LA GUÉRONNIÈRE, LOUIS-ÉTIENNE-ARTHUR DUBREUIL HÉLION, viscount of. - French writer and politician, b. 6 Apr. 1816 at Dorat (Haute-Vienne), d. 23 Dec. 1875 in Paris. He took up journalism at the age of 19 with the Avenir national of Limoges, moved in 1848 to the Presse, then to the Pays, of which he was for some time editor-in-chief; there he began a series of political portraits, the first being that of Luigi Napoleone Bonaparte, favourable to the subject.
Although he had protested against the coup d'état of 2 Dec. 1851, he soon drew close to Bonaparte and, after an interview with Morny, accepted the candidacy offered him in the government's name and was elected deputy in Feb. 1852. He unreservedly supported the government in the columns of the Constitutionnel and the Pays, and voted in favour of the restoration of the Empire. In 1854 he was appointed member of the Council of State and director-general of the press at the Ministry of the Interior. A highly influential adviser to the Emperor, he wrote in Feb. 1859 the pamphlet L'empereur Napoléon III et l'Italie, in which he maintained the necessity of an Italian confederation presided over by the Pope, and toward the end of the same year Le Pape et le Congrès, aimed at reducing the temporal power of the Pontiff to the
city of Rome alone. Senator in 1861, ambassador to Brussels (1868) and Constantinople (1870), he continued his activity even after the fall of the Second Empire.