He entered the army in 1769, served in the American War of Independence in 1781 as a colonel under Rochambeau. In 1784 he was sent as minister plenipotentiary to St Petersburg, where he was received into the intimacy of the empress Catherine II and wrote some comedies for her theatre. At St Petersburg he concluded (in January 1787) a commercial treaty which was exceedingly advantageous to France, and returned to Paris in 1789. He took up a sympathetic attitude towards the Revolution at its outset and in 1791 was sent on a mission to Berlin, where he was badly received. After fighting a duel he was forced to leave Berlin, and went into retirement until 1801 when, at Bonaparte's instance, he was nominated by the senate to the Corps legislatif.
Subsequently he became a member of the council of state, grand master of the ceremonies, and senator, 1813. In 1814 Segur voted for the deposition of Napoleon and entered Louis XVIII's Chamber of Peers. Deprived of his offices and functions in 1815 for joining Napoleon during the Hundred Days, he was reinstated in 1819, supported the revolution of 1830, but died shortly afterwards in Paris. By his wife, Antoinette d'Aguesseau, he had two sons, of whom Count Philippe Paul is separately noticed. Among his writings may be mentioned Histoire des principaux evenements du regne de Frederic-Guillaume II (1800); Pensées politiques (Paris, 1795); Histoire de France (n vols., 1824-1834); Histoire des juifs (1827); Mémoires (3 vols., 1824); and Contes (1809). His Œuvres completes'' were published in 34 volumes in 1824 et seq.
See duc de Broglie, "Deux Français aux États-Unis" in Mélanges publies par la Société des Bibliophiles français (2nd part, 1903); A Cornereau, "La Mission du comte de Ségur dans la xviii' division militaire," in the Mémoires de la Société bourguignonne de geographie et d'histoire (vol. 17, 1901).
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