Agenor, duc de Gramont
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Antoine Alfred Agénor duc de Gramont |
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| Born |
14 August 1819 Paris |
| Died | 17 January 1880 (aged 60) |
| Occupation | diplomat |
| Language | French |
| Nationality | French |
| Alma mater | École Polytechnique |
Antoine Alfred Agénor, 10th Duc de Gramont, Prince de Bidache, etc. (14 August 1819 – 17 January 1880) was a French diplomat and statesman.
He was born in Paris of one of the most illustrious families of the old noblesse, a cadet branch of the viscounts of Aure, which took its name from the Seignory of Gramont in Navarre. His grandfather, Antoine VIII de Gramont, duc de Gramont (1755–1836), had emigrated during the French Revolution, and his father, Antoine Héraclius Genevieve Agénor (1789–1855), duc de Gramont and de Guiche, fought under the British flag in the Peninsular War, became a lieutenant-general in the French army in 1823, and in 1830 accompanied Charles X of France to Scotland.
The younger generation, however, were Bonapartist in sympathy; Gramont's cousin Antoine Louis Raymond, comte de Gramont (1787–1825), though also the son of an émigré, served with distinction in Napoléon's armies, while Antoine Agénor owed his career to his early friendship for Louis Napoleon.
Educated at the École Polytechnique, Gramont early gave up the army for diplomacy. It was not, however, till after the coup d'état of 2 December 1851, which made Louis Napoleon supreme in France, that he became conspicuous as a diplomat. He was successively minister plenipotentiary at Cassel and Stuttgart (1852), at Turin (1853), ambassador at Washington DC (1854), Rome (1857) and at Vienna (1861).
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