Antraigues

Antraigues, EMANUEL DELAUNAY, COMTE D', a great politician, with a very ambiguous character, was born at Villeneuve de Berg, in the department Ardèche, in 1755. His talents were first displayed in his Mémoires sur les États généraux (1788). This book, full of daring assertions of liberty, was one of the first sparks of the fire which afterwards rose to such height in the French Revolution. In 1789, when Antraigues was chosen as a deputy, he defended the privileges of the hereditary aristocracy, ranked himself with those who opposed the union of the three estates, and maintained that the royal veto was an indispensable part of good government. After leaving the Assembly in 1790, he was employed in diplomacy at St Petersburg and Vienna, where he defended the cause of the Bourbons. In 1803 he was employed under Alexander of Russia in an embassy to Dresden, where he wrote against Bonaparte a brochure, Fragment du XVIII. Livre de Polybe. He came to England, and acquired great influence with Canning. On July 22, 1812, he was murdered, with his wife, at his residence near London, by an Italian servant. See L. Pingaud, Un Agent Secret (1893).