Maistre, Joseph Marie, comte de (1754–1821)

French publicist and philosopher. The founder of ultramontanism and an inveterate enemy of revolutionary ideas, he scourged without mercy or discrimination the ‘irreligious doctrines of the 18th century’. He gained a worldwide reputation with his book Considérations sur la France (1797).

He was born in Chambéry. In 1793, on the approach of the republican armies, he fled with the king of Sardinia. A year later he returned to Chambéry, but was then forced to leave Savoy. He settled at Lausanne, where he published his Lettres d'un royaliste savoisien à ses compatriotes and the Adresse de quelques parents des militaires savoisiens à la nation française.In 1803 the king of Sardinia sent him as minister-plenipotentiary to St Petersburg. Here he published a number of works, notably Examen de la philosophie de Bacon (1817), Du Pape (1819), De l'eglise gallicane (1821), and Soirées de St Petersbourg (1821).