ANTRAIGUES, EMMANUEL HENRI LOUIS ALEXANDRE DE LAUNAY, COMTE D' French publicist and political adventurer, was a nephew of Francois Emmanuel de Saint-Priest (1735-1821), one of the last min isters of Louis XVI. During the emigration he was the secret agent of the Comte de Provence (Louis XVIII.) at different courts of Europe, and at the same time received money from the courts he visited. At Venice, where he was attache to the Russian legation, he was arrested in 1797, but escaped to Russia. Sent as Russian attaché to Dresden, he published a violent pamphlet against Napoleon I., and was expelled by the Saxon Government. He then went to London, and it was universally believed that he betrayed the secret articles of the Treaty of Tilsit to the Brit ish Cabinet, but his biographer, Pingaud, contests this. In 1812, he and his wife Madame Saint-Huberty, an operatic singer, were assassinated by a servant whom they had dismissed.
See H. Vaschalde, Notice bibliographique sur Louis Alexandre de Launay, comte d'Antraigues, sa vie et ses oeuvres; Leonce Pingaud, Un Agent secret sous la revolution et l'empire, le comte d'Antraigues (Paris, 1893) ; Edouard de Goncourt, La Saint-Huberty et l'opera an siecle.