Benjamin Constant - Biography

Biography

Henri-Benjamin Constant was born in Lausanne to descendants of Huguenot Protestants, who had fled from Artois to Switzerland during the Huguenot Wars in the 16th century. His father, Samuel Constant de Rebecque, was a high-ranking officer in the Dutch States Army, like his grandfather, his uncle and his cousin Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque. When Constant's mother died soon after his birth, both his grandmothers took care of him. He was educated by private tutors in Brussels (1779), the Netherlands (1780), and at the Protestant University of Erlangen (1783), where he got appointed at the court of Duchess Sophie Caroline Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Because of an affair with a girl he had to leave, and he moved to the University of Edinburgh, where he lived at Andrew Duncan, the elder and became friends with James Mackintosh, and Malcolm Laing. In Paris, at Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard he became acquainted with Belle van Zuylen, a 26-year older Dutch woman and writer, who knew his uncle well through their correspondance. She acted as a mother until Constant got appointed at the court of Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and moved to the north.

There he married Wilhelmina von Cramm, but he divorced her in 1793. In September 1794 he met the famous and rich, but married Anne Louise Germaine de Staël. They both admired Jean Lambert Tallien and Talleyrand. Their intellectual collaboration between 1795 and 1811 made them one of the most celebrated intellectual pairs of their time.

After the Reign of Terror also Constant became a defender of bicameralism and the Parliament of Great Britain. In revolutionary France this resulted in French Constitution of 1795, the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients. In 1799, after 18 Brumaire he was appointed in the Tribunat but in 1802 he was forced to withdraw by Napoleon Bonaparte, because of his speeches and his connections with Mme de Staël, who was disappointed in French Rationalism.

In 1803 Jean Gabriel Peltier had argued that Napoleon should be killed at a time when Britain and France were at peace. James Mackintosh defended, the French refugee, against a libel suit instigated by Napoleon - then First Consul (military dictator) of France. The speech was widely published in English and also across Europe in a French translation by Madame de Staël. De Staël was forced to leave the country and became interested in connections with the German Romanticism.

Constant moved with her and the two children to Weimar where they were invited by Duchess Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel the day after their arrival. There they met with August Wilhelm Schlegel, his brother Friedrich Schlegel, and Friedrich von Schiller; at first Johann Wolfgang Goethe hesitated to meet with her. Constant got bored with Germaine because of her constant need of attention and in 1809 he secretely married a woman which had been divorced twice, Caroline von Hardenberg, (related to Novalis and Karl August von Hardenberg). He spent time in gambling in Baden-Baden or in Göttingen, and moved back to Paris in 1815, where Louis XVIII of France had been appointed as king. As a member of the Council of State Constant defended the constitutional monarchy. Constant became friends with Madame Récamier and argued with Germaine, who had asked him to pay when their daughter Albertine married Victor de Broglie. During the Hundred Days of Napoleon, who had become more liberal, Constant was invited several times at the Tuileries in order to set up changes for the Charter of 1815.

After the Battle of Waterloo Constant moved to London, but not in the company of Madame Récamier, who went south, but with his wife. In 1817, back in Paris, he sat in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower legislative house of the Restoration-era government. He was one of its most eloquent orators and a leader of the parliamentary block, first known as the Indepentants and then as "liberals." He became an opponent of Charles X of France during the Restoration between 1815 and 1830.

Constant died in Paris on 8 December 1830.