For love of the freedom of expression and humanity: the French journalist Lucien Bousquet-Deschamps during the Liberal Triennium (1820-1823)

Abstract

This book presents the biography of a French journalist, famous during the years 1820-1823 both in France and Spain, and unjustly forgotten today in both countries: Lucien Bousquet-Deschamps. After establishing the date and place of his birth, family circumstances and studies, the first part introduces his early compromise with liberalism, his collaboration in the newspaper L,Aristarque and his effort, in close collaboration with the bookseller Corréard, to preserve a free press in the face of the measures taken by the French government to silence the newspapers after the assassination of the Duke of Berry, with the consequent judicial persecutions that finally forced him to flee to Spain. Next, we examine the way in which Bousquet-Deschamps was assimilated into the world of Madrid journalists and how, when this project failed, he published in Madrid a French-language newspaper, L’Écho de l’Europe. The content and the reasons for the failure of this newspaper are thus analysed. The third part is dedicated to the self-sacrifice he demonstrated during the yellow fever epidemic that devastated Barcelona in 1821, endangering his own life, and earning him the admiration of the doctors of the sanitary mission sent by the French government, who managed to get permission for him to return to his homeland. There, he was met with (as we show in the fourth chapter) the unfortunate surprise of being granted only a partial pardon, enduring a prison sentence of one year in hard conditions, which made him a victim of an absolutism incapable of true «forgiveness and oblivion». The epilogue refers to his expatriation to Alexandria and Smyrna where he maintained an important journalistic work, although we do not know how, when and where his existence ended.