1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Moreau de Saint Méry, Médéric Louis Élie

MOREAU DE SAINT MÉRY, MÉDÉRIC LOUIS ÉLIE (1750–1819), French politician, was born at Fort de France, in the island of Martinique, on the 28th of January 1750. He came to Paris at the age of nineteen, and became an avocat at the parlement of Paris. He subsequently returned to Martinique to practise law, and in 1780 was appointed member of the colonial council of San Domingo. Returning to Paris in 1784, he received a commission to study the legislation of the French colonies, and published Lois et constitutions des colonies françaises de l’Amérique sous le Vent de 1550 à 1785. In 1789 he was president of the assembly of the electors of Paris, played an active part in the early days of the Revolution, and was designated by Martinique deputy to the Constituent Assembly. His moderate ideas were the occasion of his arrest after the 10th of August 1792, but he contrived to escape to the United States, opened a bookseller’s shop at Philadelphia, and published Déscription topographique et politique de la partie espagnole et de la partie française de l’Île de Saint-Domingue (1796–1798). Returning to France in 1799, he became historiographer to the navy and councillor of state, and drafted in part the colonial and maritime code. In 1802 he was appointed by the First Consul administrator of the duchies of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, but was dismissed in 1806 for slackness in repressing insubordination. From that date until his death he lived on a pension paid him by the Empress Josephine, who was a kinswoman of his.

See Fournier-Tescay, Discours prononcé aux obsèques de Moreau le 30 Janvier 1819; Silvestre, Notice sur Moreau (Paris, 1819).