page_title: Joseph Pellerin
section_title: Youth and career
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Pellerin / Youth and career
context_page_description: Joseph Pellerin was a French Intendant-General of the Navy, first Commissioner of the Navy as well as a celebrated numismatic pioneer.
  Pellerin was born at Marly, near Versailles 27 April 1684 and died 2 August 1783 at his château of Plainville in Picardy.
context_section_description: In his youth his principal studies were in the modern and classical languages, which included French, English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Syriac as well as others, and it was to his precocious expertise in these that he owed his admission to the offices of the Ministry of the Marine (as the Navy was called in France) in 1706, where he became employed in correspondence. Having in 1709 succeeded (despite the previous failure of trained cryptographers) to decipher some coded letters seized from a Spanish frigate concerning the Archduke Charles of Austria (one of the pretenders to the Spanish throne, the other being Louis XIV's nephew the Duke of Anjou; this being the cause of the ongoing Wars of the Spanish Succession), by this astonishing feat he caught the attention of then Naval Minister Pontchartrain who named him cabinet secretary.
  He enjoyed similar favour in the succeeding ministries: under Louis XIV's legitimated son the Count of Toulouse he was named Commissioner of the Navy in 1718, and Maurepas elevated him to General Commissioner, and then First Commissioner. His detailed plans for the invasion of Britain to restore Bonnie Prince Charlie to the throne (and thus occupy British forces which were greatly hampering French colonial affairs), though supported by Maurepas went unexecuted by Louis XV (whether out of disregard, pique against Maurepas, personally, or for another reason remains in debate). They may be consulted in the Maurepas Papers at Cornell University.
  After a very successful career he sought an early retirement in 1745 citing health problems due to overwork. In fact he remained on as a greatly valued expert consultant for several years afterwards, his positions having gradually been formally assumed by his son Joseph Jr., who received letters-patent of nobility in recognition of two generations' of his family's service to the crown in 1740.
caption: Pellerin surrounded by some of his coins
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2006:06:19 17:28:29", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9612", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "399", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "500"}