Antoine Balthazar Joachim d'André

Antoine Balthazar Joachim, baron d'André (2 July 1759 - 16 July 1825) was a French royalist politician.

He was born at Aix-en-Provence. At the onset of the French Revolution he was a conseiller at the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence. Sent as a representative of the nobility and the sénéchaussée of Aix to the États généraux of 1789, he was an active deputy. Following the example of Philippe, duc d'Orléans, he joined the third estate, and served as a member of the Comité de constitution that was forging a constitution for France. Twice he was elected president of the Assemblée constituante and was one of the prominent partisans pressing for a constitutional monarchy, the monarchiens. The attempted royal flight to Varennes inspired him to vote with the majority to suppress the royal executive power (June 1791).

After the close of session for the Assemblée constituante he remained in Paris, where he founded a large grocery business (épicerie), for which the journalists of the Left dubbed him "l'Épicier".

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Emigration

Accused of hoarding and suspected to plotting with the royalist émigrés, he emigrated himself, at first to Great Britain and then to Switzerland, where he placed himself in the service of the comte de Provence. In this capacity he became an active royalist; through him the British spymaster William Wickham directed the funds intended to support counter-revolutionary propaganda.

Return

Under the French Directory he returned to France in February 1797 to take in hand the electoral campaign of the royalist party, with some success, though he was not elected to the Council of Five Hundred.

Napoleonic exile

After the Coup of 18 fructidor (4 September 1797) he escaped arrest by fleeing once more to Switzerland, and remained abroad for a decade, faithful to the comte de Provence, now proclaimed "Louis XVIII" by the royalists. After Napoleon's victory at Wagram (July 1809), D'André permitted his son Antoine Joseph Maurice d'André to serve in the Imperial army, while he occupied himself with establishing a model farm near Vienna.

Restoration

With the Bourbon Restoration he followed Louis XVIII to France, and was pardoned for his defection, 1809-1814, and appointed general director of police, and superindendant of the Maison du Roi.

He died at Aix-en-Provence.