FLOQUET, CHARLES THOMAS French statesman, was born at St. Jean-Pied-de-Port (Basses-Pyrenees) on Oct. 2, 1828. He was called to the bar in 1851, and made his name by his fearless attacks on the government in a series of political trials. When the tsar Alexander II. visited the Palais de Justice in 1867, Floquet was said to have confronted him with the cry "Vive la Pologne, monsieur!" He delivered a scathing indictment of the Empire at the trial of Pierre Bonaparte for kill ing Victor Noir in 1870, and took part in the revolution of Sept. 4. In 1871 he was elected to the national assembly by the depart ment of the Seine. During the Commune he formed the Ligue d'union republicaine des droits de Paris to attempt a reconciliation with the government of Versailles. He was imprisoned for a short time after the fall of the Commune. Floquet edited the Repub lique f rancaise, was president of the municipal council, and en tered the Chamber of Deputies in 1876. In 1885 he succeeded M. Brisson as president of the chamber. On the fall of the Tirard cabinet in 1888 he became president of the council and minister of the interior in a radical ministry pledged to secure the revision of the constitution. Heated debates in the chamber during the Boulangist agitation culminated on July 13 in a duel between Floquet and Boulanger in which the latter was wounded. In Feb. 1889 the government fell on the question of revision, and in the new chamber of November Floquet was re-elected to the presi dential chair. Implicated in the Panama scandals he lost the presi dency of the chamber in 1892, and his seat in the house in but in 1894 was elected to the senate. He died in Paris on Jan. 18, 1896.
See Discours et opinions de M. Charles Floquet, ed. A. Faivre (1885).