Alexandre de Laborde (1773-1842)

Comte Louis-Joseph-Alexandre de Laborde (17 September 1773 – 20 October 1842) was a French antiquary, liberal politician and writer, a member of the (1832), under the rubric political economy. Biography Early years Born in Paris, Laborde was the fourth son of the famous banker and slave trader, Jean-Joseph de Laborde, who would be guillotined during the Reign of Terror. Young Laborde had been dispatched to Vienna by his father at the outbreak of the French Revolution; there he joined the Austrian army, in which he was named an officer, 10 December 1789, at the age of seventeen, by personal intervention of the Emperor Joseph II. At first stationed at Olmuz (Moravia), he was named captain in a regiment of light cavalry in October 1791, and saw action against the Revolutionary French forces the following year along the frontiers of the Austrian Netherlands and Luxembourg, where he distinguished himself by his generosity towards his compatriots who had been taken prisoner or wounded. In 1795 he took a long leave, first to join his widowed mother and sister in Switzerland, then, to see his brother in London. He reentered the Austrian army among Kinsky's hussars, and reached the rank of squadron leader.