Louis Gustave le Doulcet, comte de Pontécoulant

Louis Gustave le Doulcet, comte de Pontécoulant (November 17, 1764—April 3, 1853) was a French politician. He was the father of Louis Adolphe le Doulcet and Philippe Gustave le Doulcet.

Biography

Early life and National Convention

Born in Caen on the 1764, he began a military career with the "Compagnie Écossaise" of the "Garde du corps du Roi" in 1778, becoming Lieutenant Colonel in 1791. A moderate supporter of the French Revolution, he was elected to the National Convention for the "départment" of Calvados in 1792, and became commissioner with the Army of the North during the French Revolutionary Wars.

He voted for the imprisonment of King Louis XVI during the war, and his banishment after the peace. He then attached himself to the Girondists, voting in favor of Jean-Paul Marat's prosecution, and was consequently declared an "enemy of the people" in August 1793, being pursued by the Reign of Terror and taking refuge to Switzerland.

In July, he had refused to defend his fellow Normand and Girondist Charlotte Corday, the assassin of Marat, who wrote him a letter of reproach on her way to the guillotine.

Thermidor and Directory

He returned to the Thermidorian Convention on March 8, 1795, and was noted for his moderation, especially after defending Prieur de la Marne and Jean-Baptiste Robert Lindet. President of the Convention in July 1795, he was for some months a member of the Council of Public Safety.

Doulcet was subsequently elected to the French Directory's Council of Five Hundred, but was suspected of Royalist sympathies, and had to spend some time in retirement between anti-monarchist coup of 18 Fructidor (September 4, 1797) and the establishment of the Consulate (the 18 Brumaire coup of November 9, 1799).

Empire and Restoration

Becoming senator of the First French Empire in 1805, and count of the Empire in 1808, he organized the national guard in Franche-Comté in 1811, and the defence of the north-eastern frontier in 1813.

During the 1814 Bourbon Restoration, Louis XVIII made him a Peer of France, and although he received a similar honor from Napoleon during the Hundred Days, he remained in the upper house after the return of the king. He died in Paris, leaving memoirs and correspondence from which were extracted four volumes (1861-1865) of "Souvenirs historiques et parlementaires, 1764-1848".

References

*1911