Paul de Beauvilliers, count and later (1679) 2nd duc de Saint-Aignan (1648–1714), often referred to as the duc de Beauvilliers, was a French government official under King Louis XIV.
Chairman of the Royal Council of Finances (conseil royal des Finances) in 1685, he became the governor of the Duke of Burgundy (1689), the duke of Anjou (future King Philip V of Spain) (1690), and the duke of Berry (1693), thus being in charge of the education of the three grandsons of Louis XIV.
In 1691 he entered the Council of Ministers (Conseil d'en haut), chaired by the king himself where matters of state policy were decided including religion, diplomacy, and war. He was the voice of the dévot party that advocated finding a peaceful end to France's and Louis XIV's interminable wars.
In 1697, he ordered the intendants (heads of the royal administration in the provinces) to conduct a general survey whose conclusions, known as the Mémoires, offer an interesting portrayal of France in the very end of the 17th century.
Close to the duke of Burgundy, his pupil and heir to the throne, he was one of the reformists who advocated a less centralized and absolute monarchy, and whose ideas of polysynody were briefly applied after 1715, although he did not live long enough to see it.
The duc de Beauvilliers died in Vaucresson, near Versailles, in 1714, one year before Louis XIV.
