Paul de Flotte

Naval officer and June insurgent, elected socialist deputy for Paris in 1850, killed with Garibaldi

Born at Landerneau in 1817, he graduated from the naval school and became a naval officer. From 1836 to 1840 he sailed on two voyages round the world, under Du Petit-Thouars and Dumont d'Urville, and became a lieutenant in 1846. He worked on the screw propeller for steamships. An admirer of Fourier, he was won over to revolutionary and socialist ideas and spoke in the revolutionary clubs after February 1848. He sided with the insurgents in June and was deported to Belle-Île. Freed in 1849, he was elected socialist deputy for the Seine in the by-election of March 1850. Expelled after the coup, he came back under a false name, and in 1860 joined Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand and was killed in the landing in Calabria.

Also known as: Louis François René Paul de Flotte · Deflotte