Emmanuel de Las Cases

Emmanuel Augustin Dieudonné Las Cases

Emmanuel-Augustin-Dieudonné-Joseph de Las Cases [las kaz] (born June 21, 1766 in Las Cases Castle near Revel (Haute-Garonne) ; † May 15, 1842 in Passy-sur-Seine , Seine-et-Marne department ) was a French naval officer and statesman under Napoleon . When he abdicated for the second time, he voluntarily followed the latter into captivity on St. Helena for 18 months and became world famous for the publication of his diaries from this period.

Life

The son of a not very rich, noble family from the country, but which has been introduced in his youth at the royal court, the path of Emmanuel de Las Cases seemed clear: he joined with eleven years in the Ecole Militaire of Vendôme and 1780 in the Ecole Militaire from Paris , where he was being prepared for a career as an officer in the Navy. He participated on the French side in the last two years of the American War of Independence and in the siege of Gibraltar in 1782 by French warships. He stayed in North American waters from 1784 to 1789, conducting various maritime operations there. At the time of the French Revolution , he eventually served as a lieutenant in the Navy.

After the outbreak of the revolution, like many other noble families, he emigrated to Worms and Koblenz in 1791 and took part in the campaign against revolutionary France in 1792. In the same year he fled to England, where he earned his living as a tutor. The loss of family wealth through the revolution had put him in very poor conditions. Be under the pseudonym Le Sage appearing Atlas historique, chronologique, géographique et généalogique (Paris 1803-1804), edited German and propagated by Alexander of shower and Joshua Eyselein (Karlsruhe 1826-1827), these personal grievances averted.

Due to the Peace of Amiens and the amnesty for French exiles by the First Consul, Las Cases was able to return to France in 1802. He then settled in Paris as a bookseller. However, as an emigrated French aristocratic and his unchanged advocacy towards the monarchy, his situation was not uncomplicated. He refused the advice of former comrades to join the imperial court. He returned to the army and drew the attention of Napoleon through his good performances and his acquaintance with Joséphine (who wanted to make him Chambellan personally ) and the Minister of the Navy Denis Decrès . In 1808 Las Cases was appointed imperial baron and in 1809 chambellan and requete master in the naval section of the State Council. Since then he has been entrusted with various missions, including inspecting prisons, hospitals, etc.

During the Allies' first invasion in 1814, he commanded the 10th Legion of the National Guard , established in 1789 , which suffered great losses in the fighting for Paris. After Napoleon's first abdication he went to England for a short time, but rejoined the Council of State after his return from Elba.

After Napoleon's second abdication, he asked permission to follow him to St. Helena with his eldest son, Emmanuel Pons Dieudonné de Las Cases . He left his wife and youngest child in France for this. On St. Helena, Napoleon dictated some of his mémoires to him . Las Cases also served Napoleon as an intermediary between him and the English because of his knowledge of English.

However, since Las Cases established secret connections with Europe, he and his son were separated from Napoleon on November 27, 1816 and, after a short, involuntary stay at the Cape of Good Hope, sent back to Europe, where he lived in Austria between 1817 and 1821, Frankfurt a. M. and finally lived in Belgium. In 1821 he returned to France.

His efforts to persuade the monarchs of the Aachen Congress to ease Napoleon's lot were unsuccessful. After his death he published the well-known Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (Paris 1821–1823, 8 vols.), To which Barry O'Meara's Napoleon in exile is the continuation. A reply from the commanding officer of St. Helena, Hudson Lowe , who had been severely attacked by Las Cases , caused Las Cases to travel to London to seek personal satisfaction from the same, but this immediately resulted in Las Cases being expelled. After the July Revolution, Las Cases entered the Chamber twice from 1831 to 1843 as MP for St-Denis , where he took his seat on the extreme left.

Las Cases died on May 15, 1842 in his home in Passy-sur-Seine and was buried in the Cimetière de Passy .

bibliography

• Atlas historique, chronologique, géographique et généalogique (Paris 1803 to 1804, edited in German and enlarged by Dusch and Eyselein, Karlsruhe 1826–1827)
• Atlas historique, généalogique, chronologique et geographique: Avec des augmentations par [François] J [oseph Ferdinand] Marchal de Bruxelles, et de nombreuses améliorations par une societé de savans et de gens de lettres / De A. Le Sage [di Emmanuel Auguste Dieudonné <Cte de Las Cases>] (Brussels, 1827)
• Historical-genealogical-geographical atlas by Le Sage Graf Las Cases in three and thirty overviews / from the French of the latest edition in Dt. transfer and with two political geograph. Over. presumably from Alexander von Dusch, Grand Duke. Baden Ministerialrath in the Dpt. the away. Affairs (Karlsruhe, 1825–1831)
• Mémoires de FAD, comte de Las Cases (Brussels, 1818)
• Mémorial de Sainte Hélène, ou journal où se trouve consigné, jour par jour, ce qu'a dit et fait Napoléon durant dix-huit mois (5 vols., London and Paris, 1823)
• Memories of Sanct-Helena, or diary in which everything that Napoleon spoke and did in a period of eighteen months is recorded day by day . From the Count of Las Cases. Translated from the French. Stuttgart; Tübingen: Cotta, 1823-1826.
• Suite au mémorial de Sainte Hélène, ou observations critiques , etc. (2 vols., Paris, 1824), published anonymously, but it is known that this was written by Grille and Musset-Pathay.

Web links

• Literature by and about Emmanuel de Las Cases in the catalog of the German National Library