Charles de Chambrun (diplomat)


Count Louis Charles Pineton de Chambrun was a French diplomat and writer.

Early life

Chambrun was born on 10 February 1875 in Washington, D.C., where his father, Charles-Adolphe de Chambrun, Marquis of Chambrun, was a judicial counsellor at the Embassy of France, Washington, D.C. His mother was Marie Henriette Hélène Marthe Tircuy de Corcelle. His siblings included Pierre de Chambrun, Marquis of Chambrun ; General Count Aldebert de Chambrun ; and Thérèse de Chambrun.
Through his brother Aldebert, he was uncle to Count René de Chambrun, the French-American lawyer and businessman who married Josée Laval.

Career

Charles served as attaché to France's ambassador to the Vatican, Berlin, then Washington, D.C. In 1914, he became First Secretary at the St Petersburg embassy, and later served in Athens and Vienna. From 1928 to 1933, he represented France in Ankara and then became ambassador to Rome from 1933 to 1935 during the midst of Fascist Italy.
In March 1937, as he was about to board the train to Brussels with his wife, Magda Fontanges, the former mistress of Benito Mussolini, shot him twice at the Gare du Nord because she thought he was behind her expulsion from Italy. Maître René Floriot defended Fontanges, who only served a one-year suspended prison sentence for her crime.

Académie française

With Paul Claudel, Maurice Garçon, Marcel Pagnol, Jules Romains and Henri Mondor, he was one of six people elected on 4 April 1946 to the Académie française in the second group election to fill the numerous empty seats caused by the lack of elections during the German occupation of France.
Chambrun was made a Grand officer of the Légion d'Honneur in 1936.

Personal life

While in Rome, he married Marie Augustine de Rohan-Chabot at the Capitol building in Rome. The widow of Prince Lucien Murat, she was a daughter of the Alain de Rohan-Chabot, 11th Duke of Rohan, and Herminie, Duchess of Rohan (née de La Brousse de Verteillac). She was a writer, galleriste and landscape and portrait painter. Her older sister, Marie-Joséphine de Rohan-Chabot, was the wife of Napoléon Louis de Talleyrand-Périgord.
The Countess de Chambrun died in Paris on 10 October 1951. Count de Chambrun died at his residence in Paris on 6 November 1952.

Works

;Charles de ChambrunLettres à Marie, Pétersbourg-Pétrograd, 1914–1918 Atatürk et la Turquie nouvelle À l'école d'un diplomate : Vergennes L'Esprit de la diplomatie Traditions et souvenirs
;Marie de Rohan Chabot Le Roi de Rome, Plon, 1941
;Marie de Rohan Chabot Raspoutine et l'aube sanglante, De Boccard, s.d.La reine Christine de Suède, Flammarion, 1934Les Errants de la Gloire, Flammarion, 1933La vie amoureuse de la Grande Catherine coll. « Leurs amours », Flammarion, 1927