A DISTINGUISHED CAREER

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 2, 2 July 1913, Page 7

A DISTINGUISHED CAREER

! Henri Rochefort, Marquis de Rochefort1 Lucay, was bom in Paris on 30th, January. 1830. His father was & " Legitimist noble. After experience*?* 1 a medical student, a clerk at the Hotel de Ville, a playwright, and a journalist, Henri Rochefort joined the staff of the Figaro in 1863; but 4 series of hie articles, afterwards published as Les Francais de la Decadence, brought the paper into collision with the authorities, and caused the termination of his engagement. In collaboration with dramatists, he had meanwhile written a long series of successful vaudevilles. On leaving the B'igaro Rochefort started a paper of his own, La Lahtei'ne. It was i seized on its eleventh appearance, and in August;. 1868, Rochefort was fined I 10,000 francs, with a year's imprison* ' ment. He then published his paper in. • Brussels, whence it was smuggled into France. Printed in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and German, it went' the round of Europe. After a second prosecution he fled to Belgium. A DUELLIST, A seriesi of duels, of which the most famous was one fought with Paul do Cassgnac, kept Rochefort in the public eye. In 1869 he was returned to thft Chamber of Deputies. He renewed his onslaught on the Kmpire, starting a '■ new paper, the Marseillaise, as the organ of political • meetings arranged by him ' B elf at La Villette. The paper was Vio1 lent, and was seized, and Rochefort and 1 Grousset (an associate) were sent to 1 prison for six months. The revolution ' of September was the signal for his release. He became o-member of the Go- ! veftiment of National Defence, but this 1 short association with the forces of law ; and order was soon broken on account ' of his openly expressed sympathy with . the Communards. Oh 11th May. 1871, • he fled in disguise from Park A week' earlier he had resigned with a handful of other deputies from the Natiohal As^ sembly rather than countenance the dismemberment of France. Arrested at Meaux by the Versailles Government he was detained for some time in prison with a nervous illness before he was condemned, under military law, to imprisonimenit for life. He was transported to New Caledonia, and in 1874 escaped to San Francisco. He lived in London and Geneva until the general amnesty permitted his return to France in 1880. I In Geneva he resumed the publication of La Lanjterne, and in the Parisian papem i articles constantly appeared from rliis • pen. When at length, in 1880, the general amnesty permitted his return to Paris, he founded L' lntran&jge&nt. 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 the fortress in August, 1889, at tlie same time as General Boulanger, whom he had followed into exile. Ho • continued his polemic from London, and, after the suicide of General Boulanger, he attacked M. Cottstans, Minister for the Interior in the Freycinet Cabinet. - with tho violence, in a series of articles which led to an interpellation : in the Chamber in circumstances of wild i excitement and disorder, The Panama scandals furnished him with another occasion, and he created something of a . sensation by a statement in the Figaro t that he had met M. Clemenceau at i the table of the financier Cornelius Hern. In 1895 he returned to Paris, two years before tha Dreyfus affair supplied him with another point d'appui. He became a leader of the anti-Dreyfusards, and had i a practical share in the organisation of l the press campaign. Subsequently he i. was editor of La Patrie.