Avaux, Jean-Antoine de Mesmes

Avaux, Jean-Antoine de Mesmes (1640–1709), Comte d'Avaux , French ambassador to the Jacobite court in Ireland, was born into a noble Béarnais family. He became the most skilled French diplomat of his day, acting as Louis XIV's plenipotentiary at Nijmegen in 1675–8, and then as his ambassador to the Netherlands, a post he left only at the outbreak of war in November 1688. From The Hague he had in vain warned James II (qv) of the threat to his throne posed by William of Orange (qv). Appointed ambassador extraordinary to James II and given a purse of 500,000 livres, he accompanied him to Ireland from his exile in France, landing at Kinsale on 12 March 1689 (OS).

During the next thirteen months d'Avaux was ‘more of a commissar than an ambassador’ and ‘played an active part in the administration’ (Simms). He was at loggerheads with James, criticising him for his lack of purpose in Ireland (other than the regaining of his English throne) and for his hostility to the legislative changes made by his Irish parliament. He left Cork for France on 8 April 1690 (OS), accompanied by five Irish regiments he had recruited for exchange with French regiments for service in Ireland. He died in Paris on 10 February 1709. The Comte d'Avaux's correspondence with the French court, privately printed about 1845 and published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission in 1934, shows him to have been accurate in his assessment of the Irish political situation and to have given sound advice to both Louis and James.