LA VALETTE, CHARLES-JEAN-MARIE-FÉLIX, marquis de. – French politician and diplomat, b. 12 Nov. 1806 at Senlis (Oise), d. 2 May 1881 at Paris. A diplomat under Louis-Philippe, he was secretary of embassy at Stockholm in 1837, consul-general at Alexandria in Egypt in 1841, and minister plenipotentiary at Cassel (Hesse). Elected deputy in 1846, he retired from public life in 1848. In 1851, President of the Republic Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte appointed him minister to Constantinople and charged him with energetically urging the Sultan to grant satisfaction to Catholics regarding the Holy Places question.
He immediately found himself in conflict with Tsar Nicholas I, who from St. Petersburg personally directed political action; and, given the growing acrimony of this dispute, the Foreign Minister Drouyn de Lhuys recalled La V. in March 1853. Appointed senator in June of the same year, he returned to Constantinople as ambassador in 1860. In December 1861 he succeeded the Duke of Grammont as ambassador to the Holy See.
La V. was indifferent in religious matters (his Journal describes him as downright Voltairean), had married a Protestant, and made no secret of his desire to bring the Roman Question to an end through energetic policy, fully satisfying the demands of the Kingdom of Italy. He bluntly set out the line of conduct of his government, so that, compared with other heads of mission, he was not entirely unwelcome to Pius IX, who considered him “the only French ambassador who had never deceived him.” After the fall of Minister Thouvenel, he left Rome and was replaced by La Tour d’Auvergne. Minister of the Interior from 1865 to 1867 and of Foreign Affairs from 1868 to 1869, he was appointed ambassador to London, where he remained until 3 Jan. 1870.