Cassagnac, Adolphe Granier de,

Cassagnac, Adolphe Granier de, French journalist, born in the department of Gers in 1806, in 1832 came to Paris, where he was employed on several journals, and where his vehement style of writing soon brought him considerable prominence and a number of duels and law-suits. In 1840 he visited the Antilles, in hopes of political preferment, and there married a Creole lady, Mademoiselle Beanvallon. Until 1848 a zealous Orleanist, he became one of the earliest promoters of the empire, and a bitter assailant of his former patrons, and as a supporter of the government, represented his native department from 1852 to 1870. He founded several papers, of all shades of political and religious thought, and chiefly resembling one another in their early demise; ultimately he became the chief editor of the semi-official Le Pays, which he revived after the fall of the empire. He died 31st January 1880. His appearances before the courts of justice were numerous, in his earlier years for duelling, and afterwards in cases of libel and debt. He published two romances and a number of compilations.—His son, PAUL ADOLPHE MARIE, born in 1843, joined him on Le Pays (1866), assisting with the literary work, and assuming charge of the duelling department of the paper. Having joined a Zouave regiment in 1870 as a volunteer, he was captured at Sedan, and imprisoned for some time in Silesia. He returned to Paris in 1872, renewed his association with Le Pays, and violently advocated the imperialist cause. In 1876 he was elected a deputy, and engaged in a course of turbulent insolence and obstruction; he was imprisoned in 1877, and during the autumn openly but vainly urged MacMahon to a coup d'état. The death of the Prince Imperial in 1879 disconcerted his hopes of effecting the recall of the Bonapartes; and his proclamation of Prince Victor Napoleon, in opposition to his father, Prince Jérôme, as head of the dynasty, introduced dissensions that still further weakened his party.