VAUDREUIL (Joseph Hyacinthe François-de-Paule de Rigaud, comte de).

L.S., Versailles, October 30, 1786, 1 p. in-8 addressed to MOREAU de SAINT MERY: ""I have the honor, Sir, to send you the letter I have just received from M. de Calonne. The funds destined to the people of letters being exhausted, it is not possible, for this year, to grant you the 6000 livres in gratuity [...]". Joseph-Hyacinthe-François de Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil (born in Saint-Domingue on March 2, 1740 and died in Paris at the Louvre Palace on January 17, 1817) was a French courtier. Lieutenant-General, Grand Fauconnier of France, Knight of the King's Orders, Peer of France, Governor of the Louvre, free member of the Academy of Fine Arts, he is known to have been the friend of the Count of Artois, as well as the possible lover of the close friend of the Duchess Gabrielle de Polignac and of the portraitist Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Son of Joseph-Hyacinte de Rigaud, Count of Vaudreuil, governor of the French part of the island of Saint-Domingue from 1753 to 1757, he fought in the Seven Years' War as aide-de-camp to the Prince of Soubise, and as a senior officer of the gendarmerie. He then reached the rank of lieutenant general, was appointed grand falconer of France, and was very successful at the court. Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry (born January 13, 1750 in Fort-Royal, Martinique, and died January 28, 1819 in Paris) was a jurist, politician, slaveholder and historian of the colony of Saint-Domingue. A Creole settler, scholar, and slave owner, Moreau de Saint-Méry was also an actor in the French Revolution, as much involved in the anti-absolutist revolutionary process in Paris in 1789 as in the colonial slave and segregationist reaction.