Biography

Laborde was born near Jaca

Jaca

Jaca is a city of northeastern Spain near the border with France, in the midst of the Pyrenees in the province of Huesca...

 in Aragon

Aragon

Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...

, into a modest béarn

Béarn

Béarn is one of the traditional provinces of France, located in the Pyrenees mountains and in the plain at their feet, in southwest France. Along with the three Basque provinces of Soule, Lower Navarre, and Labourd, the principality of Bidache, as well as small parts of Gascony, it forms in the...

aise family. When he reached adolescence he joined his uncle, who was head of a maritime import-export company at Saint-Jean-de-Luz

Saint-Jean-de-Luz

Saint-Jean-de-Luz is a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in south-western France.Saint-Jean-de-Luz is part of the province Basque of Labourd and the Basque Eurocity Bayonne - San Sebastian .-Geography:...

, and took over as head of the business on the cousin's death. He based his subsequent fortune not only on this company, but also on transatlantic trade (supplying the American colonies with basics, in return for far more financially interesting products such as tropical fruits, rare trees and slaves) and his sugar plantations on Saint-Domingue

Saint-Domingue

The labour for these plantations was provided by an estimated 790,000 African slaves . Between 1764 and 1771, the average annual importation of slaves varied between 10,000-15,000; by 1786 it was about 28,000, and from 1787 onward, the colony received more than 40,000 slaves a year...

 (Haïti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

).

His dazzling rise, comparable to that of several bourgeois men of the age of Enlightenment, gained him promotion to noble rank and allowed him to acquire several estates. He became fermier général (1759–1767) on the suggestion of his friend the duc de Choiseul. He took up residence in the château de La Ferté-Vidame in 1764, redecorating it to his taste and commissioning several artists. However, following a game of musical chairs, he lost it in 1784 to the duc de Penthièvre, who had himself lost his domaine de Rambouillet

Château de Rambouillet

The château de Rambouillet is a castle in the town of Rambouillet, Yvelines department, in the Île-de-France region in northern France, southwest of Paris...

 to king Louis XV, who coveted its "terres giboyeuses" or wooded hunting lands. Laborde was named marquis and in 1784 acquired the castle of Méréville, rebuilding it to his taste.

In politics, he was ahead of his time and of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, and (with Mirabeau

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau was a French revolutionary, as well as a writer, diplomat, freemason, journalist and French politician at the same time. He was a popular orator and statesman. During the French Revolution, he was a moderate, favoring a constitutional monarchy built on...

) was one of the only noble députés (from the bailliage d'Étampes) to accept demotion to the Third Estate upon the Revolution. However, this was not enough to save him from being guillotined under the "loi des suspects" on the orders of Louis de Saint-Just

Louis de Saint-Just

Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just , usually known as Saint-Just, was a military and political leader during the French Revolution. The youngest of the deputies elected to the National Convention in 1792, Saint-Just rose quickly in their ranks and became a major leader of the government of the French...

, in one of the last fits of the Reign of Terror

Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...

 in May 1794. In 1792 much of the fabulous Orleans Collection

Orleans Collection

The Orleans Collection was a very important collection of over 500 paintings formed by the French prince of the blood Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans, mostly acquired between about 1700 and his death in 1723...

 of paintings was briefly his, before he was forced by events to abandon his ambition to exhibit them in his Paris house, and sold them.

Descendents

• Pauline de Laborde (1765–1782), married Jean-François Pérusse
  Les Cars
  Les Cars is a commune in the Haute-Vienne department in the Limousin region in western France.- References :*...
  
   1st duc des Cars
• Nathalie de Laborde (1774–1835), married Charles de Noailles, duc de Mouchy, was la petite mouche among the many mistresses of Chateaubriand
• Alexandre de Laborde
  Alexandre de Laborde
  Comte Louis-Joseph-Alexandre de Laborde was a French antiquary, liberal politician and writer, a member of the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques , under the rubric political economy.-Early years:...
  
  , archaeologist, soldier and politician, who continued his father's Revolutionary political views

External links

• His genealogy on Geneanet