Francois Anguste Marie Mignet, a French historian, born in Aix, May 8, 1796. He was educated at Avignon, and in 1818 was called to the bar. In 1820 he obtained a prize offered by the academy of Nimes for an essay on Charles VII. The acquisition in 1821 of a more important prize proposed by the academy of inscriptions and belles-lettres, for a dissertation on the state of the government and legislation of France during the age of Louis IX., induced him to abandon law for literature, and he removed to Paris. His liberal political views recommended him to the editor of the Gourrier Francais, to the staff of which he was attached for more than ten years; and about the same time he began a course of historical lectures at the Athenge which gained him a considerable reputation. In 1824 appeared his first important publication, Histoire de la revolution frangaise de 1789 d 1814 (2 vols. 8vo), frequently reprinted in France, and translated into the principal European languages. In 1830 he was associated with Thiers and Armand Carrel in the establishment of the National newspaper, and, having cooperated in the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty, was appointed by Thiers upon his accession to office councillor of state and director of the archives in the ministry of foreign affairs.

In 1832 he was elected a member of the academy of moral and political sciences, of which in 1837 he became the perpetual secretary; and in the same year he was admitted to the French academy. His political views were so distasteful to the government of Lamartine in 1848, that he was removed from his offices of director of the foreign archives and of councillor of state. Among his most important works are a series of documents entitled Negotiations relatives d la succession d'Espagne sous Louis XIV., with an introduction (4 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1836-42), constituting a complete history of the reign of Louis XIV.; Antonio Perez et Philippe II. (8vo, 1845); Vie de Franklin (1848); Histoire de Marie Stuart (2 vols. 8vo, 1851); and Charles Quint, son abdication, son sejour et sa mort au monastere de Yuste (1854). In 1843 he published several biographical papers under the title of Notices et memoires historiques (2 vols. 8vo); and he has since published Eloges historiques (8vo, 1863). In December, 1874, he submitted to the academy his Notice historique de la vie et des ceurres du due de Broglie, who died in 1870. For many years he has been engaged upon a history of the reformation.