GUIZOT, FRANÇOIS-PIERRE-GUILLAUME. — French politician, born on 4 October 1787 in Nîmes, died on 12 October 1874 at Val-Richer (Calvados). A Calvinist and the son of a lawyer executed during the Revolution, he spent his childhood, together with his mother, in Geneva, devoting himself to the study of German, English, and Italian literature, the classical languages, and the exact sciences. Having subsequently gone to Paris, he became tutor in the household of the former Swiss minister to the French government, Stapfer, and in 1812 married Pauline de Meulan; through his wife’s connections with the royalist party, this marriage later opened the way to his political career.
Professor of modern history at the faculty of letters (1812), two years later he became secretary-general of the Ministry of the Interior and played an important role in preparing the press law of 23 October 1814. During the Hundred Days he took refuge in Ghent and, with the second Restoration, became secretary-general at the Ministry of Justice, remaining there until 1816. An advocate of a strictly constitutional policy, opposed both to the reactionaries and to the liberals, he moved decisively into opposition to the actions of the absolutist ministries. Thus removed from active politics, he published a series of historical works, some programmatic in character, others rather broadly cultural. After the fall of the Bourbons (1830), he became a deputy and remained one continuously until 1848. Minister of Public Instruction from 1832 to 1837, he prepared the law on primary education (1833), which formed the basis of the subsequent French educational system. Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1840, in 1845 he sent Pellegrino Rossi to Rome to negotiate with the Holy See an agreement concerning the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, and until the fall of the July Monarchy remained the true director of French policy. Opposed to any reform of the electoral law, which, in his view, would have disrupted the balance of internal forces, G. brought about, through his obstinacy, the Parisian revolution of February 1848, which forced him to take refuge in England. He returned to France the following year but took no further part in political life. In 1862, while presiding over a meeting of a Protestant society, he spoke in favor of maintaining the Pope’s temporal power and against French intervention in Italy. Although not a Catholic, he maintained the necessity of a close alliance between the civil authority and the clergy in order to confront the country’s moral and political crisis.
Among his works are: Hist. de la révolution d'Angleterre (2 vols., Paris 1826–27); Hist. de la République d'Angleterre et d'Olivier Cronwell (ibid. 1854); Hist. du protectorat de Richard Cronwell et du rétablissement des Stuarts (ibid. 1856); Hist. générale de la civilisation en Europe (5th ed., ibid. 1845); Hist. de la civilisation en France (5th ed., ibid. 1845); Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de mon temps, 9 vols. (ibid. 1858–68).