Marc-René de Voyer de Paulmy d'Argenson (13 December 1623 – 1 May 1700), was a French administrator and diplomat, who served as ambassador to Venetian Republic from 1651 to 1655.
In 1650, he married Marguerite Houlier de La Pouyade; her family were also senior lawyers and administrators in Angoulême, whose titles included Comte de Rouffiac.[2] In 1654, the title was transferred to D'Argenson, and they had seven children; Marc-René de Voyer de Paulmy d'Argenson (1652-1721), Antoinette-Catherine (1654-?), Françoise (?), François-Élie (1656–1728), later Archbishop of Bordeaux, Thérèse-Hélène, Marie-Scholastique (1661-?), and Joseph-Ignace (1662-1690), a member of the Knights Hospitaller. [1]
Career
Cardinal Mazarin, French chief minister 1642 to 1661; for reasons that are unclear, he removed D'Argenson from Venice, ending his career
D'Argenson's father was a councillor in the Parlement de Paris, and a Maîtres des Requêtes, a class of lawyers who acted as professional bureaucrats, government officials and diplomats. They were part of the Noblesse de robe or Nobles of the robe, or the Second Estate in pre-Revolutionary France. Rank derived from holding judicial or administrative posts, and its members were hard-working professionals, unlike the aristocratic Noblesse d'épée or Nobles of the Sword.[3]
As was customary for eldest sons, D'Argenson followed the same career path; in 1642, he became councillor in the Parlement de Normandie, or Rouen, and later Maîtres des Requêtes. He accompanied his father to Venice in 1651, when he was appointed Ambassador to the Venetian Republic. When he died shortly after their arrival in November, D'Argenson replaced him as envoy; in 1655, he fell from favour and was replaced by Cardinal Mazarin, who removed him from his office of councillor of state.[citation needed]
In September 1656, he joined the Paris chapter of the Company of the Holy Sacrament, a Catholic society founded in 1627 by Henri de Levis, duc de Ventadour. It differed from similar organisations in being kept secret, and was suppressed in 1666 when its existence became known. The society disappeared from view until 1865, when a history of the Paris house written by D'Argenson was discovered in the Bibliothèque nationale.[5]
In addition to his history of the Society, he wrote various religious works, most of which have not survived. He was a friend of Jean Louis Guez de Balzac, (1597-1654), also from Charente and a founding member of the Académie française, now remembered for the style, rather than content, of his writing.[6]
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