Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (b. Saumur, 1843–d. Paris, 1916) was a scion of an old Norman family who had initially styled themselves “Le Roy, sieurs de Beaulieu.” His father, Pierre, and grandfather, François, had both been mayors of Lisieux and served as conservative/monarchist deputies for the département of Calvados through stormy, revolutionary times. While Paul’s father appears to have died peacefully, his grandfather had been assassinated by Republican troops in 1799 at his manor house in the Norman village of Saint-Martin-de-Fresnay. Under the Second Empire of Napoleon III, Paul’s father, Pierre, was deputy for Calvados between February 1852 and September 1857, being defeated only when the government decided to drop him as its official candidate on account of his Orleanist sympathies.
Paul’s elder brother, Anatole, was a prolific writer on political and economic questions. In 1881 he was elected professor of contemporary history and Eastern affairs at the École libre des sciences...
