Jean-Joseph de Laborde


Jean-Joseph, marquis de Laborde was a French businessman, fermier général and banker to the king, who turned politician. A liberal, he was guillotined in the French Revolution.

Biography

Laborde was born near Jaca in Aragon, into a modest béarnaise family. When he reached adolescence he joined his uncle, who was head of a maritime import–export company at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and took over as head of the business on the cousin's death. He based his subsequent fortune not only on this company, but also on transatlantic trade and his sugar plantations on Saint-Domingue.
His rapid rise, comparable to that of several bourgeois men of the age of Enlightenment, gained him promotion to noble rank and allowed him to acquire several estates. He became fermier général on the suggestion of his friend the duc de Choiseul. He took up residence in the château de La Ferté-Vidame in 1764, the fief bringing with it the ancient title of Vidame de Chartres. He rebuilt it in the neoclassical style which now remains as a shell, and commissioned several artists. However, following a game of musical chairs, he lost it in 1784 to the duc de Penthièvre, who had himself lost his domaine de Rambouillet to king Louis XV, who coveted its "terres giboyeuses" or wooded hunting lands. Laborde was named marquis and in 1784 acquired the Château de Méréville, rebuilding it to his taste.
In politics, he was ahead of his time and of the French Revolution, and was one of the only noble députés to accept demotion to the Third Estate upon the Revolution. However, this was not enough to save him from being guillotined in Paris under the "loi des suspects" on the orders of Louis de Saint-Just, in one of the last fits of the Reign of Terror in May 1794. In 1792 much of the fabulous Orleans Collection of paintings was briefly his, before he was forced by events to abandon his ambition to exhibit them in his Paris house, and sold them.

Descendants