embezzlements and other irregularities in Canada.

On 13 October 1761, Louis XV replaced Berryer with Choiseul and, to keep him in royal service, named him garde des sceaux of France, a role he occupied until 15 September 1762.