Henri Rochefort

Henri Rochefort, photo taken by Nadar

Edouard Manet: Portrait of Henri Rochefort

Henri Rochefort , actually Victor-Henri, marquis de Rochefort-Luçay , (born January 31, 1830 in Paris , † June 13, 1913 in Aix-les-Bains ) was a French writer , journalist , theater poet and politician . 1863 editor of Figaro , Dreyfus ' leading opponent ; typical representative of the polemical pamphlet .

Life

Henri Rochefort was a son of the author of Vaudevilles known as Edmond Rochefort (1790–1871) , who represented legitimist views. In contrast, his mother was republican. He didn't want to live the medical studies his father intended him to do. Instead, he became an assistant clerk at the Paris city administration, which he resigned in 1861. He had already worked as a journalist and in 1856 became editor of the Charivari . He wrote the work Les petits mystères de l'hôtel des ventes (Paris 1862), which contained his collected art criticism , as well as novels, vaudevilles such as Monsieur bien mis (1856) and dramas. He also wrote literary and political articles as editor of the Nain jaune , the Soleil and the Figaro .

Dismissed from the Figaro editorial team in 1868 because of a series of articles that the government did not like , Rochefort founded the radical weekly La Lanterne in May of this year , which was very popular. Rochefort satirized the government, the ministers, the senate and the legislative body, stabbing the Second Empire with sharp, witty, but often beyond decency articles . When the newspaper appeared for the eleventh time, it was confiscated and Rochefort was sentenced in August 1868 to a fine of 10,000 francs and a year in prison. He then published his journal in Brussels , from where it was smuggled into France. It was also published in English, Spanish, Italian and German and was distributed throughout Europe. After a second prosecution, Rochefort fled to Brussels for a while.

Rochefort remained in the public spotlight through a series of duels , the most prominent of which was that with Paul de Cassagnac over an article on Joan of Arc . In November 1869, after two previous unsuccessful candidacies in Paris, he was elected Member of the Legislative Body. He renewed his violent attacks on the imperial family in the Marseillaise , which he edited and whose collaborators included Victor Noir and Paschal Grousset . The brutal articles in this magazine led to the duel in the course of which Victor Noir was shot by Prince Pierre Bonaparte on January 11, 1870. Thereupon Rochefort practically called for an uprising. His journal was banned and he was sentenced on January 22, 1870 to six months in prison.

After the fall of Napoleon III. Rochefort was released on September 4, 1870. As a minister without a portfolio, he was briefly a member of the government of national defense and charged with building the barricades inside the capital. Because of his ambiguous behavior in the rebellion of October 31, 1870, he resigned from his post. He also resigned his seat in the National Assembly on March 3, 1871 , because he considered the cession of Alsace-Lorraine to be illegal. After March 18, he was the main contributor to the journal Le mot d'ordre and a member of the Welfare Committee of the Paris Commune . On May 11, 1871, when he saw the end of the Commune approaching, he fled Paris in disguise, was stopped by the Prussians in Meaux , extradited to Versailles and sentenced to deportation by the court martial there.Although Victor Hugo stood up for him, he was in 1873 deported to Nouméa in New Caledonia . From there he escaped on an English ship in March 1874 and reached first Australia , then the United States , where he disembarked in San Francisco , then made his way back to Europe and finally arrived in London in June 1874 . Then he went to Geneva , where he began again to issue the Lanterne , with malicious attacks against the government and the opportunists under Léon Gambetta .

In July 1880 Rochefort returned to Paris as a result of a general amnesty , where he founded the newspaper L'Intransigeant , in which he opposed the various governments, in particular the new colonial policy. Elected by the Seine department to the Chamber of Deputies in 1885 , he joined the extreme left, but declared his resignation from the Chamber when the amnesty application submitted by the latter was rejected by the assembly on February 6, 1886. He became a supporter of Georges Boulanger and joined his agitation in 1887. Therefore, he was tried with Boulanger and Arthur Dillon in the Senate and sentenced to prison on August 14, 1889 for an assassination attempt on the constitution and conspiracy; but he fled to London in time.

Rochefort continued his polemical appearance from London and, after Boulanger's suicide (September 30, 1891), attacked Ernest Constans , interior minister in the cabinet of Charles de Freycinet , extremely violently in a series of articles, leading to a chaotic and excited interpellation in led the chamber. The Panama scandal gave him another opportunity, and he caused a sensation with his claim, published in Figaro , that he had met Clemenceau at the table of the financier Cornélius Herz. After the amnesty issued in February 1895 when President Félix Faure took office , he returned to France, where he became one of Dreyfus' most determined opponents and played a major role in the organization of the press campaign. He was later the editor of La Patrie . He died on June 13, 1913 at the age of 83 in Aix-les-Bains.

Portraits

Henri Rochefort has been portrayed by numerous artists. Gustave Courbet drew two of them as half-length portraits. Giovanni Boldini also portrayed Rochefort in a similar way . In addition to a half-profile picture, there are also two paintings by Édouard Manet that depict his escape from New Caledonia (“L'Evasion de Rochefort”). Armand Gautier showed Rochefort in his prison cell and Aime Jules Dalou created a bronze bust of him.

Works

• Les Français de la decadence . Librairie centrale, Paris 1866–68 (3 volumes with his most important articles)
• La Grande Bohème . Librairie centrale, Paris 1867
• Les Dépravés: Roman de moeurs contemporaines . L. Hudrey, Geneva 1875
• L'Aurore boreal . 1878
• L'évadé: roman canaque . Charpentier, Paris 1880
• Les Naufrageurs: roman parisia . Jules Rouff, Paris 1881
• Retour de la Nouvelle Calédonie: De Nouméa en Europe . Jules Rouff, Paris 1881
• Napoléon dernier , 3 volumes, 1884
• Les aventures de ma vie . Paul Dupont, Paris 1896 (autobiography, 5 volumes). German abridged arrangement in 2 volumes, Stuttgart 1900

Revisions

• L'évadé: roman canaque . Editions Viviane Hamy, Paris 1993, ISBN 2-87858-043-5
• Les aventures de ma vie . Mercure de France, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-7152-2516-4 (edited by Paul Lidsky)

literature

• Alexandre Zevaes: Henri Rochefort le pamphlétaire . Editions France-Empire, Paris 1946. - coll. " Hommes et mouvements "
• Roger L. Williams: Le prince des polémistes: Henri Rochefort . Trévise, Paris 1970
• Claude-Jean Girard: Un polémiste à Paris: Henri Rochefort . L'Harmattan, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-7475-5343-4
• Joël Dauphiné: Henri Rochefort: déportation et évasion d'un polémiste . L'Harmattan, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-7475-6967-5

Web links

Commons : Henri Rochefort  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Literature by and about Henri Rochefort in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries)