Louis-Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld

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Portrait of the Duc d'Anville

Louis-Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld , Duc d'Enville (or older spelling, d'Anville), then 6th Duke of La Rochefoucauld , (born July 4, 1743 in Paris , † September 4, 1792 in Gisors ( Normandy ) by execution ) was an aristocrat and politician in 18th century France. As the high nobility of the Ancien Régime , he played a certain role in politics until he fell victim to the September massacre.

biography

Origin and family

Louis-Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld comes from the La Rochefoucauld house , one of the oldest and most respected houses of the French nobility. The family can be traced back to the “Seigneurs de La Rochefoucauld” in the Charente department in the 10th and 11th centuries.

He was the son of Jean-Baptiste Louis Frédéric de La Rochefoucauld de Roye and Marie-Louise-Nicole de La Rochefoucauld. In 1762 he married Louise-Pauline de Gand de Mérode (the marriage remained childless). In the same year he inherited the title "Duc de la Rochefoucauld" from his grandfather Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld (born September 29, 1690; † 1762).

In 1780 he married a second time, this time his niece, Alexandrine de Rohan-Chabot. This marriage also had no offspring.

Career

He was one of the greatest advocates of American independence in France and the translator for Benjamin Franklin 's Constitutions des Treize États-Unis de L'Amérique (Constitution of the Thirteen United States of America), which he published in Paris in 1778. De La Rochefoucauld was also very interested in the natural sciences and was an avid traveler who had visited England, Sweden , Germany, Switzerland , Italy and Savoy . He was a friend of Desmarest , Dolomieu , Saussure , Turgot , Condorcet , president of the “Société royale de médecine” (Royal Medical Society), and the “ Académie royale des sciences ” (Royal Academy of Sciences).

In 1789 he was a deputy of the Estates General and belonged to the group of 47 aristocrats and the Society of Thirty , which joined the Third Estate on June 25, 1789 . Here, however, the liberal aristocrat soon felt repulsed by the prevailing conditions. He was still center-left of the Constituent Assembly , where he had many friends and was trying to buy time for the monarchy. After this body had done its work and dissolved, he became a member of the departmental board of directors. After the assault on the Tuileries on August 10, 1792, he resigned from his post and left the capital to escape popular anger.

The Château de la Roche-Guyon

He was arrested in Gisors while trying to get to his castle in La Roche-Guyon with his wife and mother .

On September 4, 1792 he was killed by the "Volontaires de la Sarthe et de l'Orne" (a revolutionary militia association). This happened in the course of the hunt for the nobles (Chasse aux aristocrates) which took place as a result of the Allied advance in France and the removal of the fortress Verdun . Citizens of the municipality and his neighbor Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu tried in vain to save him.

His successor in the series of the Dukes of Rochefoucauld was his nephew François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt as "François XII de La Rochefoucauld".

Others

  • Louis Alexandre de la Rochefoucauld received a carcass from a servant of the Marquis d'Apcher in 1767 , which was supposed to represent the beast of Gévaudan , with the request that King Louis XV. and to demonstrate to the court at Versailles .
  • His father, Jean-Baptiste Louis Frédéric de La Rochefoucauld de Roye, duc d'Anville carried out the military operation to Arcadia , which was named after his name (Expédition du duc d'Anville).
  • From 1767 to 1784 La Rochefoucauld was regiment owner of the Régiment de La Sarre .
  • From 1781 he was an honorary member of the Académie royale des sciences.

literature

  • Jules Michelet , French Revolution
  • Daniel Vaugelade, “Le Salon physiocratique des La Rochefoucauld”, Publibook, 2001
  • Daniel Vaugelade, La Question américaine au XVIII | e à travers la correspondance du duc Louis Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld , Publibook, 2005
  • Solange Fasquelle, Les La Rochefoucauld: une famille dans l'Histoire de France , Perrin, Octobre 1999, ISBN 2-262-00799-3

Footnotes

  1. At that time still belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia
  2. cannot be translated as a proper name
  3. ^ Frédéric Bluche, Septembre 1792. Logiques d'un massacre , Paris, Robert Laffont, 1986, ISBN 2-221-04523-8 , p. 103
  4. (Gazette de la bete n ° 11 de December 2010)
  5. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter L. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 8, 2020 (French).

Web links

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