Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

[1] He had just begun to practice at the Parisian bar before the Revolution of July 1830 and was retained for the Republican defence in most of the great political trials of the next ten years.

He was elected deputy for Le Mans in 1841 with little opposition; but the violence of his electoral speeches led to his being tried at Angers and sentenced to four months' imprisonment and a fine, against which he appealed successfully on a technical point.

Under Louis Philippe he made large contributions to French jurisprudence, editing the Journal du palais, 1791–1837 (27 you., 1837) and 1837–1847 (17 vols.

Between Ledru-Rollin and Odilon Barrot with the other chiefs of the "dynastic Left" there were acute differences, hardly dissimulated even during the temporary alliance which produced the campaign of the banquets.

[further explanation needed] It was the speeches of Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc at working-men's banquets in Lille, Dijon and Chalons that heralded the revolution of 1848.

He was minister of the interior in the provisional government, and was also a member of the executive committee appointed by the Constituent Assembly, from which Louis Blanc and the extremists were excluded.

Ledru-Rollin himself escaped to London where he joined the executive of the revolutionary committee of Europe, with Lajos Kossuth and Giuseppe Mazzini among his colleagues.