Félix Pyat was a French Socialist journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 and politician

Politician

A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

.

Biography

He was born in Vierzon

Vierzon

Vierzon is a commune in the Cher department in the Centre region of France.-Geography:A medium-sized town by the banks of the Cher River with some light industry and an area of forestry and farming to the north...

 (Cher), the son of a Legitimist lawyer. Called to the bar in Paris in 1831, he threw his whole energies into journalism. The violent personal attacks in a pamphlet entitled Marie-Joseph Chénier et le prince des critiques (1844), in reply to Jules Janin

Jules Janin

Jules Gabriel Janin was a French writer and critic.-Biography:Born in Saint-Étienne , Janin's father was a lawyer, and he was educated first at St. Étienne, and then at the lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris...

, brought him a six-months sojourn in the Sainte-Pélagie prison, in the cell just vacated by Lamennais.

He worked with other dramatists in a long series of plays, with an interval of six years on the National, until the revolution of 1848. George Sand

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

, whom he had introduced in 1830 to the staff of Le Figaro

Le Figaro

Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...

, now asked Ledru-Rollin

Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin 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...

 to make him commissary-general of the Cher. After three months tenure of this office he was elected by the Cher department to the Constituent Assembly

Constituent assembly

A constituent assembly is a body composed for the purpose of drafting or adopting a constitution...

, where he voted with the Mountain

The Mountain

The Mountain refers in the context of the history of the French Revolution to a political group, whose members, called Montagnards, sat on the highest benches in the Assembly...

, and brought forward the celebrated motion for the abolition of the presidential office.

About this time he fought a duel with Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...

, who had called him the aristocrat of democracy. He joined Ledru-Rollin in the attempted insurrection of 13 June 1849, after which he sought refuge in Switzerland, Belgium, and finally in England, where he became involved with the irregular masonic

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

 organisation, La Grande Loge des Philadelphes

Rite of Memphis-Misraim

The Rite of Memphis-Misraim is a fringe Freemasonic rite which was formed by the merging of the two rites of Memphis and Misraïm under the influence of General Garibaldi in 1881.-The Rite of Misraïm:...

 For having glorified regicide after Orsini's attempt on the life of Napoleon III he was brought before an English court, but acquitted, and the general amnesty of 1869 permitted his return to France. However, further outbursts against the authorities, followed by prosecution, compelled him to return to England.

The deposing of Napoleon III on the 4 September 1870 brought him back to Paris, and it was he who in his paper Le Combat displayed a black-edged announcement of the negotiations for the surrender of Metz

Metz

Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...

 to the Prussians. After the insurrection of the 31st of October he was imprisoned for a short time. In January 1871, Le Combat was suppressed, only to be followed by an equally virulent Vengeur.

Elected to the National Assembly

National Assembly

National Assembly is either a legislature, or the lower house of a bicameral legislature in some countries. The best known National Assembly, and the first legislature to be known by this title, was that established during the French Revolution in 1789, known as the Assemblée nationale...

, he retired from Bordeaux

Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...

, where it sat, with Henri Rochefort and others until such time as the so-called "parricidal" vote for peace should be annulled. He returned to Paris to join the Committee of Public Safety, and, in Hanotaux

Gabriel Hanotaux

Albert Auguste Gabriel Hanotaux, known as Gabriel Hanotaux was a French statesman and historian.-Biography:...

's words, was the me ulcre of the Paris Commune

Paris Commune

The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...

, but was blamed for the loss of the fort of Issy. He was superseded on the Committee by Delescluze, but he continued to direct some of the violent acts of the Commune, the overthrow of the Vendôme column, the destruction of Thiers

Thiers

Thiers is a French surname. Notable persons with the surname include:*Adolphe Thiers , French statesman and historian*Louisa Thiers , American supercentenarian*Harry D...

's residence and of the expiatory chapel built to the memory of 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....

. He escaped the vengeance of the Versailles government, crossed the frontier in safety, and, though he had been condemned to death in his absence in 1873, the general amnesty of July 1880 permitted his return to Paris.

He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies

Chamber of Deputies of France

Chamber of Deputies was the name given to several parliamentary bodies in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries:* 1814–1848 during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy, the Chamber of Deputies was the Lower chamber of the French Parliament, elected by census suffrage.*...

 for the department of Bouches-du-Rhône

Bouches-du-Rhône

Bouches-du-Rhône is a department in the south of France named after the mouth of the Rhône River. It is the most populous department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Its INSEE and postal code is 13.-History of the department:...

 in March 1888 and took his seat on the extreme Left, but died at Saint-Gratien

Saint-Gratien

Saint-Gratien is the name or part of the name of three communes of France:*Saint-Gratien in the Somme département*Saint-Gratien in the Val-d'Oise département*Saint-Gratien-Savigny in the Nièvre département...

the following year.