ROCHEFORT-LITCAY, VICTOR HENRI, Comte de; b. Paris, 1830; of a distin guished family, some of whom had been chancellors of France. His fattier was pr, Pounced royalist; but his mother, a radical sympathizer with political progress' of a.l kinds, educated Henri to abhor caste under whatever guise. He was a timid youth of feeble health but of rare nervous and mental power. Soon after his graduation he became the sole support of his mother and three sisters, finding employment in a gov ernment office in 1851. At this time he was engaged to write theatrical criticisms for the Clta-riva-ri, where he-made himself felt by the vigor of his style, and became a favor ite by his brilliant social qualities and wit free from malice. In 1860 baron Hausemann procured him an appointment and an improved salary. In 1863 he became one of the editors of the Fi'garo, where his style was recognized as that of an editorial master and he signed his articles with his full name. In 1866 he began those rigorous thrusts at the Napoleonic government which caused the paper to be interdicted until the publisher dropped Rochefort from its editorial staff. He then collected his political articles and published them in volumes entitled Francais de la Decadence in 1866, La Grande Bohente, 1867, and Signes du. Temps, 1868. The repeal of the most arbitary restrictions on the press in 1868 enabled Rochefort to start a journal of his own called the Lanterne, a. weekly which soon obtained an immense circulation, and brought the government's• friends to his attack by law, by defamation, and by personal violence. The 11th num ber was seized, the editor arrested and convicted of disrespect of the government, men- , tented to a year in prison, a fine of 10,000 francs, and deprivation of civil and political rights. He escaped to Brussels, continued the publication of the Lanterne there; and spite of the most rigorous police exclusion it was largely read in France; and by trans lations made into English, German, and Italian papers its articles came into France in a thousand ways. In 1869 a district in Paris nominated him for the legislative assembly,
when Jules Gr12,yy was elected. The same year lie was permitted to return to Paris by dis continuing the Lanterne, when he was elected to the assembly and took his seat Dec., 1869. He there exhibited his disposition to overthrow the government; started the Ma•selluise, in a similar style to the Lanterne, and attracted the animosity that led Pierre Bonaparte to murder his associate editor Victor Noi•. For editorials immediately following this outrage he was again sent to prison, but permitted to appear as a witness at the trial of Pierre Bonaparte, where his testimony was given with an unexpected moderation of lan guage. On the break-up of the imperial government following the French defeats in 1870, Rochefort gained his liberty and became a member of the provisional government. After the capitulation of Paris, Jan., 1871, he founded the Not d'Ordre, which defended' Gambetta's policy. Elected to the national assembly at Bordeaux, lie remarked that "this time the republicans shall not be juggled out of the republic." He imagined Thiers not friendly to a republic; and finding his influence, and that of persons still less friendly, predominating, he resumed the direction of his journal in Paris and threw him ' self into the movement to organize in the capital a government opposed to that in Ver sailles. The organizers of that government had no sympathy with the wild spirit of destructiveness which ruled in Paris after its defeat, but they were held responsible the consequences. After the surrender of Paris to the national troops, Rochefort was tried and condemned for his action, sent to prison, and two years later sent to the penaD colony of New Caledonia in the Pacific. He escaped with friends in 1874, returned via San Francisco, New York, and London, and revived•the Lanterne in Geneva, Switzer land. The general amnesty of July 11, 1880, permitted his return to Paris, where lie has established a journal named L'Intransigeunt.