10 Facts About Nicolas Beaujon

Nicolas Beaujon was a wealthy French banker at the court of King Louis XV.

The portrait of Nicolas Beaujon seen here was painted by Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun in 1784.

Once established in the capital, Nicolas Beaujon rapidly emerged as one of the richest men in France, playing a crucial role in the financing of the government of Louis XV, in particular by lending enormous sums during the Seven Years' War, which enabled the French Navy, bankrupt as was the rest of the government, to continue to function.

Nicolas Beaujon employed the architect Etienne-Louis Boullee to make substantial alterations to the buildings and to design an English-style garden.

Nicolas Beaujon owned it until the year of his death, when he transferred the property to King Louis XVI.

At times Nicolas Beaujon would have them all together in his central apartment to amuse him of an evening with their brilliant conversation and other charms.

Nicolas Beaujon did, according to some historians, have an illegitimate daughter, Adelaide de Prael de Surville, who took her name from the man Beaujon arranged for her mother, Louise Dalisse, a famous dancer at the Comedie-Francaise under the name of "Chevrier", his mistress, to marry in order to lend a patina of decency to the whole affair.

Nicolas Beaujon went on to marry Jean Frederic Perregaux, the first president of the Banque de France which he helped to create under Napoleon.

In 1784 Nicolas Beaujon founded, on his grounds, the Hopital Nicolas Beaujon, originally intended for poor orphans, becoming a general hospital during the Revolution, in 1795, and which continues in operation today.

Nicolas Beaujon died in Paris in late 1786 of a hemiplegia and was honoured with a huge funeral pomp culminating with the deposition of his remains in a magnificent tomb in the chapel of St Nicholas of Roule, which had been founded by him and built by his architect Girardin.