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.

Life

Nicolas René Berryer was the son of Nicolas Berryer, procureur général to the

Grand Conseil The term Grand Conseil () or Great Council refers two different institutions during the Ancien Régime in France. It also is the name of parliaments in several Swiss cantons. Ancien Régime France Part of the King's Council Starting in the 13th ...

, and Élisabeth Nicole Ursule d'Arnollet de Lochefontaine. Initially "avocat général aux requêtes de l'hôtel", in 1728 he became "avocat général des brevets" then, in 1731, "conseiller à la cinquième chambre des enquêtes du

Parlement de Paris The ''Parlement'' of Paris () was the oldest ''parlement'' in the Kingdom of France, formed in the 14th century. Parlements were judicial, rather than legislative, bodies and were composed of magistrates. Though not representative bodies in the p ...

". 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. In 1739, he became

maître des requêtes A Master of Requests () is a counsel of the French ''Conseil d'État'' (Council of State), a high-level judicial officer of administrative law in France. The office has existed in one form or another since the Middle Ages. The occupational titl ...

then président of the Grand Conseil before being named

intendant An intendant (; ; ) was, and sometimes still is, a public official, especially in France, Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. The intendancy system was a centralizing administrative system developed in France. In the War of the Spanish Success ...

Poitou Poitou ( , , ; ; Poitevin: ''Poetou'') was a province of west-central France whose capital city was Poitiers. Both Poitou and Poitiers are named after the Pictones Gallic tribe. Geography The main historical cities are Poitiers (historical ...

(1743–1747). A friend of

Madame de Pompadour Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (, ; 29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764), commonly known as Madame de Pompadour, was a member of the French court. She was the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to 1751, and rema ...

, it was she who had him named lieutenant général de police when she became " maîtresse en titre" to

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defi ...

. He held this role from May 1747 to October 1757. Charged with protecting the relations between the king and de Pompadour, he created a "

cabinet noir In France, the ''cabinet noir'' (; French for " black room", also known as the "dark chamber" or " black chamber") was a government intelligence-gathering office, usually within a postal service, where correspondence between persons or entities ...

" (black cabinet), in order to keep postal correspondence between their enemies under surveillance. To this cabinet has been attributed the disgrace of several enemies of madame de Pompadour, notably the comte de Maurepas and the comte d'Argenson. On the other hand, he revealed himself unable to identify the authors of heinous libels against de Pompadour. 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"). His brutality won him the hatred of the people of Paris. One day, when he was summoned to parliament by the first-president, Berryer reported back that he could not cross Paris, for the mob had sworn to kill him and eat his heart. On 1 November 1758, while still under the protection of Madame de Pompadour, and with the support of Choiseul and the marshal of Belle Isle, he was named secretary of state to the Navy. Delegating the planning of the landing in England to the secretary of state for war, he devoted himself to reforming the administration. He was instrumental in blocking the plans of Belle-Isle, his former patron, to launch an invasion of the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They are divided into two Crown Dependencies: the Jersey, Bailiwick of Jersey, which is the largest of the islands; and the Bailiwick of Guernsey, ...

.McLynn p.71 With his customary brutality, he strove to repress the abuses that he believed he saw in the administration of Canada. 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. He had only one child, a daughter called Marie Élisabeth Berryer, who married Chrétien François de Lamoignon de Basville (garde des sceaux from 1787) on 4 September 1758.

Bibliography

* McLynn, Frank. ''1759: The Year Britain Became Master of the World''. Pimlico, 2005

References

External links

Article on Berryer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Berryer, Nicolas Rene 1703 births 1762 deaths Counts of France Ancien Régime office-holders Ministers of justice of France Lieutenant generals of police of Paris Secretaries of State of the Navy (France)