Andre-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat

Born the November 30th 1746, Andre-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat is wire of the banker ship-owner Jacques-Alexandre Laffon de Ladebat with Bordeaux. It makes its studies in Holland at the Protestant University of Franeker.

In 1763, of return in France after a stay in England, it starts by working in the businesses of naval armament of his father and is invested much in the development of an experimental farm with Pessac > Voir Web site on the experimental farm of Pessac in the Gironde and in the beginning of the clearing of the Landes of Bordeaux; at the same time it takes an active part in work of the Academy of Science of Bordeaux like to the Academy of Painting and Sculpture which it will chair. It is characterized by several communications on finances and the political economy. In particular in 1788 he is noticed by his famous Discours on the need and the means of destroying the Esclavage in the colonies , which will be published and read a few years later during the meeting with the legislative Assemblée and will be exploited by the Company of the Friends of the Blacks with which it will be associated to read the text of the speech of Andre-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat.

Political commitment

Austere Protestant and integrates, Andre-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat occupies himself until 1789 of the businesses of naval armament of his family in Bordeaux, of the management of an experimental farm with Pessac, while taking part in various academies of Bordeaux. In May 1789, it is indicated by the Tiers state, although noble, with the General states; as he refuses to dislocate himself to represent the nobility of his department, he is invalidated Election with the General states. Member of the executive Directory of the the Gironde in 1790, it is elected Député of this department to the legislative Parliament where it joined the moderate party of the “Breaking into leaf”; he chairs the Committee of finances and assumes the chairmanship of the Parliament in June 1792. June 20th, 1792, at the time of the riots to the Tuileries, it takes the defense of the king and his family, which will be worth to him to be arrested and imprisoned to the Carmelite friars next in December.

Slackened at the beginning of the Convention, he is again imprisoned under the Terreur; he escapes from accuracy from the revolutionary Tribunal because one needed his credit to ensure the financing of the subsistence. Appointed administrator of the Case of Discount, ancestor of the Banque de France, it will be associated then liquidator with the Territorial Bank.

President of the Council of Old of the Directory

He is elected by the Gironde appointed with the Council of Old. He will sit with the moderate republicans who, with the constitutional monarchists and the royalists soon will constitute the majority of the two assemblies opposed to the Directors. A character as represented to him a real danger to the men in place “compromised, or corrupted or rotted” according to Carnot, and having large financial needs. Its personal honesty, its rigorous and austere side protesting thus made of it a serious rival for the men of the Directory. He is President of the Council of Old at the time of the Coup d'etat of the 18 fructidor year V (September 4th, 1797) organized by the three directors: Barred, Réveillière and Rewbell.

Political deportation in Guyana

Imprisoned with the Prison of the Temple with fifteen other moderate or royalist deputies (of which the Pichegru general) it is 51 years old when it is off-set without judgment with the Guyana. The voyage by ground of Paris with Rochefort out of iron cages, then by sea towards Cayenne in the holds of the corvette Valiant the , under particularly inhuman conditions, will last more than two months. Then parked like cattle on this remote ground with the disastrous reputation, one will let them stagnate several months and some more than two years in the unhealthy marshes and deserted and inhospitable savannas of Sinnamary. A deportee on two never returned from there. Andre-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat will escape from accuracy from dead but will remain more than two years with Sinnamary.

Return in France

It returns to France in February 1800, pardoned by the First Consul. As of its return he is requested by several departments to represent them with the Senate but there remains suspect with the First Consul who will always reproach him for having denounced the exactions of the Bonaparte general in Italy and requested little time before fructidor its dismissal; moreover the Consul was wary of this kind of perfect honest not involved man who had not even managed to grow rich like much under the Directory, and expressed far too much spirit of independence. The First Consul considered that such a man could not appear in his Senate and striped his name of all the lists. Laffon de Ladebat was thus only deportees of fructidor to having to move away from the policy to return to the trade and the private life all while engaging in other forms of social utility.

“In arbitrary monarchy, anarchy jacobine, directorial confusion and the military despotism I did not see that the contempt of the people” wrote it to explain its abstention from now on from any political commitment. While taking the direction of the Territorial Bank as well as the responsibility for the final liquidation of the Case of Discount which was entrusted to him for its financial competence recognized, he endeavoured to cure the damage which its deportation in its business had caused. It was necessary for him to recover the remainders of its dispersed or confiscated goods and, in particular, to obtain compensations for the requisition for the Indies for the one for the vessels for the family armament, Sartine . That one even which, appears it, had stopped on its return with Barras the wearing of Marseilles.

During the Restauration it more did not meet the favor of the Bourbons, that besides it never begged.

Philanthropic activities

It contributed then to the creation and the development of philanthropic institution and Savings banks then. In 1818 one finds it President of the Protestant Company of Precaution and of Mutual Helps and, as a member of the Company of Christian morals it is in 1821 with the number of the founders with Auguste de Staël and Charles de Rémusat of the “Committee for the abolition of the draft of the blacks and slavery” the same year, after a stay in England where it will study the new systems of industrial engineering and Community set up by Robert Owen at New-Lanark, it translates into French and foreword a work of Henry Grey Macnab who reports and analyzes these experiments pionnières intended for the “Relief and most useful use of the classes workers and of the poor, and for the education of their children” Finally little time before its death, which has occurred on October 14th, 1829 it gathers the notes which it took during its deportation with Sinnamary and which will be published only in 1912 pennies the title “Newspaper of my deportation in the French Guiana, fructidor year V - ventôse year VIII.

Andre-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat died the October 14th 1829 at the age of almost eighty-three years. Its funeral praise was pronounced by Guizot with the Father-Lachaise where it rests beside his wife and some of her children (division 39) Tomb of Andre-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat with the cemetery of the Father-Lachaise. The town of Bordeaux offered to its family a medal carrying on the face its profile and to the reverse the inscription: “With the Deputy honoured twice with the votes of its fellow-citizens, who defended with courage the laws and freedoms, proscribes the 18 fructidor year V, man of good which devoted its life to the public utility, with progress of the religion, morals and the lights”.

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