LEDRU-ROLLIN, ALEXANDRE AUGUSTE (1807 1874), French lawyer politician, was the grandson of Nicolas Philippe Ledru, the celebrated quack doctor known as "Comus" under Louis XIV., and was born in a house that was once Scar ron's, at Fontenay-aux-Roses (Seine), on Feb. 2, 1807. He was called to the bar, and was retained for the Republican defence in most of the great political trials of the years 5830-40. He was elected deputy for Le Mans in 1841 with hardly a dissentient voice; but for the violence of his electoral speeches he was tried at Angers and sentenced to four months' imprisonment and a fine, against which he appealed successfully on a technical point. He made a rich and romantic marriage in 1843, and in 1846 disposed of his charge at the Court of Cassation to give his time entirely to politics. He was now the recognized leader of the working men of France. He had more authority in the country than in the Chamber, where the violence of his oratory diminished its effect. He asserted that the fortifications of Paris were directed against liberty, not against foreign invasion, and he stigmatized the law of regency (1842) as an audacious usurpation. He founded La Reforme in which to advance his propaganda. Between Ledru Rollin and Odilon Barrot with the other chiefs of the "dynastic Left" there were acute differences, hardly dissimulated even during the temporary alliance which produced the campaign of the ban quets in 1848. Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine then held the tribune in the Chamber of Deputies until the Parisian populace stopped serious discussion by invading the Chamber. He was minister of the interior in the provisional government, and was also a mem ber of the executive committee appointed by the Constituent Assembly, from which Louis Blanc and the extremists were ex cluded. At the crisis of May 15 he definitely sided with Lamartine and the party of order against the proletariat.
After this he never regained his influence with the working classes, who considered they had been betrayed. At the presiden tial election in December he secured only 370,000 votes. His opposition to the policy of Louis Napoleon, especially his Roman policy, led to his moving the impeachment of the president and his ministers. The motion was defeated, and next day (June 13, 1849) he headed what he called a peaceful demonstration, and his enemies armed insurrection. He himself escaped to London where he joined the executive of the revolutionary committee of Europe, with Kossuth and Mazzini among his col leagues. He was accused of complicity in an obscure attempt (1857) against the life of Napoleon III., and condemned in his absence to deportation. Emile 011ivier removed the exceptions from the general amnesty in 187o, and Ledru-Rollin returned to France after twenty years of exile. Though elected in 1871 in three departments he refused to sit in the National Assembly, and took no serious part in politics until 1874, when he was re turned to the Assembly as member for Vaucluse. He died on Dec. 31, 1874.
Under Louis Philippe he made large contributions to French jurisprudence, editing the Journal du palais, 1791-1837 (27 vols., 1837), and 1837-1847 (17 vols.), with a commentary Repertoire general de la jurisprudence francaise (8 vols., 1843-48), the introduc tion to which was written by himself. His later writings were political in character. See Ledru-Rollin, ses discours et ses ecrits politiques (2 vols., Paris, 1879), edited by his widow ; A. R. Calman, Ledru Rollin and the Second French Republic (New York, 1922) ; A. R. Calman, Ledru-Rollin apres 1848 et les proscrits francais en Angleterre (1921).