Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Torcy
Encyclopedia
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
's reign, notably the treaty (1700) that occasioned the War of the Spanish Succession
War of the Spanish Succession
The War of the Spanish Succession was fought among several European powers, including a divided Spain, over the possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under one Bourbon monarch. As France and Spain were among the most powerful states of Europe, such a unification would have...
(1701-1714), in which the dying Charles II of Spain
Charles II of Spain
Charles II was the last Habsburg King of Spain and the ruler of large parts of Italy, the Spanish territories in the Southern Low Countries, and Spain's overseas Empire, stretching from the Americas to the Spanish East Indies...
named Louis XIV's grandson, Philippe, duc d'Anjou
Philip V of Spain
Philip V was King of Spain from 15 November 1700 to 15 January 1724, when he abdicated in favor of his son Louis, and from 6 September 1724, when he assumed the throne again upon his son's death, to his death.Before his reign, Philip occupied an exalted place in the royal family of France as a...
, heir to the Spanish throne, eventually founding the line of Spanish Bourbons.
Biography
Colbert was born at ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
The son of Charles Colbert, Louis's minister of foreign affairs, and the nephew of le grand Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert was a French politician who served as the Minister of Finances of France from 1665 to 1683 under the rule of King Louis XIV. His relentless hard work and thrift made him an esteemed minister. He achieved a reputation for his work of improving the state of French manufacturing...
, Louis' chief advisor, for whom the Torcy title was created, Colbert de Torcy was a brilliant and precocious legal student. As a very young man he assisted his father in sensitive diplomatic missions. Torcy proved himself so able that in 1689 Louis XIV granted him the right to succeed to his father's position as minister of foreign affairs, a position he fulfilled July 28, 1696 to September 23, 1715. Torcy was the guiding spirit of French diplomacy at the series of international conferences that resulted in the Treaty of Utrecht
Treaty of Utrecht
The Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, comprises a series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single document, signed by the belligerents in the War of Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht in March and April 1713...
(1713) and the Treaty of Rastatt
Treaty of Rastatt
The Treaty of Rastatt of 7 March 1714, ended hostilities between France and Austria at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. It complemented the Treaty of Utrecht, which had, the previous year, ended hostilities with Britain and the Dutch Republic...
(1714). Colbert de Torcy was concerned with professionalizing the conduct of diplomacy. He instituted an académie politique to train young professionals in the equivalent of a foreign service bureaucracy: it did not survive his retirement, but his establishment at Versailles of a centralized diplomatic archive (1710) has been a service to historians.
The aged king, recognizing that Torcy had been a de facto secretary of state, named him such in his will. But when Louis died in 1715, his will was broken; the Regent, Philippe, Duke of Orléans
Philippe II, Duke of Orléans
Philippe d'Orléans was a member of the royal family of France and served as Regent of the Kingdom from 1715 to 1723. Born at his father's palace at Saint-Cloud, he was known from birth under the title of Duke of Chartres...
deprived Torcy of any political power, and he settled into a long retirement, during which he was a member of the unofficial political salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
called the Entresol, which formed in the early years of Louis XV
Louis XV of France
Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...
's maturity when the abbé Alary, a protégé of Fleury, convened an occasional political discussion group in the entresol of his apartment in Place Vendôme
Place Vendôme
Place Vendôme is a square in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France, located to the north of the Tuileries Gardens and east of the Église de la Madeleine. It is the starting point of the Rue de la Paix. Its regular architecture by Jules Hardouin-Mansart and pedimented screens canted across the...
. There in sociable surroundings, sharing the gossip and news Colbert de Torcy debated contemporary events in a sympathetic circle and like others, doubtless read aloud and elicited comment upon the political writings.
The architect Germain Boffrand
Germain Boffrand
Germain Boffrand was one of the most gifted French architects of his generation. A pupil of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Germain Boffrand was one of the main creators of the precursor to Rococo called the style Régence, and in his interiors, of the Rococo itself...
had built a series of hôtels particuliers in the new district, the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and Colbert de Torcy purchased one as a semi-finished shell, 14 November 1715, which he finished as a suitable Paris residence, the hôtel de Torcy (later the hôtel de Beauharnais, now the German Embassy 78, rue de Lille). There his magnificent installation among his tapestries, furnishings paintings, Chinese porcelains mounted in gilt-bronze, sculptures and other works of art above all in his cabinet doré, giving onto the salon that was lit from both sides, provided him solace and comfort in a long and productive retirement, in which he completed his Mémoirs pour servir à l'histoire des négotiations depuis le Traité de Riswick jusqu'à la Paix d'Utrecht, published in 1756.
Colbert de Torcy died at Paris in 1715. His official portrait was painted by Hyacinthe Rigaud
Hyacinthe Rigaud
Hyacinthe Rigaud was a French baroque painter of Catalan origin whose career was based in Paris.He is renowned for his portrait paintings of Louis XIV, the royalty and nobility of Europe, and members of their courts and considered one of the most notable French portraitists of the classical period...
. Colbert de Torcy is commemorated in the rue de Torcy, Paris XVIIIème http://www.v1.paris.fr/CARTO/nomenclature/9348.nom.html.