Jules Bastide

Who was Jules Bastide?

Jules Bastide was a French politician.

He studied law for a time, and was afterward engaged in business as a timber merchant. In 1821, he became a member of the French la Charbonnerie, modelled on that of the Italian Carbonari, and took a prominent part in the Revolution of 1830. After the July Days uprising, he received an artillery command in the National Guard. For his part in the riots in Paris on the occasion of the funeral of General Maximilien Lamarque, Bastide was sentenced to death, but he escaped to London.

On his return to Paris in 1834, he was acquitted. He occupied himself with journalism, and he contributed to the National, a republican journal of which he became editor in 1836. In 1847, he founded the Revue Nationale as a collaborative venture with Philippe Buchez, whose ideas had thoroughly infected Bastide. After the Revolution of February 1848 Bastide's intimate knowledge of foreign affairs gained for him a ministerial post in the provisional government, and, after the creation of the Executive Commission, he was made Minister of Foreign Affairs. At the close of 1848, he resigned his portfolio, and, after the coup d'état of December 1851, retired to private life.