François Mauguin

France state institutions Liberalism and republicanism 1785–1854 ○ Natural causes

Liberal deputy of the July Revolution of 1830 whose jailing for debt in 1850 became the Mauguin affair

Born at Dijon in 1785, he became an advocate in 1804 and made his name as an orator in the political trials of the Restoration, among them his defence of Colonel La Bédoyère. An ardent Liberal, he was elected deputy for Beaune in 1827 and fought the Polignac ministry, and in the July Revolution of 1830 he declared "This is a revolution we have to lead" and sat on the interim Municipal Commission. Under the July Monarchy he led the dynastic opposition in rivalry with Odilon Barrot but grew increasingly conservative. Elected for the Côte-d'Or to the Constituent Assembly in 1848 and to the Legislative Assembly in 1849, he generally voted with the right. On 27 December 1850 a creditor had him locked up in the Clichy debtors' prison, and the Assembly, outraged at the breach of its members' immunity, sent a battalion to free him. He left public life after the coup and died at Saumur in 1854.