Montalembert, CHARLES FORBES RENÉ DE, born in London, May 15, 1810, was the eldest son of a noble French émigré and his English wife. His grandfather, Mr Forbes, a retired Indian merchant, living at Stanmore, near Harrow, had charge of him from an early age, as his father went back to France with the restored Bourbons and was rewarded for his zeal in their service by being named a peer of France and minister-plenipotentiary to Stuttgart. When Charles was eight years old he was sent to school at Fulham, but was there for a very short time, as the following year his grandfather died, and he went to his parents in Paris. He was fourteen when the head of the Collège St Barbe induced them to place him under a regular course of study. At sixteen he entered the college, and left it at nineteen to join his father, then ambassador at Stockholm. He returned to Paris in 1829, and during a period of uncertainty as to his future career occupied himself by writing an article upon Sweden, which appeared in the Revue Française. In 1830 he went to Ireland, and, returning full of enthusiasm for religious freedom, at once eagerly joined himself to the Abbé Lamennais and Lacordaire in their enterprise of the Avenir, the well-known High Church Liberal newspaper. In 1831 Montalembert and Lacordaire opened a free school in Paris, which was immediately closed by the police, and a prosecution commenced against the schoolmasters. The death of Montalembert's father at this time having raised him to the peerage, he appealed to be tried by his peers, and pleaded with great eloquence the cause of the church and the common interests of religious liberty. Though he was reprimanded and fined 100 francs, this defeat had the effect of a victory. In the same year the Avenir was temporarily suspended, and finally given up, being condemned by the pope. After this Montalembert for a time withdrew from France and lived in Germany, where he was inspired with the idea of writing the History of St Elizabeth, which was published in 1836. In 1835 he returned to Paris, and made his first speech as a member of the Chamber in defence of the liberty of the press.
He married a daughter of Count Felix de Mérode in 1836. The winter of 1842 he spent in Madeira for his wife's health, and while there wrote a pamphlet entitled Devoir des Catholiques dans la Question d'Enseignement, in which he protested against the monopoly of education by the French University, and pleaded for free education, or, in other words, religious education guaranteed by common liberty. For this cause he fought unwearily in parliament till it was won. His protests against tyranny, however displayed, came to a climax in a great speech in January 1848 upon Switzerland. The Revolution took place a month later; and in April Montalembert was elected a member of the National Assembly. When the coup d'état of December occurred he supported Louis Napoleon till the confiscation of the Orleans property. Then he at once resigned his post as a member of the Consultative Commission, and became from henceforth a determined opponent of the imperial régime. He was elected to the Academy on February 5, 1852, and from that time occupied himself with literary work. After a visit to England in 1855, he wrote L'Avenir politique de l'Angleterre. Three years later he published an article in the Correspondant, called 'Un Debat sur l'Inde au Parlement Anglais,' in which he made such exasperating allusions to the imperial government that he was prosecuted and sentenced to six months' imprisonment and a fine of 3000 francs. The sentence was, however, remitted by the emperor. He published the two first volumes of his great work, Les Moines d'Occident, in 1860, and completed it in 1867. He also wrote Une Nation en Deuil: la Pologne (1861), L'Eglise libre dans l'État libre (1863), Le Pape et la Pologne (1864), &c. During the last ten years of his life he suffered from the malady of which he died in Paris on 13th March 1870, sixteen days after writing his celebrated letter on papal infallibility.
Montalembert was one of the best French orators of his day, a great statesman and author, an accomplished man of the world, and a devoted, noble-minded son of the church. He loved freedom more than all the world, and the Catholic religion more than freedom; and thus, while he fought all his life for freedom, in questions of faith he submitted his will and intelligence to the judgment of Rome. See the Memoir by Mrs Oliphant (2 vols. 1872).