Montalembert, Charles Ren� Forbes de, Comte de 1810-70
French historian and politician

Born in London, the eldest son of a noble French �migr� and his English wife, he was educated at Fulham and the Coll�ge Ste Barbe. In 1830 he eagerly joined the Abb� Lamennais and Henri Lacordaire in L'Avenir, a Catholic liberal newspaper. He pleaded the cause of religious liberty, in spite of the papal condemnation of L'Avenir. His great speech (1848) on Switzerland is a famous protest against tyranny. After the February Revolution (1848) he was elected a member of the National Assembly, and supported Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III) until the confiscation of the Orl�ans property, when he became a determined opponent of the imperial regime. He visited England in 1855, and wrote De l'Avenir politique de l'Angleterre (1856, 'The Political Future of England'), and many other works on medieval church history and contemporary political topics in an attempt to reconcile Catholicism and liberalism.