Joseph de Villèle

French monarchy state institutions Monarchy and royalism 1773–1854 ○ Natural causes

Ultra-royalist prime minister of the Restoration

Born at Toulouse in 1773, he joined the navy. Arrested on the Isle of Bourbon (now Réunion) during the Terror and later freed, he became a planter there with sixty slaves and helped oust the officials sent to enforce the abolition of slavery. He returned to France in 1807 with a large fortune. At the Restoration he became mayor of Toulouse and in 1815 entered the ultra-royalist Chambre introuvable, leading the extreme right. At the end of 1821 he became the real chief of the cabinet as minister of finance, and in 1822 formally prime minister. He muzzled the opposition with stringent press laws, indemnified the émigrés with a billion francs and made sacrilege punishable by death. After losing the election of 1827 he resigned and took no further part in public affairs. He died in 1854.