Jean-Baptiste Lynch
Jean-Baptiste Lynch was a Count of the First French Empire, Mayor of Bordeaux and a peer of France, sitting in the upper house of the French Senate. Lynch opposed the French Revolution, and was later imprisoned under the Reign of Terror. In 1808, he was appointed mayor of Bordeaux, and was for a time entirely devoted to Napoleon. In 1813, he contacted the royalist agents, and in 1814 he surrendered the city to the British. Louis XVIII later appointed him a peer of France.
Biography
Early life
Lynch was born in 1749, the son of "Thomas Lynch, Esquire, and Lady Petronilla Drouillard". His father's family were of Irish origin, being one of the Tribes of Galway. In an ancient, but small notability, the Catholic Lynch family had to flee persecution and seek refuge in Bordeaux in the seventeenth century. John Lynch, an officer in the Irish army, and grandfather of Jean-Baptiste, settled there and became naturalised in 1710, but he did not succeed in his trade integration. Thomas Lynch made a rich marriage by marrying the daughter of treasurer Pierre Drouillard.Lynch was destined by his father to become a lawyer. He was appointed to advise the Bordeaux Parliament in December 1770, and received this position in 1771. He married the daughter of Berthon Leberthon, the first president of the parliament. When his stepfather was elected as a deputy from Bordeaux to the Estates General of 1789, Lynch followed him to Paris and publicly professed his opinions, which earned him being imprisoned during the Terror. He was released after Thermidor.