Alphonse de Lamartine

Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine was born 21 October 1790 into minor nobility and began as a moderate royalist. By the 1840s he'd become one of the sharpest critics of Louis-Philippe's July Monarchy, drifting toward the Republican Left and Social Catholicism. When revolution broke out in 1848 he helped found the Second Republic, preserved the tricolor as France's flag, and served as Foreign Minister through that volatile year, spending much of his energy defusing clashes between the government and the working class. He ran for president in 1848 and lost to Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Af…