Charles, marquis de La Valette
Quick Facts
Biography
Charles-Jean-Marie-Félix, marquis de La Valette (25 November 1806, Senlis – 2 May 1881, Paris) was a French politician and diplomat.
Charles de La Valette was Minister of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs in the government of Emperor Napoleon III.
He was French Ambassador to Constantinople before the Crimean War, then served as a government minister, before a posting to the Vatican (an ancestral family member had been Grand Master of the Order of Malta).
An Anglophile, he finally returned to London in an official capacity as French Ambassador from 1869 to 1870.
The Marquis married firstly at London in 1828 Maria Garrow Birkett (who died 1831, aged 24), daughter of the late Daniel Birkett. He married secondly in 1845 the widow of a Boston banker, Adeline Fowle (Mrs Samuel Welles), who died in 1869; he married thirdly, in 1871, Georgiana-Gabrielle de Flahaut, marquise douairière de La Valette, who died in 1907; she was sister of Emily, Dowager Marchioness of Lansdowne.
Honours
- Marquis de France
- Grand-croix, Légion d'honneur
- Chevalier de Malte