duc de Coislin. The chancellor’s great-grandson, Henri Charles du
Cambout de Coislin, bishop of Metz, commissioned Bernard de
Montfaucon, a learnedBenedictine of St Maur, to prepare a catalogue
of the Greek MSS. with commentaries. This work was published in
folio 1715, as Bibliotheca Coisliniana, olim Segueriana .... The
greater part of the printed books were destroyed by lire, in the abbey
of St Germain-des-Prés, in 1794.,
See F. Duchesne, Hist. des chanceliers de France (fol. 1680); for the affair of Val de Grâce, Catalogue de documents historiques . . . relatifs au règne de Louis XIII (Paris, 1847); also R. Kerviler, Le Chancelier P. Séguier (Paris, 1874). Great part of his correspondence is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.,
SÉGUR, the name of a French family, the first member of which to attain distinction was François de Ségur, better known as the seigneur de Sainte-Aulaye (d. c. 1605), who professed the reformed religion, and was closely associated with Henry IV., becoming in 1576 president of his council. lean-Isaac, marquis de Ségur (d. 1707), fought in most of the campaigns of the France of his time, and remained loyal throughout the troubles of the Fronde. His son, Henri Joseph, marquis de Ségur(1661–1737), was lieutenant-general of Champagne and Brie, governor of Foix. In his youth he was the hero of an episode of gallantry with Anne of Beauvilliers, abbess of La Joye, which led to the suggestion that she was none other than the Portuguese nun of the famous Letters. His son, Henri François, comte de Ségur (1689–1751), was colonel at seventeen, when he succeeded to the command of the Ségur regiment which his father had raised. In 1718 he began a thirty years' tenure of the lieutenant generalship of Champagne and Brie. He had married in that year Angélique de Froissy, a natural daughter of the regent, Philip of Orleans, but the death of his father-in-law a few years later prevented his reaping special advancement from his marriage, though Mme de Ségur belonged to the inner circle of Louis XV.’s intimates. Ségur served in Italy during the war of the Polish Succession under Marshal Villars, and became, in 1736, inspector general of cavalry. In 1738 he was sent to Nancy as lieutenant general under Marshal Belle-Isle, and to Bohemia in 1741 with the French troops allied with the Bavarians. But in September 1741 he was compelled by the imperial troops to surrender at Linz. In 1744 he was again sent to Bavaria, and defeated the Austrians at Lichtenau on the 28th of January 1745. He served throughout the Flemish campaigns of 1746 and 1747, and was commandant of Metz at the time of his death (18th of June 1751). His son, Philippe Henri, marquis de Ségur (1724–1801), marshal of France, his grandson, Louis Philippe, comte de Ségur (1753–1830), and Louis Philippe’s son PHILIPPE PAUL, comte de Ségur (1780–1873), are separately noticed.
Joseph Alexandre Pierre, vicomte de Ségur (1756–1805), second son of the marshal, quitted the army at the outbreak of the Revolution to devote himself to literature. He edited the Mémoires of Besenval in 1795 from the MS. which, originally in his possession, had been surreptitiously placed with the printer during Ségur’s imprisonment under the Terror. These were printed in 1804–1805. Between 1790 and 1800 he produced a number of pieces at the Comédie Française and the Opéra Comique. He published in 1802 a selection from his works entitled Comedies, chansons et proverbes, and in 1801 appeared Les Femmes, leurs mœurs . . . (3 vols.), which has often been reprinted, but is of doubtful authorship.
Octave-Henri Gabriel de Ségur (1778–1818), elder son of Louis Philippe de Ségur, served in the later Napoleonic campaigns, and remained in the army under the Restoration. He threw himself into the Seine on the 1 5th of August 1818. The domestic unhappiness that led to his suicide is retailed by the comtesse de Boigne in her Mémoires (vol. i., 1907). His elder son, EUGENE, comte de Ségur, succeeded his grandfather in the peerage in 1830. He married Sophie Rostopchine (1799–1894), daughter of Count Feodor Rostopchine, governor of Moscow. The countess of Ségur wrote some famous books for children, the most familiar of which are perhaps the Malheurs de Sophie and the Mémoires d’un âne, and many tales in the Bibliothéque rose. Her letters to her daughter and son-in-law, the count and countess de Simard de Petray, were published in 1891, and those to her grandson in 1898.
Raymond Joseph Paul, comte de Ségur d’Aguesseau (1803–1889), third son of Octave de Ségur, took his mother’s family name in addition to his own. He studied law at Aix and Paris. As procurer général of Amiens he gave in March 1830 a decision on the question of the electoral lists which pleased the liberal party, but late in the year, as substitute in the royal court of Paris, he ordered the suppression of certain liberal journals, and in other civil appointments was accused of reactionary administration. He gave his adhesion to Prince Louis Napoleon, and became a member of the consultative commission in 1851, and of the senate in 1852. After the fall of the empire he retired into private life.
Louis Gaston Adrien de Ségur (1820–1881), son of Eugene de Ségur and Sophie Rostopchine, became a prelate of the papal court, and canon-bishop of Saint-Denis. He was a champion of the ultra-montane party and wrote a number of Catholic works, collected in ten volumes (Paris, 1876–1877). His life was written by his brother Anatole, who edited two collections of his letters in 1882 and 1899.
ANATOLE HENR1 PHILIPPE DE SBGUR (1823–1902), GastonSégur s brother, became councillor of state in 1872, serving until 1879. His works include the life of his grandfather Count Rostopchine (1872), Fables (1879), Un Episode de la Terreur (1864), Paul Marie Charles Bernard (1875).
His son, PIERRE MARIE MAURICE HENR1, marquis de Ségur (b. 1853), wrote a life (1895) of the marshal de Ségur, which was crowned by the French Academy. His book on Madame Geoiirin, Le Royaume de la rue Saint-Honoré (1897), also received a prize. His principal work is the three volumes devoted to Marshal Luxemburg-La Jeunesse du maréchal de Luxembourg, 1628–1668 (1900); Le Maréchal de Luxembourg et le prince d’Orange, 1668–1678 (1902); Le T apissier de N otre-Dame. Derniéres années du maréchal de Luxembourg, 1678–1695 (1904); Julie de Lespinasse (1905); English Transl., 1907; and Au couchant do la monarchies Louis XVI et T urgot, 1774–1776 (Paris, 1910). He was elected to the French Academy in 1907. There is much general information on the family of Ségur in A. de SégurSégur s Le Maréchal de Ségur, 1724–1801 (Paris, 1895), and in L. P. de SégurSégur s Recueil de famille (1826).
SÉGUR, LOUIS PHILIPPE, Comte de (1753–1830), French diplomatist and historian, son of Philippe Henri, marquis de Ségur, was born in Paris on the 10th of December 1753. He entered the army in 1769, served in the American War of Independence in 1781 as a colonel under Rochambeau. In 1784 he was Sent as minister plenipotentiary to St Petersburg, where he was received into the intimacy of the empress Catherine II. and wrote some comedies for her theatre. At St Petersburg he concluded (II January 1787) a commercial treaty which was exceedingly advantageous to France, and returned to Paris in 1789. He took up a sympathetic attitude towards the Revolution at its outset and in 1791 was sent on a mission to Berlin, where he was badly received. After fighting a duel he was forced to leave Berlin, and went into retirement until 1801 when, at BonaparteSégur s instance, he was nominated by the senate to the Corps législatif. Subsequently he became a member of the council of state, grand master of the ceremonies, and senator, 1813. In 1814 Ségur voted for the deposition of Napoleon and entered Louis XVIII.’s Chamber of Peers. Deprived of his offices and functions in 1815 for joining Napoleon during the Hundred Days, he was reinstated in 1819, supported the revolution of 1830, but died shortly afterwards in Paris on the 27th August 1830. By his wife, Antoinette d’Aguesseau, he had two sons, of whom Count Philippe Paul is separately noticed. Among his writings may be mentioned Histoire des principaux événements du règne de Frédéric-Guillaume II (1800); Pensées politique (Paris, 1795); Histoire de France (11 vols., 1824–1834); Histoire des juifs (1827); Mémoires (3 vols., 1824); and Contes (1809). His Œuvres complètes were published in 34 volumes in 1824 et seq.
See duc de Broglie, “Deux Français aux Etats-Unis” in Mélanges publiés par la Société des Bibliophiles français (2nd part, 1903); A. Cornereau, “La Mission du comte de Ségur dans la xviiie division militaire,” in the Mémoires de la Société bourguignonne de géographie et d’histoire (vol. 17, 1901).
