Prince Edmond de Polignac

Prince Edmond Melchior Jean Marie de Polignac (19 April 18348 August 1901) was a French aristocrat and composer. Ancestry Edmond was a member of the Polignac family, one of the more illustrious families of France. His grandmother, the duchesse de Polignac, had been the close friend of Queen Marie Antoinette. His father, Jules de Polignac, prince de Polignac (1780–1847), was the Minister of State in the Restoration government of King Charles X and the author of the July Ordinances in 1830, which revoked the Constitution, suspended freedom of the press, and gave the king extraordinary powers, including absolute power in the name of “insuring the safety of the state”. The document resulted in the development of an insurgency and resulted in the “July Revolution” that ended the reign of the Bourbons. The king and his family went into exile, and his cabinet members were tried. Jules de Polignac was captured, tried, convicted and condemned in December 1830 to la mort civile: life imprisonment and a complete loss of civil rights. He was incarcerated in the Château de Ham. Early life By the time of his imprisonment Edmond’s father Jules de Polignac had two sons by his second wife, Mary Cha