La Valette, Charles-Jean-Marie-Félix, Marquis of

LA VALETTE, Charles-Jean-Marie-Félix, Marquis of. - French politician and diplomat, b. 25 Nov. 1806 at Senlis (Oise), d. 2 May 1881 in Paris. A diplomat under Louis Philippe, he was embassy secretary in Stockholm in 1837, consul general in Alexandria, Egypt in 1841, and minister plenipotentiary in Cassel (Hesse). Elected deputy on 1 Aug. 1846, he retired to private life in 1848. In 1851 he was appointed minister to Constantinople by the President of the Republic, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, and was charged with forcefully impressing upon the Sultan the need to give satisfaction to Catholics in the question of the Holy Places.

He immediately found himself in conflict with Tsar Nicholas I himself, who from St. Petersburg personally directed political action, and given the bitterness this conflict was assuming, the Foreign Minister Drouyn de Lhuys, in March 1853, recalled La V. Appointed senator in June of the same year, he returned to Constantinople as ambassador in 1860. In Dec. 1861 he succeeded the Duke of Grammont as ambassador to the Holy See. La V. was indifferent in matters of religion (l'Ideville in his Journal even calls him a Voltairean), had married a Protestant, and made no secret of his determination to put an end to the Roman question through energetic policy, fully satisfying the demands of the Kingdom of Italy. He set forth his government's line of conduct bluntly, so that, in comparison with other heads of mission, he was not entirely unwelcome to Pius IX, who considered him "the only ambassador of France 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.