French diplomatist and writer, born in Paris on the 16th of December 1716, son of Philippe Jules François, duc de Nevers, and Maria Anne Spinola, and great-nephew of Cardinal Mazarin. He was educated at the College Louis le Grand, and married at the age of fourteen. He served in the campaigns in Italy (1733) and Bohemia (1740), but had to give up soldiering on account of his weak health. He was subsequently ambassador at Rome (1748–1752), Berlin (1755–1756) and London, where he negotiated the treaty of Paris (Feb. 10, 1763). From 1787 to 1789 he was a member of the Council of State. He did not emigrate during the Revolution, but lost all his money and was imprisoned in 1793. He recovered his liberty after the fall of Robespierre, and died in Paris on the 25th of February 1798. In 1743 he was elected to the Academy for a poem entitled Délie, and from 1763 he devoted the greater part of his time to the administration of the duchy of Nevers and to belles-lettres. He wrote much and with great facility; but his writings are of little value, his Fables being his best productions. His Œuvres complètes were published in Paris in 1796; an edition of his Œuvres posthumes was brought out in Paris by François de Neufchâteau in 1807, and his Correspondance secrète was published in Paris by de Lescure in 1866.
See L. Perey (pseud. for Mlle. Luce Herpin), Un Petit-Neveu de Mazarin (Paris, 1890); La Fin du XVIIIe siècle: le duc de Nivernais (Paris, 1891), by the, same writer; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi (vol. xiii.); Dupin, Éloge du duc de Nivernais (1840); Abbé Blampignon, Le Duc de Nivernais, d’après sa correspondance inédite (1888).
