GRAMONT. ANTOINE-AGÉNOR-ALFRED de, prince of BIDACHE, duke of GUICHE. - French minister, b. 14 Aug. 1819 in Paris, d. there 18 Jan. 1880. Having allied himself with Luigi Napoleone Bonaparte, after the coup d’état he became minister plenipotentiary at Cassel, at Stuttgart (March 1852), and at Turin (Jan. 1853).
He remained at the latter post for more than four years and took part in the negotiations that led to Piedmont’s entry into the Anglo-French alliance and to Sardinian participation in the Crimean War. He subsequently went to Rome, where he remained until 1861. Ambassador in Vienna from 1861 to 1870, he then moved to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War was due in large part to his inept conduct during the candidacy of Leopoldo di Hohenzollern for the throne of Spain. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, in 1870 he informed the court of Rome of the withdrawal of French troops from the Papal States and unsuccessfully sought an Austro-Italian-French triple alliance. After the fall of the Second Empire, he vainly attempted to justify his conduct during its final crisis, but his assertions were unanimously contradicted.