Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin
Encyclopedia
Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin (2 February 1807 – 31 December 1874) was a French
politician
.
The grandson of Nicolas Philippe Ledru, the celebrated quack doctor known as "Comus" under Louis XV
and Louis XVI
, Ledru-Rollin was born in a house that had once been Paul Scarron
's, at Fontenay-aux-Roses
(Hauts-de-Seine
). He had just begun to practise at the Paris
ian bar before the revolution of July, and was retained for the Republican defence in most of the great political trials of the next ten years. In 1838 he bought for 330,000 francs Désiré Dalloz
's place in the Court of Cassation. He was elected deputy for Le Mans
in 1841 with little opposition; but the violence of his electoral speeches led to his being tried at Angers
and sentenced to four months' imprisonment and a fine, against which he appealed successfully on a technical point. He made a rich and romantic marriage in 1843, and in 1846 disposed of his charge at the Court of Cassation to give his time entirely to politics. He was now the recognized leader of the working-men of France. He had more authority in the country than in the Chamber, where the violence of his oratory diminished its effect. He asserted that the fortifications of Paris were directed against liberty, not against foreign invasion, and he stigmatized the law of regency (1842) as an audacious usurpation. Neither from official Liberalism
nor from the press did he receive support; even the republican National was opposed to him because of his championship of labour. He therefore founded La Réforme in which to advance his propaganda. Between Ledru-Rollin and Odilon Barrot
with the other chiefs of the "dynastic Left" there were acute differences, hardly dissimulated even during the temporary alliance which produced the campaign of the banquets.
It was the speeches of Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc
at working-men's banquets in Lille
, Dijon
and Châlons
that really heralded the revolution. Ledru-Rollin prevented the appointment of the duchess of Orleans as regent in 1848. He and Alphonse de Lamartine
held the tribune in the Chamber of Deputies until the Parisian populace stopped serious discussion by invading the Chamber. He was minister of the interior in the provisional government, and was also a member of the executive committee appointed by the Constituent Assembly, from which Louis Blanc and the extremists were excluded. At the crisis of 15 May
, he definitively sided with Lamartine and the party of order against the proletariat
.
Henceforward his position was a difficult one. He never regained his influence with the working classes, who considered they had been betrayed; but to his short ministry belongs the credit of the establishment of a working system of universal suffrage. At the presidential election in December
he was put forward as the Socialist candidate, but secured only 370,000 votes. Ledru-Rollin led The Mountain
, a moderate republican grouping, to the 1849 legislative election
, and secured 25% of the vote. His opposition to the policy of President Louis Napoleon, especially his Roman policy, led to his moving the impeachment of the president and his ministers. The motion was defeated, and next day (13 June 1849) he headed what he called a peaceful demonstration, and his enemies armed insurrection.
Ledru-Rollin himself escaped to London
where he joined the executive of the revolutionary committee of Europe, with Lajos Kossuth
and Giuseppe Mazzini
among his colleagues. He was accused of complicity in an obscure attempt (1857) against the life of Napoleon III of France
, and condemned in his absence to deportation. Emile Ollivier
removed the exceptions from the general amnesty in 1870, and Ledru-Rollin returned to France after twenty years of exile. Though elected in 1871 in three departments he refused to sit in the National Assembly, and took no serious part in politics until 1874 when he was returned to the Assembly as member for Vaucluse
.
Under Louis Philippe
he made large contributions to French jurisprudence, editing the Journal du palais, 1791–1837 (27 you., 1837) and 1837–1847 (17 vols.), with a commentary Repertoire général de la jurisprudence française (8 vols., 1843–1848), the introduction to which was written by himself. His later writings were political in character. See Ledru-Rollin, ses discours et ses écrits politiques (2 vols., Paris, 1879), edited by his widow.
There is currently an avenue as well as a Paris Métro
station named Ledru-Rollin
.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
.
The grandson of Nicolas Philippe Ledru, the celebrated quack doctor known as "Comus" under Louis XV
Louis XV of France
Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...
and Louis XVI
Louis XVI of France
Louis XVI was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before being executed in 1793....
, Ledru-Rollin was born in a house that had once been Paul Scarron
Paul Scarron
Paul Scarron was a French poet, dramatist, and novelist. His precise birthdate is unknown, but he was baptized on July 4, 1610...
's, at Fontenay-aux-Roses
Fontenay-aux-Roses
Fontenay-aux-Roses is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.École Normale Supérieure was a girls school located in the area....
(Hauts-de-Seine
Hauts-de-Seine
Hauts-de-Seine is designated number 92 of the 101 départements in France. It is part of the Île-de-France region, and covers the western inner suburbs of Paris...
). He had just begun to practise at the Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
ian bar before the revolution of July, and was retained for the Republican defence in most of the great political trials of the next ten years. In 1838 he bought for 330,000 francs Désiré Dalloz
Désiré Dalloz
Désiré Dalloz was a French jurist, politician and publisher.Born in Septmoncel, Jura, he pursued the profession of an advocate. He was admitted to the bar of the Cour royale in 1817, and practiced law before the French high courts from 1823 to 1836. His oral arguments were reproduced in legal...
's place in the Court of Cassation. He was elected deputy for Le Mans
Le Mans
Le Mans is a city in France, located on the Sarthe River. Traditionally the capital of the province of Maine, it is now the capital of the Sarthe department and the seat of the Roman Catholic diocese of Le Mans. Le Mans is a part of the Pays de la Loire region.Its inhabitants are called Manceaux...
in 1841 with little opposition; but the violence of his electoral speeches led to his being tried at Angers
Angers
Angers is the main city in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France about south-west of Paris. Angers is located in the French region known by its pre-revolutionary, provincial name, Anjou, and its inhabitants are called Angevins....
and sentenced to four months' imprisonment and a fine, against which he appealed successfully on a technical point. He made a rich and romantic marriage in 1843, and in 1846 disposed of his charge at the Court of Cassation to give his time entirely to politics. He was now the recognized leader of the working-men of France. He had more authority in the country than in the Chamber, where the violence of his oratory diminished its effect. He asserted that the fortifications of Paris were directed against liberty, not against foreign invasion, and he stigmatized the law of regency (1842) as an audacious usurpation. Neither from official Liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
nor from the press did he receive support; even the republican National was opposed to him because of his championship of labour. He therefore founded La Réforme in which to advance his propaganda. Between Ledru-Rollin and Odilon Barrot
Odilon Barrot
Camille Hyacinthe Odilon Barrot was a French politician.-Early life:Barrot was born at Villefort Lozère. He belonged to a legal family, his father, an advocate of Toulouse, having been a member of the Convention who had voted against the death of Louis XVI. Odilon Barrot's earliest recollections...
with the other chiefs of the "dynastic Left" there were acute differences, hardly dissimulated even during the temporary alliance which produced the campaign of the banquets.
It was the speeches of Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc
Louis Blanc
Louis Jean Joseph Charles Blanc was a French politician and historian. A socialist who favored reforms, he called for the creation of cooperatives in order to guarantee employment for the urban poor....
at working-men's banquets in Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...
, Dijon
Dijon
Dijon is a city in eastern France, the capital of the Côte-d'Or département and of the Burgundy region.Dijon is the historical capital of the region of Burgundy. Population : 151,576 within the city limits; 250,516 for the greater Dijon area....
and Châlons
Chalons
Chalons may refer to:Places* Châlons, in France's Isère département* Châlons-en-Champagne, formerly Châlons-sur-Marne, in the Marne département* Chalon-sur-Saône, in the Saône-et-Loire département* Roman Catholic Diocese of Châlons...
that really heralded the revolution. Ledru-Rollin prevented the appointment of the duchess of Orleans as regent in 1848. He and Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse de Lamartine
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was a French writer, poet and politician who was instrumental in the foundation of the Second Republic.-Career:...
held the tribune in the Chamber of Deputies until the Parisian populace stopped serious discussion by invading the Chamber. He was minister of the interior in the provisional government, and was also a member of the executive committee appointed by the Constituent Assembly, from which Louis Blanc and the extremists were excluded. At the crisis of 15 May
French demonstration of 15 May 1848
The French demonstration of 15 May 1848 was an event played out, mostly, in the streets of Paris. It was intended to reverse the results of a Second-Republic election of deputies to the Constituent Assembly. It is difficult to say, with any precision, whether this phenomenon should be called a...
, he definitively sided with Lamartine and the party of order against the proletariat
Proletariat
The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...
.
Henceforward his position was a difficult one. He never regained his influence with the working classes, who considered they had been betrayed; but to his short ministry belongs the credit of the establishment of a working system of universal suffrage. At the presidential election in December
French presidential election, 1848
The first-ever French presidential election of 1848 elected the first—and only—President of the Second Republic. The election was held on 10 December 1848 and led to the surprise victory of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte with 74% of the vote.-Election:...
he was put forward as the Socialist candidate, but secured only 370,000 votes. Ledru-Rollin led The Mountain
The Mountain (1849)
The Mountain was a political grouping in the French legislative election, 1849. It drew its name from The Mountain, a group active in the early period of the French Revolution...
, a moderate republican grouping, to the 1849 legislative election
French legislative election, 1849
French legislative elections were held on 13 May 1849. Voters elected the first National Assembly of the Second Republic.The conservative Parti de l'Ordre won an overall majority of 450 seats.The Parti de l'Ordre was a bourgeois, traditionalist, and conservative party opposed to the Presidency of...
, and secured 25% of the vote. His opposition to the policy of President Louis Napoleon, especially his Roman policy, led to his moving the impeachment of the president and his ministers. The motion was defeated, and next day (13 June 1849) he headed what he called a peaceful demonstration, and his enemies armed insurrection.
Ledru-Rollin himself escaped to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
where he joined the executive of the revolutionary committee of Europe, with Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth
Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva was a Hungarian lawyer, journalist, politician and Regent-President of Hungary in 1849. He was widely honored during his lifetime, including in the United Kingdom and the United States, as a freedom fighter and bellwether of democracy in Europe.-Family:Lajos...
and Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini
Giuseppe Mazzini , nicknamed Soul of Italy, was an Italian politician, journalist and activist for the unification of Italy. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century...
among his colleagues. He was accused of complicity in an obscure attempt (1857) against the life of Napoleon III of France
Napoleon III of France
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the President of the French Second Republic and as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I, christened as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte...
, and condemned in his absence to deportation. Emile Ollivier
Émile Ollivier
Olivier Émile Ollivier was a French statesman. Although a republican, he served as a cabinet minister under Emperor Napoleon III and led the process of turning his regime into a "liberal Empire".-Early life and career:Émile Ollivier was born in Marseille...
removed the exceptions from the general amnesty in 1870, and Ledru-Rollin returned to France after twenty years of exile. Though elected in 1871 in three departments he refused to sit in the National Assembly, and took no serious part in politics until 1874 when he was returned to the Assembly as member for Vaucluse
Vaucluse
The Vaucluse is a department in the southeast of France, named after the famous spring, the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse.- History :Vaucluse was created on 12 August 1793 out of parts of the departments of Bouches-du-Rhône, Drôme, and Basses-Alpes...
.
Under Louis Philippe
Louis-Philippe of France
Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...
he made large contributions to French jurisprudence, editing the Journal du palais, 1791–1837 (27 you., 1837) and 1837–1847 (17 vols.), with a commentary Repertoire général de la jurisprudence française (8 vols., 1843–1848), the introduction to which was written by himself. His later writings were political in character. See Ledru-Rollin, ses discours et ses écrits politiques (2 vols., Paris, 1879), edited by his widow.
There is currently an avenue as well as a Paris Métro
Paris Métro
The Paris Métro or Métropolitain is the rapid transit metro system in Paris, France. It has become a symbol of the city, noted for its density within the city limits and its uniform architecture influenced by Art Nouveau. The network's sixteen lines are mostly underground and run to 214 km ...
station named Ledru-Rollin
Ledru-Rollin (Paris Metro)
Ledru-Rollin is a station on line 8 of the Paris Métro, named after the Avenue Ledru-Rollin.The station opened on 5 May 1931 with the extension of the line from Richelieu - Drouot to Porte de Charenton...
.