LA ROCHEFOUCAULD-LIANCOURT, FRANÇOIS ALEXANDRE FRÉDÉRIC, Duc de (1747-1827), French social reformer, was born at La Roche Guyon on the 11th of January 1747, the son of François Armand de La Rochefoucauld, duc d’Estissac, grand master of the royal wardrobe. The duc de Liancourt became an officer of carbineers, and married at seventeen. A visit to England seems to have suggested the establishment of a model farm at Liancourt, where he reared cattle imported from England and Switzerland. He also set up spinning machines on his estate, and founded a school of arts and crafts for the sons of soldiers, which became in 1788 the École des Enfants de la Patrie under royal protection. Elected to the states-general of 1789 he sought in vain to support the cause of royalty while furthering the social reforms he had at heart. On the 12th of July, two days before the fall of the Bastille, he warned Louis XVI. of the state of affairs in Paris, and met his exclamation that there was a revolt with the answer, “Non, sire, c’est une révolution.” On the 18th of July he became president of the Assembly. Established in command of a military division in Normandy, he offered Louis a refuge in Rouen, and, failing in this effort, assisted him with a large sum of money. After the events of the 10th of August 1792 he fled to England, where he was the guest of Arthur Young, and thence passed to America. After the assassination of his cousin, Louis-Alexandre, duc de La Rochefoucauld d’Enville, at Gisors on the 14th of September 1792 he assumed the title of duc de La Rochefoucauld. He returned to Paris in 1799, but received small favour from Napoleon. At the Restoration he entered the House of Peers, but Louis XVIII. refused to reinstate him as master of the wardrobe, although his father had paid 400,000 francs for the honour. Successive governments, revolutionary and otherwise, recognized the value of his institutions at Liancourt, and he was for twenty-three years government inspector of his school of arts and crafts, which had been removed to Châlons. He was one of the first promoters of vaccination in France; he established a dispensary in Paris, and he was an active member of the central boards of administration for hospitals, prisons and agriculture. His opposition to the government in the House of Peers led to his removal in 1823 from the honorary positions he held, while the vaccination committee, of which he was president, was suppressed. The academies of science and of medicine admitted him to their membership by way of protest. Official hostility pursued him even after his death (27th of March 1827), for the old pupils of his school were charged by the military at his funeral. His works, chiefly on economic questions, include books on the English system of taxation, poor-relief and education.
His eldest son, François, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1765-1848), succeeded his father in the House of Peers. The second, Alexandre, comte de La Rochefoucauld (1767-1841), married a San Domingo heiress allied to the Beauharnais family. Mme de La Rochefoucauld became dame d’honneur to the empress Josephine, and their eldest daughter married a brother-in-law of Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese. La Rochefoucauld became ambassador successively to Vienna (1805) and to the Hague (1808-1810), where he negotiated the union of Holland with France. During the “Hundred Days” he was made a peer of France. He subsequently devoted himself to philanthropic work, and in 1822 became deputy to the Chamber and sat with the constitutional royalists. He was again raised to the peerage in 1831.
The third son, Frédéric Gaétan, marquis de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt (1779-1863), was a zealous philanthropist and a partisan of constitutional monarchy. He took no part in politics after 1848. The marquis wrote on social questions, notably on prison administration; he edited the works of La Rochefoucauld, and the memoirs of Condorcet; and he was the author of some vaudevilles, tragedies and poems.
LA ROCHEJACQUELEIN, DE, the name of an ancient French family of La Vendée, celebrated for its devotion to the throne during and after the Revolution. Its original name was Duverger, derived from a fief near Bressuire in Poitou, and its pedigree is traceable to the 13th century. In 1505 Gui Duverger married Renée, heiress of Jacques Lemartin, seigneur de La Rochejacquelein, whose name he assumed. His grandson, Louis Duverger, seigneur de La Rochejacquelein, was a devoted adherent of Henry II., and was badly wounded at the battle of Arques; other members of the family were also distinguished soldiers, and the seigniory was raised to a countship and marquisate in reward for their services.
At the outbreak of the Revolution the chief of the family was Henri Louis Auguste, marquis de La Rochejacquelein, maréchal de camp in the royal army, who had three sons named after himself—Henri, Louis and Auguste. The marquis fled abroad with his second son Louis at the time of the emigration of the nobles. He entered the service of Great Britain, and died in San Domingo in 1802.
Henri, comte de La Rochejacquelein, born at Dubertien, near Châtillon, sur Sèvres, on the 20th of August 1772, did not emigrate with his father. He served in the constitutional guard of the king, and remained in Paris till the execution of Louis XVI. He then took refuge with the marquis de Lescure on his own estates in Poitou. When the anti-clerical policy of the revolutionary powers provoked the rising of the peasantry of La Vendée, he put himself at the head of the men of his neighbourhood, and came rapidly to the front among the gentlemen whom the peasants took for leaders. In spite of his youth and his reluctance to assume the responsibility, he was chosen as commander-in-chief after the defeat of the Vendéans by the republicans at Cholet. His brilliant personal courage, his amiability and his loyalty to the cause make him a very attractive figure, but a commander-in-chief of the Vendéans, who came and went as they pleased, had little real power or opportunity to display the qualities of a general. The comte de La Rochejacquelein had in fact to obey his army, and could only display his personal valour in action. He could not avert the mistaken policy which led to the rout at Le Mans, and was finally shot in an obscure skirmish at Nouaillé on the 4th of March 1794.
Louis, marquis de La Rochejacquelein, the younger brother of Henri, accompanied his father in the emigration, served in the army of Condé, and entered the service of England in America. He returned to France during the Consulate, and in 1801 married the marquise de Lescure, widow of his brother’s friend, who was mortally wounded at Cholet. Marie Louise Victoire de Donnissan, born at Versailles on the 25th of October 1772, belonged to a court family and was the god-daughter of Mme Victoire, daughter of Louis XV. At the age of seventeen she married the marquis de Lescure, whom she accompanied in the war of La Vendée. After his death she went through various adventures recorded in her memoirs, first published at Bordeaux in 1815. They are of extreme interest, and give a remarkable picture of the war and the fortunes of the royalists. She saved much of her own property and her first husband’s, when a conciliatory policy was adopted after the fall of the Terrorists. After her second marriage she lived with her husband on her estates, both refusing all offers to take service with Napoleon. In 1814 they took an active part in the royalist movement in and about Bordeaux. In 1815 the marquis endeavoured to bring about another Vendéan rising for the king, and was shot in a skirmish with the Imperialist forces at the Pont des Marthes on the 4th of June 1815. The marquis died at Orleans in 1857.
Their eldest son, Henri Auguste Georges, marquis de La Rochejacquelein, born at Château Citran in the Gironde on the 28th of September 1805, was educated as a soldier, served in Spain in 1822, and as a volunteer in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828. During the reign of Louis Philippe he adhered to the legitimist policy of his family, but he became reconciled to the government of Napoleon III. and was mainly known as a clerical orator and philanthropist. He died on the 7th of January 1867.
His son and successor, Julien Marie Gaston, born at Chartres on the 27th of March 1833, was an active legitimist deputy in the Assembly chosen at the close of the German War of 1870-1871. He was a strong opponent of Thiers, and continued to contest constituencies as a legitimist with varying fortunes till his death in 1897.