Matthieu de Lesseps

Mathieu Maximilien Prosper Comte de Lesseps (4 March 1771—28 December 1832) was a French diplomat and high ranking public official who served, from 1797 until his death, in numerous foreign and domestic posts. One of his sons, Ferdinand de Lesseps, was the developer and guiding spirit in charge of the construction of the Suez Canal.

Born in the German city of Hamburg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire, young Mathieu, the son of diplomat Martin de Lesseps (1730–1807) and his wife Anna Caysergues (1730–1823), spent his childhood there, and then in the capital of the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg, where his father was the French Consul General. The third of three children, Mathieu had a brother, Barthélemy de Lesseps (1766–1834), who became a renowned diplomat, writer and participant in the famous, though ultimately ill-fated, 1785–88 scientific expedition of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse. Their sister, Lise (1769–1840), was married in 1788 to Louis Maurice Taupin de Magnitot (1757–1823).

Mathieu de Lesseps entered government service in late 1797 at the start of the Second Directory, following the Coup of 18 Fructidor. On 21 May 1801, during the early period of his career, two years after Napoleon's ascent as First Consul, he married, in the Spanish port city of Málaga, Catherine de Grevigné y Gallegos (1730–1823), grandaunt of Eugénie de Montijo who, in 1853, would become Empress, as the wife of French Emperor Napoleon III.

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