Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin
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Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin (French pronunciation: [alɛksɑ̃dʁ oɡyst lədʁy ʁɔlɛ̃]; 2 February 1807 – 31 December 1874) was a French lawyer, politician and one of the leaders of the French Revolution of 1848.
Youth
The grandson of
Under
Politics
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. [further explanation needed]
1848
It was the speeches of Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc at working-men's banquets in Lille, Dijon and Chalons that heralded the revolution of 1848. 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
Exile and final years
Ledru-Rollin himself escaped to London where he joined the executive of the revolutionary committee of Europe, with
Ledru-Rollin died in Fontenay-aux-Roses.
There is currently an avenue as well as a
Quote
Some variation of the following is often attributed to Ledru-Rollin:
- "There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader."
- "There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them"
- "Eh! je suis leur chef, il fallait bien les suivre." "Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them!"[2]
The quote is probably apocryphal.[3]
Notes
- ^ Biographie de Alexandre Ledru-Rollin Archived 2013-06-21 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ E. de Mirecourt, Histoire Contemporaine no. 79, 'Ledru-Rollin' (1857)
- ^ Suzy Platt, ed. Respectfully quoted: a dictionary of quotations (Barnes & Noble, 1993), p. 194.
References
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre Auguste". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the