Ernest de Blosseville

Ernest de Blosseville
File:Bénigne Ernest Poret de Blosseville.jpg Blosseville photographed by Witz & Cie.
President of the Normandy Historical Society
In office 1873–1885
President	Jules Grévy
Preceded by	Buchère de Lépinois
Succeeded by	Charles de Beaurepaire
Mayor of Amfreville-la-Campagne
In office 1862–1886
Deputy for Eure
In office 21 June 1857 – 7 May 1863
Succeeded by	Guillaume Pierre François Petit
General Councillor
In office 1848–1880
Constituency	Eure
Personal details
Born	Bénigne Ernest Poret de Blosseville (1799-07-19)19 July 1799 Rouen, French Republic
Died	Amfreville-la-Campagne, France
Political party	Legitimists

Bénigne-Ernest Poret, Marquis de Blosseville (19 July 1799 – 25 September 1886) was a French politician and man of letters. He was active in politics throughout the 19th century and was a member of parliament in 1857.

Biography

Ernest de Blosseville was born in Rouen on 19 July 1799, where he studied at the Collège Royal. The eldest son of Bénigne Poret, Marquis de Blosseville (1768–1845), a member of parliament for the Eure from 1815 to 1816, he undertook a mission to Spain in 1823 at the request of the government. There he met Joseph Meissonnier de Valcroissant, with whom he collaborated on the memoirs of General Morillo, and later on the translation of Sebastián Miñano's History of the Spanish Revolution from 1820 to 1823 (1824).

Blosseville belonged to that generation in which enthusiasm for Chateaubriand merged with fervour for Catholicism and devotion to the elder branch of the Bourbons. When the small group which campaigned at the Conservateur under the banner of Chateaubriand lost its rallying point with the disappearance of the journal, he made an alliance with the founders of the Annales de la littérature et des arts.

He later became a prefecture councillor, refused several posts to avoid moving away from Paris, where he became friendly with Alexis de Tocqueville, then was appointed sub-prefect of Pontoise the day before the July ordinances, but was not confirmed following the events that ensued. He resigned his post in 1832. He was made a Knight of the Order of Charles III in 1840.

A contributor to or editor of various newspapers (La Quotidienne, Le Courrier de l'Europe, etc.), he professed Legitimist ideas. This scholar, who contributed to several learned societies, entered politics during the Second Empire, when he was elected to the General Council in the canton of Amfreville-la-Campagne (Eure). Defying all the odds, he was elected deputy for the 2nd constituency of Eure in 1857, against the ‘official’ candidate of the regime. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1860. He was not re-elected in the 1863, as the prefect, Eugène Janvier de La Motte, did everything in his power to ensure that he was defeated, this time by the official candidate. He was made a Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great in 1865.

From then on, Blosseville devoted himself to developing his farming estate while participating in the work of various learned societies. He is notably credited with publications on the Norman dialect of the Eure, a topographical dictionary of the Eure, and a book on the history of England's penal colonies in Australia, which won the Montyon Prize and was later called "the first scholarly history of Australia". He was president of the Normandy Historical Society and the Free Society of the Eure.

Ernest de Blosseville died in Amfreville-la-Campagne at the age of 87.

Private life

His younger brother, Jules de Blosseville (1802–1833), a naval officer, disappeared when his ship, the Lilloise, sank off Iceland. He was the great-uncle of Charles Aubourg de Boury.

Works

Major publications

• Histoire de la colonisation pénale et des Etablissements de l'Angleterre en Australie (1859)
• Souvenirs ébroïciens: Les trois Campion (1862)
• L'origine du prieuré des Deux Amants en Normandie, fabliau du XIIIe siècle (1869)
• Les Puységur, leurs oeuvres de littérature d'économie politique et de science (1873)
• Dictionnaire topographique du département de l'Eure (1877)
• Dictionnaire du patois normand en usage dans le département de l'Eure (1879–1882; 2 volumes; with Robin, Le Prévost and Passy)

Translations

• Eduardo José Rodriguez de Carassa, Oraison funèbre de Don Mathias Vinuésa (1823)
• Pablo Morillo, Mémoires du général Morillo,... relatifs aux principaux événemens de ses campagnes en Amérique de 1815 à 1821 (1823)
• Sebastián Miñano, Histoire de la révolution d'Espagne de 1820 à 1823 (1824)
• John Tanner, Mémoires de John Tanner: ou Trente année dans les déserts de l'Amérique du Nord (1835)

References

• Passy, Louis (1898). Le Marquis de Blosseville: souvenirs. Évreux: imprimerie de Charles Hérissey.

External links

• Works by Ernest de Blosseville at Gallica