Charles de Choiseul-Praslin

Charles Laure Hugues Théobald, duc de Choiseul-Praslin (29 June 1805 – 24 August 1847) was a French nobleman and politician, who served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies in 1838–1842. Choiseul-Praslin's suicide, occurring while he faced trial for the murder of his wife, the Duchess de Choiseul-Praslin (née Fanny Sébastiani), caused a scandal which in turn contributed to the outbreak of the 1848 Revolution and the fall of the July Monarchy.

Born in Paris, he was the eldest son of Charles Raynart Laure Félix, duc de Choiseul, who had been a deputy and leader of the National Guard under the First French Empire, and his wife (née de Breteuil); the couple also had another son, Edgar Laure Charles Gilbert, and three daughters.

He became a member of the Chamber for the department of Seine-et-Marne, and was later a chevalier d'honneur to Hélène, wife of Ferdinand Philippe, Duke of Orléans. A duke since 1841, Choiseul-Praslin was created a Peer of France on 6 April 1845.

On 18 October 1824, Choiseul-Praslin married Fanny Altarice Rosalba, the daughter of Marshal Horace Sébastiani de La Porta and his first wife Fanny Franquetot de Coigny. Fanny reportedly had a passionate love for her husband, which was recorded in her correspondence. The couple resided at the Choiseul estate in Vaux-le-Vicomte, and had ten children together.

While traveling from Vaux-le-Vicomte to Dieppe, the Choiseul-Praslin family spent the night of 17 August 1847 at its residence in Paris' Faubourg Saint-Honoré. At five o'clock in the morning, servants were alerted by noises coming from the duchess' room, and discovered that she had been brutally attacked, and had struggled with the assailant while being prevented from screaming. She had been hit with a blunt object, then repeatedly stabbed; she died soon after staff rushed in to provide assistance. The duke was the last person to answer calls by the household staff, and raised suspicion almost immediately because, despite the uproar, the windows of his room had remained shut.

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