Jean Gilbert Victor Fialin, duc de Persigny

Jean Gilbert Victor Fialin, duc de Persigny (February 11, 1808 - January 11, 1872) was a French statesman of the Second French Empire.

Fialin was born at Saint-Germain-Lespinasse (Loire), the son of a receiver of taxes, and was educated at Limoges. He entered the cavalry school at Saumur in 1826, becoming "maréchal des logis" in the 4th Hussars two years later. The role played by his regiment in the July Revolution of 1830 was regarded as insubordination, and Fialin was dismissed from the army. He became a journalist, and in 1833 became a strong Bonapartist, assuming the title of comte de Persigny, said to be dormant in his family.

He was involved in the abortive Bonapartist coups at Strasbourg in 1836 and at Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1840. After the second, he was arrested and condemned to twenty years' imprisonment in a fortress, commuted to mild detention at Versailles. There he wrote a book to prove that the Pyramids were built to prevent the Nile from silting up. This was published in 1845 under the title, "De la destination et de l'utilité permanente des Pyramides".

During the revolution of 1848, he was arrested by the provisional government. On his release took a prominent part in securing the election of Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to the presidency. With Morny and the marshal Saint Arnaud he plotted the restoration of the empire, and was a devoted adherent of Napoleon III. He succeeded Morny as Minister of the Interior in January 1852, and later in the year became senator. He resigned in 1854, and was ambassador in London the next year, which he occupied with a short interval (1858-1859) until 1860, when he resumed the portfolio of the interior. But the growing influence of his rival Rouher provoked his resignation in 1863, when he received the title of duke.

A more dangerous enemy than Rouher was the empress Eugénie, whose marriage he had opposed and whose presence in the council chamber he deprecated in a memorandum which fell into the empress' hands. He sought in vain to see Napoleon before the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and the breach was further widened when master and servant were in exile. Persigny returned to France in 1871, and died at Nice on 11 January 1872.

A devoted, even fanatical follower of Louis-Napoleon, whose service dated back to the future Emperor's wilderness years of exile and imprisonment, Persigny always stood out among the Emperor's motley political entourage as the most passionate ideologue of Bonapartism. Hence the Emperor's famous wry comment: "The Empress is a Legitimist, Morny is an Orleanist, Prince Napoleon is a Republican, and I myself am a Socialist. There is only one Bonapartist, Persigny - and he is mad!"

References

*1911
*See "Mémoires du duc de Persigny" (2nd ed., 1896), edited by H de Laire d'Espagny, his former secretary; a eulogistic life, "Le Duc de Persigny" (1865), by Delaroa; and Emile Ollivier's "Empire liberal" (1895).