Alexandre Marie

France state institutions Liberalism and republicanism 1795–1870 ○ Natural causes

Minister of public works in 1848 who opened the National Workshops and rebuffed the workers on the eve of the June Days

Born at Auxerre in the Yonne in 1795, he made his name as a lawyer in political trials, among them Cabet's, and in 1842 was elected deputy for Paris in the dynastic opposition. On 24 February 1848 he was the first to propose a provisional government in the Chamber, and as its minister of public works he organised the National Workshops, which, in his own words, were meant to set "altar against altar" against Louis Blanc's socialism. Elected to the Executive Commission in May, he harshly turned away the delegation led by Pujol that came to protest against sending the workshop men to the Sologne, words that pushed the workers to revolt. Under Cavaignac he was minister of justice and brought in the press law of August 1848. Defeated in 1849, he returned to the bar and sat in the Legislative Body from 1863 to 1869.

Also known as: Alexandre-Pierre-Thomas-Amable Marie de Saint-Georges