LA ROCHEFOUCAULD-LIANCOURT, FRANgOIS ALEXANDRE FREDERIC, DUC DE (1747-1827), French social reformer, was born at La Roche Guyon on Jan. 11, the son of Francois Armand de La Rochefoucauld, duc d'Estissac. The duc de Liancourt became an officer of carbineers, and married at seventeen. He established a model farm at Liancourt, where he reared cattle imported from England and Switzerland. He also founded a school of arts and crafts for the sons of soldiers, which became in 1788 the Ecole des Enfants de la Patrie. Elected to the states-general of 1789 he became President of the Assembly on July 18. Established in command of a military division in Normany, he offered Louis a refuge in Rouen, and, failing in this effort, assisted him with a large sum of money. After the events of Aug. so, 1792, he fled to England, and thence to America. After the assassination of his cousin, Louis Alexandre, duc de La Roche f oucauld d'Enville, in September 1792 he assumed the title of duc de La Rochefoucauld. He returned to Paris in 1799, and at the Restoration he entered the House of Peers. Successive gov ernments, revolutionary and otherwise, recognized the value of his institutions at Liancourt, and he was for twenty-three years government inspector of his school of arts and crafts, which had been removed to Chalons. He was one of the first promoters of vaccination in France, and he was an active member of the central boards of administration for hospitals, prisons and agriculture.
His opposition to the government in the House of Peers led to his removal in 1823 from the honorary positions he held. His works, chiefly on economic questions, include books on the English system of taxation, poor-relief and education. He died on March 24, 1827.
His eldest son, FRANcOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD succeeded his father in the House of Peers. The second, ALEXANDRE, COMTE DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (1767-1841) , married a San Domingo heiress allied to the Beauharnais family. Mme. de La Rochefoucauld became dame d'honneur to the empress Josephine, and their eldest daughter married a brother-in-law of Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese. La Rochefoucauld became ambassador successively to Vienna (18o5) and to The Hague (1808-10), where he negotiated the union of Holland with France. During the "Hundred Days" he was made a peer of France. He subsequently devoted himself to phil anthropic work, and in 1822 became deputy to the Chamber and sat with the constitutional royalists. He was again raised to the peerage in 1831.
The third son, FREDERIC GAETAN, MARQUIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD LIANCOURT wrote on social questions, notably on prison administration; he edited the works of La Rochefoucauld, and the memoirs of Condorcet; and he was the author of some vaudevilles, tragedies and poems. See A. de Castellane, Gentilshommes democrates; Les deux La Rochefoucauld, etc. (1891).