Joseph-Alexandre-Jacques Durant de Mareuil

Joseph-Alexandre-Jacques Durant de Mareuil served successive French regimes through the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and the Bourbon Restoration. Born in Paris in 1769, he entered diplomacy at Stuttgart and Copenhagen, worked in the ministry’s political division, and became minister at Dresden, Stuttgart, and Naples. His Naples mission ended during the collapse of Napoleon’s alliance with Joachim Murat in 1814. He subsequently represented Épernay during the Hundred Days and became a councillor of state. ¹

After representing France in the Netherlands, he was sent to Washington. In March 1827, Mareuil protested duties levied at Savannah on the Ville du Havre, Sully, and Eugénie, which had carried French produce through Martinique. He argued that touching a French colonial port should not remove the protection of the 1822 commercial convention. Clay replied that President John Quincy Adams agreed: the duties would be refunded and customs officers instructed against repeating the charge. ²

His later assignments included Portugal and temporary leadership of the London embassy during Talleyrand’s absence, when he signed protocols concerning Belgium. Appointed a peer in 1832, he again became ambassador to Naples before retiring to Champagne. He died in 1855. The French diplomatic archives preserve his official and family correspondence and memoirs written in 1819 and 1838, alongside papers of his diplomat son Jean-Joseph. ^{1, 3}