Charles-Jean-Marie Alquier
Date of Birth
October 13, 1752
Date of Death
February 3, 1826
About
A royal prosecutor and mayor of La Rochelle before the Revolution, Charles-Jean-Marie Alquier represented the city’s Third Estate in the Estates-General of 1789. Elected to the Convention for Seine-et-Oise, he voted for Louis XVI’s death but asked that the execution be postponed until peace unless France was invaded. He later helped organise the administration of the newly conquered Dutch Republic and sat in the Council of Ancients. From 1798 he held diplomatic posts in Munich, Madrid, Florence, Naples, Rome, Stockholm and Copenhagen, negotiating peace with Naples and the cession of Elba to France. Exiled as a regicide in 1816, he returned in 1818 and died in Paris in 1826.