Edmond Jean François Barbier (16 January 1689 – 29 January 1771) was a French

jurisconsult A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyzes and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal education in law (a law degree) and often a legal practitione ...

of the parliament and author of a historical journal of the time of

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reached maturity (then defi ...

. He was born in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Biography

Edmond Jean François Barbier was born in Paris on January 16, 1689, to a family from the Increville and Felcourt branches of Vitry le François. His father and grandfather had been lawyers at the

Parlement of Paris The ''Parlement'' of Paris () was the oldest ''parlement'' in the Kingdom of France, formed in the 14th century. Parlements were judicial, rather than legislative, bodies and were composed of magistrates. Though not representative bodies in the p ...

, and he was destined by his family to follow the same career. Admitted to the Paris Parlement on July 30 1708, Barbier, like his father, spent his entire life as a consulting lawyer at the

, and, unlike his father, does not appear to have pleaded a single case during his long career.A member of the French Parliament since 1708, he was highly regarded in his profession and spent his entire life in the center of old Paris, in the rue Galande, where he was born. His cabinet work soon brought him to the attention of some of the greatest names in the world, including M. d'Argenson and the de Nicolay family.His name was saved from oblivion by his work published under the title : Chronique de la Régence et du règne de Louis XV, ou Journal historique et anecdotique, which he wrote for himself, recording day by day what he saw and heard, without concern for style or effect. On April 27, 1718, Barbier, who had been running a business for 10 years, witnessed the fire on the

Petit Pont The Petit Pont (, ''Little Bridge''; since 2013 Petit-Pont-Cardinal-Lustiger) is an arch bridge crossing the River Seine in Paris, built in 1853, although a structure has crossed the river at this point since antiquity. The present bridge is a si ...

, linking the Left Bank to the Ile de la Cité. He mingled with the crowd of onlookers, saw the damage and was deeply impressed. For fifty-seven years, from 1718 to 1762, he kept a scrupulously accurate day-by-day account of the events of his time, unknowingly finding himself an appreciable continuator of Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon Mémoire, which end in 1723, filling a gap between them and Louis Petit de Bachaumont, which begin in 1762. He is of great interest for the history of manners in his time, as he fills his diary with little facts and news about events that are generally unimportant, but often characteristic. It is interesting to note the differences between some of the facts recounted in his chronicle and those reported in secret police gazettes. For example, on January 16, 1726, he recounts the escape of a soldier jumping from

Pont Neuf The Pont Neuf (, "New Bridge") is the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine in Paris, France. It stands by the western (downstream) point of the Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the river that was, between 250 and 225 BC, ...

into the Seine, rescued and hidden by witnesses. The police gazetin, in addition to placing the affair on the 13th, claims that he was delivered . There are others, not surprisingly, both of which actually report the murmur of the town.

Works

* ''Chronique de la régence et du règne de Louis XV (1718–1763)''

References

1689 births 1771 deaths 18th-century French historians French male non-fiction writers Writers from Paris {{france-historian-stub