Victor Henri Rochefort, Marquis de Rochefort-LuCay
Encyclopedia
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...
, was born in 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...
.
Life
His father was a LegitimistLegitimists
Legitimists are royalists in France who adhere to the rights of dynastic succession of the descendants of the elder branch of the Bourbon dynasty, which was overthrown in the 1830 July Revolution. They reject the claim of the July Monarchy of 1830–1848, whose kings were members of the junior...
noble who, as Edmond Rochefort, was well known as a writer of vaudevilles
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
; his mother's views were republican. After experience as a medical student, a clerk at the Hôtel de Ville
Hôtel de Ville, Paris
The Hôtel de Ville |City Hall]]) in :Paris, France, is the building housing the City of Paris's administration. Standing on the place de l'Hôtel de Ville in the city's IVe arrondissement, it has been the location of the municipality of Paris since 1357...
in Paris, a playwright and a journalist, he joined 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...
in 1863; but a series of his articles, afterwards published as Les Français de la décadencehttp://books.google.com/books?id=IigKAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Les+Fran%C3%A7ais+de+la+d%C3%A9cadence&source=bl&ots=cB260JDjJK&sig=BGU1TuxCD55SpAGg7ApWvVGwImg&hl=fr&ei=1yxwTfKTK861twet_ODyDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false (3 vols., 1866-68), brought the paper into collision with the authorities and caused the termination of his engagement.
In collaboration with different dramatists he had meanwhile written a long series of successful vaudevilles, which began with the Monsieur bien mis at the Folies Dramatiques in 1856. On leaving Le Figaro Rochefort determined to start a paper of his own, La Lanterne. The paper was seized on its eleventh appearance, and in August 1868 Rochefort was fined 10,000 francs, with a year's imprisonment.
He then published his paper in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, whence it was smuggled into France. Printed in French, English, Spanish, Italian and German, it went the round of Europe. After a second prosecution he fled to Belgium. A series of duel
Duel
A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...
s, of which the most famous was one fought with Paul de Cassagnac à propos of an article on Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc
Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...
, kept Rochefort in the public eye.
In 1869, after two unsuccessful candidatures, he was returned 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.*...
by the first circonscription of Paris. He was arrested on the frontier, only to be almost immediately released, and forthwith took his seat.
He renewed his onslaught on the Empire
Second French Empire
The Second French Empire or French Empire was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.-Rule of Napoleon III:...
, starting a new paper, La Marseillaise
La Marseillaise (1869 newspaper)
La Marseillaise is a French weekly newspaper created by Henri Rochefort. It was first published on 19 December 1869. The writing staff included Paschal Grousset, Arthur Arnould, Gustave Flourens, Jules Vallès and Victor Noir....
, as the organ of political meetings arranged by himself at La Villette
La Villette, Seine
La Villette was a French commune in the Seine département lying immediately north-east of Paris, France. It was one of four communes entirely annexed by the city of Paris in 1860. Its territory is now located in the XIXe arrondissement, but a neighborhood has retained its name: the quartier de La...
. The staff was appointed on the votes of the members, and included Victor Noir
Victor Noir
Victor Noir, , was a French journalist who is famous for the manner of his death and its political consequences...
and Paschal Grousset
Paschal Grousset
Jean François Paschal Grousset was a French politician, journalist, translator and science fiction writer. Grousset published under the pseudonyms of André Laurie, Philippe Daryl, Tiburce Moray and Léopold Virey.Grousset was born in Corte, Corsica, and studied medicine before commencing a...
. The violent articles in this paper led to the duel which resulted in Victor Noir's death at the hands of Prince Pierre Bonaparte. The paper was seized, and Rochefort and Grousset were sent to prison for six months.
Communards
The Communards were members and supporters of the short-lived 1871 Paris Commune formed in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War and France's defeat....
. On 11 May 1871, he fled in disguise from Paris. A week earlier he had resigned with a handful of other deputies from the National Assembly rather than countenance the dismemberment of France. Arrested at Meaux
Meaux
Meaux is a commune in the Seine-et-Marne department in the Île-de-France region in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located east-northeast from the center of Paris. Meaux is a sub-prefecture of the department and the seat of an arondissement...
by the Versailles government, he was detained for some time in prison with a nervous illness before he was condemned under military law to imprisonment for life.
In spite of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
's efforts on his behalf he was transported to New Caledonia
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...
. In 1874, he escaped on board an American vessel to San Francisco. He lived in 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...
and Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
until the general amnesty permitted his return to France in 1880. In Geneva, he resumed the publication of La Lanterne, and in the Parisian papers articles constantly appeared from his pen.
L'Intransigeant
L'Intransigeant was a French newspaper, founded in July 1880 by Henri Rochefort. Initially representing the left-wing opposition, it developed towards the right during the Boulangism affair and became a major right-wing newspaper by 1920s. The newspaper was vehemently anti-Dreyfusard, reflecting...
in the radical and socialist interest. For a short time in 1885-86 he sat in the Chamber of Deputies, but found a great opportunity next year for his talent for inflaming public opinion in the Boulangist agitation. He was condemned to detention in a fortress in August 1889 at the same time as General Boulanger, whom he had followed into exile. He continued his polemic from London, and after the suicide of General Boulanger he attacked M. Constans
Jean Antoine Ernest Constans
Jean Antoine Ernest Constans was a French politician and colonial administrator.-Biography:Born in Béziers, Hérault, he began his career as professor of law. In 1876 he was elected deputy for Toulouse to the French Third Republic's Chamber, and sat in the Left Centre as one of the 363 of May 16,...
, minister of the interior in the Freycinet
Charles de Freycinet
Charles Louis de Saulces de Freycinet was a French statesman and Prime Minister during the Third Republic; he belonged to the Opportunist Republicans faction. He was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1890, the fourteen member to occupy seat the Académie française.-Early years:He...
cabinet, with the utmost violence, in a series of articles which led to an interpellation in the chamber in circumstances of wild excitement and disorder.
The Panama scandals
Panama scandals
The Panama scandals was a corruption affair that broke out in the French Third Republic in 1892, linked to the building of the Panama Canal...
furnished him with another occasion, and he created something of a sensation by a statement in Le Figaro that he had met M. Clemenceau
Georges Clemenceau
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman, physician and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of the major voices behind the Treaty of Versailles at the...
at the table of the financier Cornelius Herz. In 1895 he returned to Paris, two years before the Dreyfus affair
Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Alsatian Jewish descent...
supplied him with another point d'appui. He became prominent among the anti-Dreyfusards along with people such as Edouard Drumont
Edouard Drumont
Édouard Adolphe Drumont was a French journalist and writer. He founded the Antisemitic League of France in 1889, and was the founder and editor of the newspaper La Libre Parole.- Early life :...
and Hubert-Joseph Henry
Hubert-Joseph Henry
Hubert-Joseph Henry , French Lieutenant-Colonel in 1897 involved in the Dreyfus affair. Arrested for having forged evidence against Alfred Dreyfus, he was found dead in his prison cell...
, and had a principal share in the organization of the press campaign. Subsequently he was editor of La Patrie
La Patrie
La Patrie was a Montreal, Quebec daily newspaper founded by Honoré Beaugrand on February 24, 1879. It became a weekly in 1957 and folded in 1978....
. As a result of his journalistic descent, this aristocratic scribe is remembered today as "the prince of press controversy" ("le Prince des polémistes").
Works
Besides his plays and articles in the journals Rochefort published several separate works, among them being:- Les Petits Mystères de l'Hôtel des Ventes (1862), a collection of his art criticisms
- Les Dépravés (Geneva, 1882)
- Les Naufrageurs (1876)
- L'Évadé (1883)
- Napoléon dernier (3 vols., 1884)
- Les Aventures de ma vie (5 vols., 1896)