page_title: Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens / Career
caption_attribution_description: Sultan Ahmed III receives French ambassador Vicomte d'Andrezel at Topkapı Palace
context_page_description: Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens was a French rationalist, author and critic of the Catholic church, who was a close friend of Voltaire and spent much of his life in exile at the court of Frederick the Great.
context_section_description: While several generations of the de Boyer family held the position of Procureur général, they also had a background in the arts. Jean-Baptiste's great-uncle was the poet and dramatist Abbe Claude de Boyer (1618-1698), while his grandfather, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer (1640-1709), owned a famous art collection, with works by Titian, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Van Dyck, Poussin, Rubens and Corregio.
  In 1719, his father reluctantly purchased Jean-Baptiste a commission in the Régiment de Toulouse, based in Strasbourg. Pierre-Jean de Boyer was made 'Marquis d'Argens' in 1722 and since eldest sons were permitted to use the same title, Jean-Baptiste was also known as Marquis d'Argens. In 1722, he eloped with an actress and fled to Spain, before being taken back to France under military escort. One of his warders was Vicomte d'Andrezel, shortly to become French ambassador in Constantinople; he persuaded Pierre-Jean de Boyer to allow his son to accompany him and they left Toulon at the end of 1723.
  D'Argens returned to France in 1724, where he spent the next few years obediently studying law and even acting in a number of legal cases. The 1731 Cadière witchcraft trial appears to have been the point at which he rejected a legal career, while confirming his opposition to the Catholic Church and the Jesuits in particular. He rejoined the army in 1733 during the War of the Polish Succession, serving in the same regiment as his younger brother Luc de Boyer (1713-1772). Wounded at Kehl, he was badly injured in a fall from his horse in 1734, which ended his military career.
  He was now formally disinherited and moved to the Netherlands, where he began his career as a writer, publishing Mémoires de Monsieur le Marquis D'Argens in 1735. This was followed by Lettres juives, issued in six volumes between 1736-1740; employing the format used by Montesquieu in his 1721 work, Persian Letters, this was an immediate success but provoked criticism from Catholic writers such as de La Martinière. After spells in Port Mahón, Menorca and Stuttgart, in 1742 he accepted an offer from Frederick the Great as Royal Chamberlain in Berlin, where he spent most of his career. He was also appointed Director of the Belles-Lettres section of the Prussian Academy of Arts and of the Berlin State Opera; it was while visiting Paris to recruit performers that he met Babette Cochois, whom he married in 1749.
  After his brothers Luc and Alexandre intervened with their father, d'Argens was reconciled with his family in 1738 and thereafter paid an allowance of £5,000 per annum, a considerable sum at the time; he was also allowed to use the family home in Provence, where he often spent the winter months. In 1763, Alexandre, who succeeded their father as Marquis d'Éguilles in 1757, was banished from France and joined his brother in Berlin; as Voltaire observed, one brother was exiled for opposing the Jesuits, the other for supporting them. After returning to France in 1768, Alexandre offered to reverse the 1734 legal order disinheriting his brother, an offer that was refused. D'Argens left Berlin for the last time in 1769 and returned to Provence; he died on 11 January 1771 while visiting his sister at the Château de La Garde near Toulon.
caption: Vicomte d'Andrezel, presenting his credentials as Ambassador to Sultan Ahmed III, October 1724
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