GUIZOT, FRANÇOIS-PIERRE-GUILLAUME. - French statesman, b. 4 Oct. 1787 at Nîmes, d. 12 Oct. 1874 at Val-Richer (Calvados). A Calvinist, son of a lawyer executed during the Revolution, he spent his childhood in Geneva with his mother, devoting himself to the study of German, English and Italian literatures, classical languages and the exact sciences. Later moving to Paris, he worked as a tutor in the household of the former Swiss minister to the French government, Stapfer, and in 1812 married Pauline de Meulan, a marriage which, through his wife’s connections with the regalist party, later opened the way to his political career.
Professor of modern history at the faculty of letters (1812), he became two years later Under-Secretary of the Interior and played an important part in drafting the press law of 23 Oct. 1814. During the Hundred Days he took refuge in Ghent, and after the Second Restoration served as Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Justice until 1816. A staunch constitutionalist, opposed alike to reactionaries and liberals, he moved decisively into opposition against the absolutist ministries. Excluded from active politics, he published a series of historical works, some programmatic in character, others more broadly cultural. After the fall of the Bourbons (1830), he was elected deputy and remained continuously in office until 1848. Minister of Public Instruction from 1832 to 1837, he drafted the primary education law (1833), which laid the foundation for France’s subsequent school system. Foreign Minister in 1840, in 1845 he sent Pellegrino Rossi to Rome to negotiate with the Holy See an arrangement regarding the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, and until the fall of the July Monarchy he remained the true director of French policy. Opposed to any reform of the electoral law, which he believed would upset the balance of internal forces, Guizot’s intransigence precipitated the Paris revolution of February 1848, forcing him to flee to England. He returned to France the following year but took no further part in political life. In 1862, presiding at a meeting of a Protestant society, he spoke in favour of maintaining the Pope’s temporal power and against French intervention in Italy. Though not himself a Catholic, he upheld the need for close alliance between civil authority and the clergy to meet the moral and political crisis of the nation.
Among his works are: Hist. de la révolution d'Angleterre (2 vols., Paris 1826–27); Hist. de la République d'Angleterre et d'Olivier Cromwell (ibid. 1854); Hist. du protectorat de Richard Cromwell et du rétablissement des Sûretés (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).