Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre

(1807-1874) (Alexandre-Auguste Ledru)

   political figure

   Known as Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre-Auguste Ledru was born in Paris, where as an attorney, he fought the regime of the july monarchy and defended the journalists who were condemned after the republican insurrection. Elected deputy (1841), he sat with the extreme Left among the radicals, founded a newspaper, La Réforme, with louis blanc and, during the Banquets campaign (1847-48), he became a proponent of a social-democratic republic. Minister of the interior in the provisional government after the revolution of 1848, then a member of the Executive Commission, he was excluded from office after the insurrection of June 1848. An unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the republic (December 1848) but elected to the Legislative Assembly (May 1849), he was the principal initiator of the failed uprisings of June 13, 1849. In exile in England, Ledru-Rollin made contact with the European revolutionaries Giuseppe Mazzini, Louis Kossuth, and Arnold Ruge. Returning to France (1871), he was elected to the National Assembly but refused to sit; he was elected again in 1874 and took his place as a deputy. Ledru-Rollin's writings include Du Paupérisme dans les campagnes, 1847, and Décadence de l'Angleterre, 1850.