Gustave Baguenault de Puchesse
Gustave, comte Baguenault de Puchesse (21 April 1843 – 15 April 1922) was a French politician, historian and industrialist.
Biography
Gustave Baguenault de Puchesse was born at Orléans, the son of Fernand Baguenault de Puchesse (1814–1889) and Marie-Joséphine Bodin de Boisrenard. He studied law in Paris, frequenting liberal Catholic personalities opposed to the Second Empire. He graduated in law in 1864 and in letters in 1866, and registered as a lawyer at the Court of Appeal of Paris. He defended two theses in 1869: De venatione apud Romanos and Jean de Morvillier, évêque d'Orléans, garde des sceaux de France. Between 1866 and 1879 he contributed to the Contemporain, as well as to the Polybiblion and the Revue des questions historiques, and became editor of the Correspondant and the Journal des débats, as well as director of the Revue d'histoire diplomatique. He became the secretary of the prefect of the Loiret, Alfred Pereira, after the Franco-German war of 1870 and the fall of the Empire.
In 1874, he married Marie-Thérèse Descours (1853–1884) in Lyon, daughter of the industrialist André Descours (of Descours & Cabaud fame), from whom he had two sons, Raoul and André. He succeeded his father-in-law in 1879 as director of the Compagnie des mines, fonderies et forges d'Alais, of which he became vice-president, then president. He also presided over the Mines d'or et placers de Biano, the Mines de fer du Zaccar and the Huelva Central Copper Mining Company.
Vice-Chairman of Mines de fer de la Haute-Deûle, he served on the boards of directors of Houillères de Graigola Mertyr, Brassac and Beaubrun, Compagnie française des mines du Laurium, Anciens Établissements Cail, Foncières-Transports, Houillères de Rochebelle, Usines du Partinium, the Intercontinental Railway Company, Société du pont sur la Manche, Société française La Norgine, Compagnie internationale La Norgine, Société des mines de fer de Fillols, Établissements Decauville, Société industrielle et métallurgique du Caucase, Société des mines d'Aytua, Société des mines et produits chimiques de Villefranche, Banque de l'industrie, Société de l'Ouenza.
He was the liquidator of the Compagnie française du métal déployé in 1902 and of the Compagnie française des mines d'Akhtala in 1909.
A social Catholic and a liberal Republican, he ran unsuccessfully for the deputation against Félix Dupanloup, to whom his father was close. He was mayor of Sandillon (the commune where his castle of Puchesse was located) from 1900 to his death and a district councilor.
A historian specializing in the French 16th century, he became a member of the Committee for Historic and Scientific Works in 1894 and a correspondent of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques in 1902. He was president of the Société archéologique et historique de l'Orléanais in 1883–1885, 1893–1895, 1902–1904, 1914–1918 and 1922, and of the Society of the History of France from 1897 to 1898, then from 1919 to 1920.
