Barrot, Odilon

(1791-1873)

   political figure

   Born in villefort, Lozère, odilon Barrot, who became an attorney in 1811, soon took a position against the regime of the restoration, which he had initially supported. A liberal constitutional monarchist, he upheld, during the revolution of july 1830, the idea of a "kingdom surrounded by republican institutions." Under the July Monarchy, he became the leader of the dynastic opposition (constitutional monarchists of the Left: parti du Mouvement). Organizer of the "Banquets campaign" (1847) for electoral reform, he was overtaken by the democratic forces during the revolution of 1848 and unwittingly became one of the initiators of the fall of the monarchy. For a time a supporter of Napoléon III, who named him minister of justice and head of his first ministry (1848-49), he soon went over to the Orléanist opposition and was arrested (December 2, 1851). In 1872, louis-adolphe Thiers named him president of the Council of State. Odilon Barrot's Mémoires were published in 1875-76.