A Noted Frenchman

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 37, 9 December 1893, Page 7

A Noted Frenchman

A STRANGE CAREER. M. Eochefort, who has just lately Ibeen amnestied for a second time by a French Republican Government, and who has consequently returned to Paris from London, whither he tied in 1889 because of his complicity with Oeneral Boulanyer, is unquestionably (writes the Sydney Town and Country Journal) the most lively newspaper writer and the most cantankerous and unscrupulous man in France.

M. Rochefort, -who, though a bitter radical, is an authentic marquis of long descent, was born in 1830, was before he was 30 a successful writer of vaudevilles, and by 1863 was earning over £I,OOO a year —great pay for France —as a contributor to the Figaro. The Figaro found, after a few years that it must get rid of M. Rochefort’s brilliant anti - Imperial tirades, or suffer the worst that the -police could do. This led to M. Rochetort’s starting on his own account La lianterne, the first issue of which was sold to the extent of 80,000 copies, and w Inch was only permitted to run for a few days in Paris when, in consequence of its violent, attacks on the Imperial family, its headquarters had to be transferred to Brussels. It sold to the number of thousands and thousands, and its notoriety involved its founder in several duels, in two of which, with Prince Achille Murat and with M. Paul de Cassagnac, he was severely wounded. The fame of La lianterne also secured its leading spirit’s election for Paris to the Corps legislatif. Rochefort’s parliamentary career under the Empire, which, as it began in 1869, only lasted a few months, was stormy and in consequence of fresh newspaper indiscretions, was ended by imprisonment. Before the Imperial Government jfinallly consigned Rochefort to the prison of Sainte Pelagic he had managed to provoke the quarrel during which Prince Pierre Bonaparte shot Victor Noir, and he had narrowlj” missed precipitating a revolution in Baris by organising a demonstration to commemorate the death of Baudin, the deputy who was killed on the barricades in 1751 when resisting lonis Napoleon's Coup d’etat. At the Baudin anniversary, as on certain other occasions during his eventful life, notably in some of his duels, M. Rochefort showed a lack of nerve ; lie dissuaded the mob which he had raised from provoking a conflict and refused to enter central Paris with his adherents. The fall of the Empire gave M. Rochefort his liberty and during the Prussian siege of Paris he was ' for a time Chief of the Commission of Barricades organised by the defence. Under the Commune be w-as incapable of restraining himself fiom sujrporting in a new paper which he had started the most violent measures, and so upon the triumph of the party of order he had to take to Right. He was captured, and after 1

many delays transported to New Caledonia in 1873, whence he escaped in 1874, sojourning briefly in Sydney on his way back to Europe, Rochefort, with Grousset, Olivier Pain, Jourde, JBalliere, and Granville, left New Caledonia in a boat, and after some exposure boarded an Australian bound barque. Upon the exile’s return to Europe he visited Ireland and London, and then settled in Geneva. The amnesty to the communists in 1880 permitted him to return to Paris, where he wrote articles and had occasional duels until he once more had in 1889 to\ seek asylum in London. M. Rochefort was not made so much of as he expected during his various exiles in British lands, and' 1 hence probably a rabid spite that he has from time to time displayed. In 1884 the companion of his New Caledonian flight. Olivier Pain, disappeared in the Soudan, whither he (Pain) had gone with the alleged intention of joining the Madhi. Rochefort chose J f") to assert in his paper, L Intransigeant that Pain had been murdered by the British. He got a discharged interpreter of the British army, one Selikovitch, to back him up in his story ; and he persisted in it, despite the plainest evidence that the whole thing originated in a malicious invention. During this time Rochefort, for no very evident motive except mischief and spite, did his best to get up a war between Prance and England. He threatened to lead a mob against the British Embassy, and he also published incitements to the mob against British journalists in Paris who ventured to contradict him. Another sample of Rochefort’s methods was his attack on General de Gallixet, one of the principal suppressors of the commune. Rochefort had suffered by that suppression, and revenged himself by spreading a statement that General de Gallifet had, when a boy, stolen his mother’s (Mme. de Gallifet’s) diamonds. The general, who was a noted duellist, met this attack by causing it to he reported as coming from him that he only knew of one thing of which he need Jbe ashamed—he had once M. Rochefort in his power, and had nut put him against a wall and shot him. If M. Rochefort had given him another chance he wou 1 d repair that error. M. Rochefort in his private capacity is an indefatigable attendant of races, and a hunter for pictures and bric-a-brac at auction sales. He can g’et money to supply bis tastes in these directions, because his name appended to a leading article will make any extreme republican paper g@. His radical leading articles are the most caustic and telling abuse ; but on almost any other topics, such as art, literature, or social affairs he can write as pleasantly and instructively as can people who have never studied anything else. He is doubtless by this time once more in the full tide of Parisian journalism ; hut although he will always get his price he is not the power he was when his Lanternc gave the Second Empire one of the heaviest of the blows that led to its eventual ruin. He has abused evexyone too impartially for people to have much confidence in his judgement. He has at various times attacked the Republic, to which he should he favourable, and Queen Victoria, towards whom he might he neutral, as bitterly as ever he did the Empress Eugenie, the Church, the Prussians, Napoleon 111., or any of his pet aversions. The only times he ever had anything favourable to say he unfortunately selected for his laudations the sanguinary tyranny of the Commune and the montebank propaganda of General Boulanger.