City Readers Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library

Charles François Philibert Masson (1762 in Blamont — 1807 in Coblenz) was a Frenchman who is notable for the books that he published. His Secret Memoirs of the Court of St Petersburg described the court of Catherine the Great and Paul I of Russia. They are still in print.

Charles François Philibert Masson was a member of the Institut de France

The Frenchman started his career as an apprentice watchmaker in Neuchâtel, but he was more interested in the arts and traveled to Russia where he became the tutor of the children of Count Nikolaj Ivanovitsj Saltykov, the Minister of War. The count made him his major domus. He made himself popular in the élite of Saint Petersburg through his wit, his taste in literature and his conversation.

He became private secretary to grandduke Alexander of Russia, the man who became Czar Alexander I in 1805.

Charles François Philibert Masson was popular in the great houses of Saint Petersburg and at court but the tyrannical Czar Paul I expelled him from Russia as an outspoken symphatiser of the French Revolution.

He lived in Germany for a while before returning to France where he published his Mémoires secrets sur la Russie.

At the time of his death he worked as a French government-official, "secrétaire-général de la préfecture", in Coblenz by the Rhine, in those days a French city.