Antoine Galiot Mandat de Grancey

Heraldic arms

Azure, with a lion or; au chef d'argent, chargé d'une hure de sanglier de sable, défendue d'argent, accostée de deux roses de gueules.

History

The family had formerly been a noble family in the Limousin, attested since 1339. Galiot Mandat, lord of Aigrefoin, was received as king's secretary for provisions on 31 October 1572 on the resignation of Louis Guybert and his father. Its descendents were in two branches, of which the elder died out when Antoine-Galiot Mandat, conseiller to the parlement de Metz by letters dated May 1640, received as conseiller to the parlement de Paris on 14 July 1649, died unmarried and without issue. The other branch, known as the barons of Nully (in Champagne), has continued until our days and distinguish itself for many generations by its devotion to the monarchy.

Antoine Galiot Mandat was the son of Galiot V Mandat (1683–1755), Maître des Requêtes ordinaire de l'Hôtel du Roi, received to the Grand Conseil on 6 March 1720. His mother, Marie Anne Cherouvrier des Grassières, was sister-in-law to marquis Louis-Urbain-Aubert de Tourny, Intendant of the Généralité de Limoges. The king confirmed his father in the land and seigneurie of Les Pins, in the north east of Touraine on 13 June 1727.

Before 1789

He was baptised at Église Saint-Sulpice. He served in the First Company of Musketeers of the Garde ordinaire du Roi from 26 November 1753 to 2 March 1755, as enseigne à drapeau to the regiment of the Gardes-Françaises (1755–57), then as Enseigne à Pique (from 5 June 1757) and sous-lieutenant (23 December 1759) in the same regiment.

Antoine Galiot Mandat married Angélique Simone Boucher, daughter of a conseiller to the Parlement de Paris on 21 January 1758. They had two children – Alexandre, ensign to the regiment of the Gardes-Françaises, and a daughter married to a conseiller to the Parlement de Paris. Antoine's father split his fortune between his children on his death on 6 April 1762.

In 1789, he left the Gardes-Françaises, at the rank of captain or colonel retiré du service, according to La Chenaye-Desbois. He was also a knight of the ordre royal et militaire de Saint-Louis. He tried in vain to become a gentleman of the court, but had to renounce his place despite his annual rent of 180,000 francs.

In the pre-revolutionary period Marquis Antoine-Jean-Galiot de Mandat was loved by everyone in Les Pins, in the north east of Touraine, even by those who would soon lead Revolutionary efforts in the area. He is known in history as "a noble who embraced the revolutionary party" and thus his behaviour corresponded to that of his neighbours and peasants.

After 1789

In 1789 Antoine Galliot Mandat was aged 58. He was head of the 4th Legion of the National Guard. He lived at rue Chapon, n° 3. Brave and loyal to his oath to defend the inviolability of the head of state and the head of state's house, he supported the new ideas but remained highly devoted to Louis XVI. He inspired great confidence in the royal court (in the words of Adolphe Thiers "to the cause by his energy and his lights". His remarks leave no doubt as to his fidelity to the king:

His ideas favouring a constitutional monarchy arose from those close to the king. Madame Campan, whose father was a friend of Mandat, answered Louis XVI's question "Who is this Mandat who at this moment commands the National Guard?" by saying "Sire, he is the most faithful of your subjects, but with much loyalty and very little intelligence. He is in the interests of the Constitution.". The National Guard's attitude in 1792 was less loyal than Mandat's, though it varied from battalion to battalion:

Guy de Rambaud also wrote that "the bataillon des Filles-Saint-Thomas, bataillon des Petits-Pères, bataillon de Henri IV and bataillon des Grands Augustins, protected us from brigands and rebels".

Antoine Galiot Mandat "always offered his head as a guarantee of the king's good intentions", but after the flight to Varennes and due to revolutionary propaganda he could no longer succeed in convincing all the national guards. The battalions of the Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau faubourgs were openly hostile to him from 1789 onwards and in the other battalions the poorest guards were favourable to Jacobin ideas.

Mandat replaces La Fayette

He replaced La Fayette shortly before 10 August 1792 as commander in chief of the National Guard. La Fayette had been impeached as a victim of false rumours as to his conduct and impeached. This proposition, backed by Brissot and heatedly fought by Vincent-Marie Viénot de Vaublanc and Quatremère de Quincy, was repulsed by a majority of 406 votes against 224.

Because of the vote, the deputies who had provoked him were assaulted, beaten and threatened with death after the session had ended, until the National Guard came to their rescue. According to Hippolyte Taine: As to de Vaublanc, the main defender of La Fayette, he was attacked three times, had taken the precaution not to go home but angry mobs showed up at his house, shouting that "four eighty people will perish at their hands, and he would be first." Twelve men who had climbed to into his apartment and rummaged around also ransacked nearby houses, and, unable to catch himself, looked for his family; they warned that if he returned to his home, he would be killed. La Fayette tendered his resignation. The assault on the Tuileries was set for 10 August. The people of Marseille were given gunpowder and bullets by the municipality – a fact known to the court.

Mandat, whose side was outnumbered, intended to defend the courts by posting some Swiss and grenadiers. He even amassed the National Guard in the garden and placed cannons on Pont Neuf and St. John's Arcade, behind the Hôtel de Ville, to stop the rioters' descent from the suburbs.

After his death

The sumptuous hôtel du Président Duret, 67 rue de Lille, belonged to him in 1792 and remained in his son's ownership until 1797 despite Galiot Mandat's assassination.