Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/957

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BOCHEFOUCAXTLD-BISACCIA.

of an excited mob. He next came to London, and afterwards pro- ceeded to Geneva, where he founded a new Lanteme. In spite of the deprivation of his civil rights he succeeded, without much difficulty, in inserting paragraphs and articles, signed with emblems or initials, in another daily Lanteme, published at Paris, and also in the Marseil- laise, the Mot d*Ordre, and the Rappel. On May 23, 1880, M. Roche- fort's son, who was concerned in getting up the demonstration or- ganised by the Communists in Paris, was more or less ill-treated by a police officer. M. Eochefort thereupon addressed to the Prefect of Police, M. Andrieux, an insult- ing letter, provoking him to a duel. M; Georges Koechlin, brother-in- law of M. Andrieux, accepted the challenge, and a hostile meeting took place near Coppet (June 3), in which M. Rochefort was somewhat severely wounded in the breast. The general amnesty of July 11 permitted M. Rochefort to return to Paris, where he at once assumed the direction of a new Radical paper called L*Intransigeant. On Sept. 25, 1881, he declared in this journal that the Tunisian expedi- tion was only imdertaken with a view to private speculation. This led to legal proceedings being taken against him by M. Roustan, but M. Rochefort was acquitted (Dec. 16).

ROCHEFOUCAULD - BISAC- CIA (Duo db), Mabib Chables Gabbibl SosTHtwEs, Comtc de la Rochef oucaidd and Due de Bisaccia, a French statesman and diploma- tist, is the second son of the Due de la Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, and brother of the present Due de Doudeauvllle. He was born Sept. 1, 1825. During the existence of the Empire the Duke, like almost all his compeers, held entirely aloof from public life. After the war with Germany he was returned to the National Assembly at Bordeaux as a representative of the depart-

ment of La Sarthe, Feb. 8, 1871, when he polled 41,207 votes, being the last on the list of nine success- ful candidates. He was chosen leader of the Legitimist Bight, though he was always a supporter of the Fusion ; and he was elected a member of the Committee of Thirty. In Dec, 1873. he accepted the post of Ambassador from the French Republic to the Court of St. James's. Thus, for the first time since the Revolution of 1830, France was represented in London by an avowed Legitimist and a per- sonal adherent of Henry V. The duke went to Paris in order to be present at the sitting of the Assem- bly on June 15, 1874, when a reso- lution was proposed for the definite organization of the French Repub- lic. It was carried by a very narrow majority. When it had been dis- posed of, the duke rose in his place and made a motion of his own amid a profound silence, followed by prolonged sensation. The Marshal- President's Ambassador in London actually proposed nothing less than the immediate declaration of the Monarchy under the Head of the House of France, and the subsidence of the existing Chief of the State, from whom he held his credentiaU as Ambassador, into the Monarch's Lieutenant-General. The motion was rejected by a majority of sixty voices, and the duke, as a matter of course, almost inmiediately after- wards withdrew from the English Embassy. In 1876 he was elected for the arrondissement of Mamers (Sarthe). He continued, in the new Chamber, to sit on the extreme Right, opposed the Republican Cabinets of M. Dufaure and M. Jules Simon, and after the act of May 16, 1877, supported that of the Due de Br<^lie. An official candi- date at the general election of Oct. 14 following, he was successful at the poll, but his election was inva- Udated at the beginning of 1878, when he declared that he was •' proud to quit such a Chamber."