Mirabeau, Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Comte de, son of the succeeding, born at the mansion-house of Bignon; was a man of massive intellect and strong physical frame, who came to the front in the French Revolution; being expelled from his order by the noblesse of Provence, he ingratiated himself with the Third Estate, and was elected commons-deputy of Aix to the States-General in 1789, where he became, as the incarnation of the whole movement, the ruling spirit of the hour, and gave proof, if he had lived, of being able to change the whole course of the Revolution, for he was already in communication with the court and in hopes of gaining it over to accept the inevitable, when he sickened and died, to the consternation of the entire people, whose affection and confidence he had won (1749-1791). See Carlyle's “French Revolution” and his Essay in his “Miscellanies.”
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Minto, Earl of * Mirabeau, Victor Riquetti, Marquis de