ROCHBFORT, Henri, 66-re rash-for (VICTOR HENRI, MARQUIS DE (Ay), French journalist and politician: b. Paris, 30 Jan_ 1830; d. 1 July 1913. He became known as the author of successful vaudevilles and farces and as a contributor to Chorivari, Figaro and other Parisian periodicals, wherein his political reviews were marked by a brilliancy of wit and audacity of attack that brought upon him the resentment of the government. His assaults on Napoleon III led the emperor to demand his expulsion from the staff of Figaro. Rochefort thereupon (1868) founded a weekly of his own, /a Lanterne, in which he continued his assaults on the government with unrivaled weapons of sarcasm and ridicule, be neath which the emperor and his ministers were helpless. The Lanterne attained an enormous circulation and when the editor was forced by repeated sentences of the courts to take refuge in Belgium, he continued its publication in a spirit all the more acrimonious. In 1869 he was elected to the Corps Legislatif and established the Marseillaise with the professed object of combating the Second Empire. In January 1870 he was imprisoned for inciting to insurrec tion. After the fall of the empire he became a member of the government of national de fense, but was out of sympathy with the con servative tendencies of that body and strongly inclined to the radical element that afterward brought forth the Commune. In May 1871
Rochefort fled from Paris, but was captured and sentenced by a court-martial to deporta tion. In 1873 he was transported to New Cale donia, but escaped in the following year, lived in Belgium and Switzerland and renewed the publication of the Lanterne. In 1880 he returned to Paris and founded the Intransigeant, a peri odical of virulent protest He was deputy in 1885-86, became an ardent supporter of Boul anger and in 1889 was sentenced to imprison ment, but escaped to England. He returned under amnesty in 1895 and attracted public at tention as one of the most violent opponents of Captain Dreyfus (q.v.) in that celebrated affair. He published 'Les francais de la deca dence' (1866) ; 'La grande Boherne) (1867); 'Les petites mysteres de l'Hotel des Ventes' (1862) ; 'Les naufrageurs' (1876) ; 'L'Evade (1880); 'Les (1882); Napoleon dernier> (1884) • 'Les Aventures de ma Vie' (Paris 1896). Consult Macdonald, J. F., 'Per sonal Recollections of Rochefort> (in Con temporary Review, Vol. CIV, London 1913).