Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre-Auguste

(born Feb. 2, 1807, Paris, France—died Dec. 31, 1874, Fontenay-aux-Roses) French radical politician. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1839, but his insistence on the need for a republican government isolated him from other leftists. Following the February Revolution, through his influence as minister of the interior in the provisional government (1848), elections for a new legislature were held for the first time under universal manhood suffrage. In 1849 he demanded the impeachment of Louis-Napoléon (later Napoleon III) and led an unsuccessful insurrection. He fled to England but returned to France after the amnesty of 1870.

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica