GORCE, PIERRE de la. - French historian, born at Vannes on 29 June 1846, died on 2 Jan. 1934. He studied at the Institut St-Jean in Douai and at the University of Paris, where he graduated in law in 1870. He then entered the magistracy, but after the promulgation in 1880 of the decrees suppressing the religious Congregations, he resigned because, being a convinced Catholic, he did not intend to participate either directly or indirectly in the execution of decrees profoundly repugnant to his conscience.
He therefore devoted himself to historical studies and investigated with particular diligence French history from the Revolution onwards. His first work was a history of the Second Republic (Histoire de la seconde République française, 2 vols., Paris 1887), followed by a comprehensive account of the Second Empire (Histoire du second Empire, 7 vols., ibid. 1894-1905). The history of the Restoration and of the July Monarchy was examined by him in three biographies devoted to the sovereigns of the period (Louis XVIII, ibid. 1926; Charles X, ibid. 1929; Louis-Philippe, ibid. 1931). On the relations between Church and State during the Revolution, and more generally on the Catholic religion in France in this period, he published the still fundamental Histoire religieuse de la Révolution Française (5 vols., ibid. 1905-23), the fruit of patient research in the national and departmental archives.