Laurent Angliviel de La Beaumelle (1728–1773)

La Beaumelle was a major figure in the 18th-century world of letters and a great admirer of Montesquieu. He went to Geneva to study Protestant theology and later to Denmark, where his career flourished. He advocated religious tolerance and served as a means of cultural exchange between Protestants in France and in other countries. He was sent to the Bastille for a year in 1756, apparently at the instigation of Voltaire, with whom he had quarrelled over his writings.