Jacques Masson
Jacques Masson, seigneur de Guérigny, Frasnay, Marcy et Minières (21 January 1693 – 12 June 1741) was an 18th-century financier of Genevan origin, director general of finance for the Duchy of Lorraine, then first clerk to the Controller-General of Finances for the Kingdom of France.
Contents
Biography
Jacques Masson was born in Geneva. He came from a Dauphiné family that had become Protestant in the Republic of Geneva, and was the son of Louis-Simon Masson (1663–1734), a Geneva merchant, and Jeanne-Catherine Favon.[1][2][3] He had a sister, Jeanne-Marguerite, who married Jean-Gabriel Mallet (1688–1752) and was the mother of Paul Henri Mallet and Henri Mallet-Prevost.[4] He was baptized on January 30, 1693 at Geneva's St. Pierre Cathedral. Leaving Geneva at an early age, he travelled to Vienna, then to various German courts, where the princes of Württemberg, Deux-Ponts and Baden entrusted him with their interests. When he came to France, he abjured his Protestant faith and was baptized a Catholic on November 15, 1719, in the chapel of Sainte-Agnès in the church of Saint-Eustache in Paris. He made a rapid fortune in the financial administration of the Duchy of Lorraine, where he became wealthy in the timber trade, then in the service of the minister Jean Frédéric Phélypeaux de Maurepas, and as purchaser of the Guérigny forges in 1720.
He becomes agent for banker Antoine Pâris in Lorraine, for the exploitation of the Commercy forest. He then joined forces with Babaud to exploit the timber of the Duchy of Lorraine, in particular to supply the Navy and trade with the Boësnier-Duportal family to Holland, and expanded forestry operations to Montbéliard, Alsace, the Rhineland, etc. He acquired forges and property in Lorraine and took a stake in the large Moyeuvre forge. Acquiring the Poiseux forge in 1720, Jacques Masson bought the Guérigny forges in 1722, forming a group with the small Marcy and Poëllonnerie forges.
Leopold I of Lorraine's most trusted advisor on financial matters, the Duke of Lorraine successively appointed him State Councillor to the Finance Council in 1727, Director General of the Lorraine Regie, then Director General of Finance for Lorraine in 1729.
Following the death of the Duke of Lorraine, he entered the service of the King of France in 1731, becoming first clerk to the Controller-General of Finances Philibert Orry. He was also appointed by decree of the Council of Mines and Miners of the Kingdom of France. Duke Francis I of the Holy Roman Empire knighted him for services rendered.[5] His daughter Jacqueline Marie-Anne Masson (from his first marriage to Marie-Anne Duru, sister-in-law of François de Blumenstein) married wood merchant and forge master Pierre Babaud de La Chaussade (1706–1792), who transformed the Guérigny forges into a major metallurgical group. Between 1720 and 1754, they brought together a dozen factories in the Nivernais and Berry regions. Jacques Masson was associated with two brothers, Jean and Pierre Babaud de La Chaussade, who ran Masson's woodworking businesses in Bitche, Lorraine. Belgian technicians invited French forge masters to use the reverberatory furnace used in the Namur region. In 1728, the Royal Navy ordered wood from the forests of Lorraine and Germany for the ports of Ponant, to be shipped via the port of Rotterdam and the sea. They then took control of deliveries to Marseille and Nantes.
Jacques Masson de Guérigny died in 1741, leaving his second wife Marie Boësnier (widow of Jean Babaud and sister of economist Paul Boësnier de l'Orme[6]) an infant son, Alexandre-Frédéric-Jacques Masson de Pezay, who, thanks to the protection of Maurepas, was chosen to teach military tactics to the Dauphin, earning him the title of Maréchal général des logis of the army staff. Angélique Dorothée Babaud, daughter of Marie Boësnier's first marriage, married Marquis Dominique-Joseph de Cassini (1715–1790), Maréchal de camp and son of Jacques Cassini; among others, she was mistress to the Prince of Condé and the Count of Maillebois.
Notes
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- Bamford, Paul Walden (1988). Privilege and Profit: A Business Family in Eighteenth-Century France. University of Pennsylvania Press.
- Berthiau, Jean André (1994). "Un important fournisseur de la marine royale: Pierre Babaud de La Chaussade (1706-1792)", Bulletin de la Société nivernaise des lettres, sciences et arts.
- Conchon, Anne (2018). Le financement des infrastructures de transport XVIIe-début XIXe siècle. Institut de la gestion publique et du développement économique.
- Corbier, Claude (1870). Notice historique sur les forges impériales de la Chaussade à Guérigny (Nièvre).
- Dufort de Cheverny, Jean-Nicolas (1886). Mémoires sur les règnes de Louis XV et Louis XVI et sur la Révolution. Paris: Plon, Nourrit et Cie.
- Ortolani, Marc; Olivier Vernier (2002). "Pierre Babaud de La Chaussade, un grand chef d'entreprise métallurgique en Nivernais et sa famille." In: Le temps et le droit: journées internationales de la Société d'Histoire du Droit, mai 2000.
External links
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- ↑ La Chenaye-Aubert, François-Alexandre de (1775). Dictionnaire de la noblesse, contenant les généalogies, l'histoire et la chronologie des familles nobles de France, vol. 9.
- ↑ Desnoiresterres, Gustave (1887). Le Chevalier Dorat et les poètes légers au XVIIIe siècle. Didier.
- ↑ Bord, Gustave (1912). Études sur la queston Louis XVII. Émile-Paul.
- ↑ Galiffe, Jacques Augustin (1831). Notices généalogiques sur les familles genevoises: depuis les premiers temps, jusqu'à nos jours, vol. 2. Barbezat, p. 441.
- ↑ Pontet, Josette; Michel Figeac & Marie Boisson (2002). La Noblesse, de la fin du xvie au début du xxe siècle: un modèle social?, vol. 2. Anglet: Atantica p. 148.
- ↑ Correspondance de Madame de Graffigny. Voltaire Foundation, Taylor Institution (1985).
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