Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes (1721–1794); French statesman, lawyer and defender of King Louis XVI
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Guillaume de Lamoignon de Blancmesnil (1683—1772); seigneur de Blancmesnil et de Malesherbes; father of Guillame-Chrétien, politician and statesman
They perfected their studies in Paris and there met the most famous scholars of the era : Laplace, Jussieu, d'Alembert, the Monge brothers, Volney, Malesherbes, and Condorcet, secretary of the Académie des sciences.
He was brought into the ministry by his patron Maurepas following the ascension of Louis XVI and the dissolution of the Maupeou ministry, taking office alongside Turgot and Malesherbes.
Malesherbes himself was a keen botanist, but in the same year (1775) he was forced out of office because he published a scheme to reform the tax system.
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This was a court which dealt with tax offences, but under its president Malesherbes it became perhaps the only French government institution to protect ordinary citizens against a corrupt state.
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Certainly his former patron, Malesherbes, went to the guillotine.
Undergraduate students in their first and second years of study in French literature, French language, Latin, Ancient Greek and Musicology take their classes at the Malesherbes center.
Maupeou and Terray were replaced, 24 August 1774, by Miromesnil and then by Malesherbes, recalled from his exile in 1775 to be Secretary of State of the Maison du Roi, and by the economist Turgot.