Name Jean-Baptiste Marquess | ||
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Died September 2, 1746, Paris, France Parents Charles Colbert, marquis de Croissy | ||
Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquess of Torcy (September 14, 1665 – September 2, 1746), generally called Colbert de Torcy, was a French diplomat, who negotiated some of the most important treaties towards the end of Louis XIV's reign, notably the treaty (1700) that occasioned the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), in which the dying Charles II of Spain named Louis XIV's grandson, Philippe, duc d'Anjou, heir to the Spanish throne, eventually founding the line of Spanish Bourbons.
Biography
Born in Paris, the son of Charles Colbert, Louis's minister of foreign affairs and the nephew of le grand Colbert, Louis' chief advisor, for whom the Torcy title was created, Colbert de Torcy was a brilliant and precocious legal student. As a very young man, he assisted his father in sensitive diplomatic missions. Colbert de Torcy proved himself so able that in 1689, Louis XIV granted him the right to succeed to his father's position as minister of foreign affairs, a position he fulfilled from July 28, 1696 to September 23, 1715.
He was the guiding spirit of French diplomacy at the series of international conferences that resulted in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) and the Treaty of Rastatt (1714) and was concerned with professionalizing the conduct of diplomacy. He instituted an academie politique to train young professionals in the equivalent of a foreign service bureaucracy: it did not survive his retirement, but his establishment at Versailles of a centralized diplomatic archive (1710) has been a service to historians. Louis XIV was his foreign relation.
The aged king, recognizing that Colbert de Torcy had been a de facto secretary of state, named him such in his will, but when Louis died in 1715, his will was broken; the Regent, Philippe, Duke of Orleans deprived Colbert de Torcy of any political power, and he settled into a long retirement, during which he was a member of the unofficial political salon called the Entresol, which formed in the early years of Louis XV's maturity when the abbe Alary, a protege of Fleury, convened an occasional political discussion group in the entresol of his apartment in Place Vendome. There in sociable surroundings, sharing the gossip and news Colbert de Torcy debated contemporary events in a sympathetic circle and like others, doubtless read aloud and elicited comment upon the political writings.
The architect Germain Boffrand had built a series of hotels particuliers in the new district, the Faubourg Saint-Honore, and Colbert de Torcy purchased one as a semi-finished shell, 14 November 1715, which he finished as a suitable Paris residence, the hotel de Torcy (later the hotel de Beauharnais, now the German Embassy 78, rue de Lille). There his magnificent installation among his tapestries, furnishings paintings, Chinese porcelains mounted in gilt-bronze, sculptures and other works of art above all in his cabinet dore, giving onto the salon that was lit from both sides, provided him solace and comfort in a long and productive retirement, in which he completed his Memoirs pour servir a l'histoire des negotiations depuis le Traite de Riswick jusqu'a la Paix d'Utrecht, published in 1756.
Colbert de Torcy died at Paris in 1746. His official portrait was painted by Hyacinthe Rigaud. Colbert de Torcy is commemorated in the rue de Torcy, Paris XVIIIeme [1].