Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

France state institutions Russian revolutionary democrats 1807–1874 ○ Natural causes

Radical republican leader of La Réforme, minister of the interior in 1848 and leader of the Mountain (Democratic Socialists) in 1849

Born in Paris in 1807, he made his name defending republicans in political trials and was elected deputy for Le Mans in 1841. He founded La Réforme, and his banquet speeches at Lille, Dijon and Chalon in 1847 heralded the revolution. As minister of the interior in the Provisional Government he put universal suffrage into working order and he sat on the Executive Commission, but on 15 May he sided with Lamartine and lost the workers' trust. He won some 370,000 votes in the presidential election of December, and in 1849 led the Mountain to about 25 percent of the vote. When his motion to impeach the president over the Roman expedition failed, he led the demonstration of 13 June; after its defeat he fled to London for more than twenty years. Amnestied in 1870, he was elected for Vaucluse in 1874.