Omer Talon is a lawyer and magistrate, avocat général before the Parlement of Paris during the Regency and the Fronde, held to be the most eloquent voice of the Palace of Justice.
| Type | Character (magistrate; historical person) |
| Office | Avocat général, Parlement of Paris |
| Spanish entry | Omer Talon |
History
Of a long line of lawyers, he began his career in Poitiers before rising in the capital. He argues with scholastic precision and a preacher’s fervor.
In the Fronde he is the moderate uncomfortable to all: he defends the Parlement’s prerogative to register royal edicts and limit the Crown’s power, but does not side with the princes’ agitation or the barricades. On 15 January 1648, answering Cardinal Mazarin’s lit de justice, he gave a speech that shook the Palais-Royal: he attacked government by terror, compared the France of the day to the despotisms of the Medes and Persians, and declared the Parlement the last dike between the people and the arbitrariness of the treasury. The queen regent, Anne of Austria, is said to have wept. He gives legal form to the grievances the street shouts.