Name Louis-Georges Brequigny | ||
Louis-Georges-Oudard-Feudrix de Brequigny (22 February 1714 – 3 July 1795), French scholar, was born at Granville, Manche in Normandy.
His first publications were anonymous: an Histoire des revolutions de Genes jusqu'a la paix de 1748 (750), and a series of Vies des orateurs grecs (1752). Elected a member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres in 1759, he contributed an Histoire de Posthume empereur des Gaules (vol. XXX., 1760) to the collected works of that illustrious society, and also a Memoire sur l'etablissement de la religion et de l'empire de Mahomet (vol. XXXii., 1761–1763).
After the close of the Seven Years' War he was sent to search in the archives of England for documents bearing upon the history of France, more particularly upon that of the French provinces which once belonged to England. This mission (1764–1766) was very fruitful in results; Brequigny brought back from it copies of about 7000 documents, which are now in the Bibliotheque Nationale. A useful selection of these documents was published (unfortunately without adequate critical treatment) by Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac, under the title Lettres de rois, reines et autres personages des cours de France et d'Angleterre, depuis Louis VII. jusqu'a Henri IV., tires des archives de Londres par Brequigny (collection of Documents inedits relatifs a l'histoire de France, 2 vols., 1839, 1847).
Brequigny himself drew the material for many important studies from the rich mine which he had thus exploited. These were included in the collection of the Academie des Inscriptions:
This last was read to the Academy on 22 January 1793, the morrow of Louis XVI's execution. Meanwhile, Brequigny had taken part in three great and erudite works.
To the Table chronologique des diplomes, chartes, lettres, et actes imprirns concernant l'histoire de France he contributed three volumes in collaboration with Mouchet (1769–1783). Charged with the supervision of a large collection of documents bearing on French history, analogous to Rymer's Foedera, he published the first volume (Diplomat ad Chartae, etc., 1791). The Revolution interrupted him in his collection of Memoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences, les lettres, et les arts des Chinois, begun in 1776 at the instance of the minister Bertin, when fifteen volumes had appeared.
See the note on Brequigny at the end of vol. i. of the Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions (1808); the Introduction to vol. iv. of the Table chronologique des diplomes (1836); Champollion-Figeac's preface to the Lettres des rois et reines; the Comite des travaux historiques, by X Charmes, vol. i. passim; N Oursel, Nouvelle biographie normande (1886); and the Catalogue des manuscrits des collections Duchesne et Brequigny (in the Bibliotheque Nationale), by Rene Poupardin (1905).