Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys

Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys

Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys (born November 19, 1805 in Paris , † March 1, 1881 ibid) was a French statesman.

Live and act

The son of a general taker attended the Paris Lycée Louis-le-Grand and from 1825 the law school there. He then entered the diplomatic service and in 1830 was embassy attaché in Madrid. After the death of King Ferdinand VII, he worked as legation secretary at the court in The Hague (King Wilhelm I ) between 1833 and 1836 . Afterwards he was appointed chargé d'affaires at the court of Queen Isabella II. In 1840 he returned to France and was appointed to the directorate of trade affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1842 .

As a result of his opposition to François Guizot's policies, he lost his state office and violently attacked the ministry and the chamber majority for their corruption and took part in the reform movement that led to the overthrow of the July monarchy . After that he was elected to the constituent assembly and then also to the legislature, always voting with the right and in May 1848 became chairman of the committee for foreign affairs.

Under Louis Bonaparte's presidency, Drouyn de Lhuys took over the post of Foreign Minister with effect from December 20, 1848, and went to London as Ambassador Extraordinary to Queen Victoria in June 1849 . In the interim cabinet from January 10 to 24, 1850, he again headed the Foreign Office and supported Napoleon III. on December 2, 1851 during his coup d'état.

He then took part in the consultative commission ( Second Empire ) and was appointed senator. On July 28, 1852 he took over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs again. Eager to keep the peace, after the outbreak of the Crimean War he organized the Vienna Conferences in April 1855, after which he resigned from the ministry. In 1856 he also resigned as senator because the emperor had reproached this body for lack of initiative. He used his leisure to justify his behavior on the oriental question by means of a Histoire diplomatique de la crise orientale (Brussels and Leipzig 1858).

In 1862 Drouyn de Lhuys took over the Foreign Ministry again. Although the policy of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria and Pope Pius IX. supported, he signed the September Convention with Italy in 1864. His efforts for the Poles, the American southern states and Denmark were unsuccessful. On the German question in 1866 he sought to promote France's interests in particular by creating a protectorate over southern Germany and ceding parts of the area to the left of the Rhine.

But when Otto von Bismarck rejected the French demands for compensation in August 1866, Napoleon III declared that Drouyn was arbitrary because he was not ready for war with Prussia and released him on September 1st of the same year. Since then he has dealt with agriculture and acclimatization issues and died March 1, 1881.

literature

• Bernard d'Harcourt: Les Quatre ministères de M. Drouyn de Lhuys . Plon Paris 1882.

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