Mesere, Francois Ed de

Francois Ed de Mesere (1610-1683) - French historian, historiographer.

Francois Ed de Meseret
fr. François Eudes, sieur de Mézeray
Aliases	Sandricour
Date of Birth	1610 ( 1610 )
Place of Birth	Ri (Orne)
Date of death	July 10, 1683 ( 1683-07-10 )
A place of death	Paris
Citizenship	France
Occupation	,
Language of Works	French

The son of a doctor, Ed, only later adopted the surname Mesere. Having received a brilliant education, he came to Paris to seek happiness and found a patron in the person of Vauquelin Desiveto, the former mentor of Louis XIII , who had procured him the place of military commissar.

A few years later, Meseret left this lucrative position and conceived an extensive work on the history of France, decorating it with portraits of the kings from the France métallique Jacques de Vieux and supplying with additions to Academic Baudouin (a short list of remarkable deeds and a characterization of each French king).

The first volume of Histoire de France (1640), which speaks of the origin of French nationality, is full of major flaws. The mere fact that Meseret did not use Latin sources significantly harms the historical value of his work. At the same time, the book was extremely successful: the author was considered the greatest historian of France, Richelieu appointed him a pension.

To continue the history of Mesere, all archives were opened. The second volume was published in 1646, the third in 1651. In 1649, the Academy accepted it among its members. "Histoire de France" - the most capital work of Mesere; she is not without well-known external virtues (style, witty characteristics, etc.).

Adjacent to the Fronde , Mesere released, under the name Sandricour, a mass of pamphlets and mazarinad: “Procès du cardinal Mazarin, tire de greffe de la cour”, “Préparatifs de la descente du cardinal Mazarin aux enfers”, “Ruine des Mazarins, antimazarins et amphibies” , "Tres-humbles remontrances des trois Etats, présentée à Sa Majesté pour la convocation des états généraux", "Sentiments de la France sur l'éloignement du cardinal Mazasarin" and others.

Later, Meseret decided to make an abbreviation of his Histoire de France, with a synoptic review of the history of other peoples. In fact, he wrote a new book based on the same materials that he had collected for Hisioire de France. The Abrégé de l'histoire de France was a huge success. Its first edition was published in 1668 and was immediately translated into English and German.

In this new work of Mesere, you can find quite a few inaccuracies. The spirit of opposition to the financial regime of that time is remarkable in it, for which Mesere was deprived of Kolber's pension. In response, Mesere wrote, but did not publish, the Histoire de la maltôte.

Mesere played a prominent role in French historiography. Despite all the successes made by historical science, the book of Meseret, as a living monument of the XVII century. retains its interest. Mesere's literary legacy went to the National Library, which contains many of his manuscripts including Anecdotes and a notebook entitled: Pensées d'un solitaire sur la cause et la fin des choses. A statue by Leharivel-Durocher was erected on the square in Caen.