Henri Rochefort

Victor Henri Rochefort, Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay (French pronunciation: [viktɔʁ ɑ̃ʁi ʁɔʃfɔʁ maʁki də ʁɔʃfɔʁ lysɛ]; 30 January 1831 – 30 June 1913) was a French writer of vaudevilles and politician. He was born in Paris and died in Aix-les-Bains.

Life

His father was a Legitimist noble who, as Edmond Rochefort, was well known as a writer of vaudevilles; his mother's views were republican. After experience as a medical student, a clerk at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, a playwright and a journalist, he joined the staff of Le Figaro in 1863; but a series of his articles, afterwards published as Les Français de la décadence (3 vols., 1866–68), brought the paper into collision with the authorities and caused the termination of his engagement.

In collaboration with different dramatists he had meanwhile written a long series of successful vaudevilles, which began with the Monsieur bien mis at the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques in 1856. On leaving Le Figaro Rochefort determined to start a paper of his own, La Lanterne. The paper was seized on its eleventh appearance, and in August 1868 Rochefort was fined 10,000 francs, with a year's imprisonment.

He then published his paper in Brussels, whence it was smuggled into France. Printed in French, English, Spanish, Italian and German, it went the round of Europe. After a second prosecution he fled to Belgium. A series of duels, of which the most famous was one fought with Paul de Cassagnac à propos of an article on Joan of Arc, kept Rochefort in the public eye.