Draft:Charles Coudert

Charles Coudert (1795-1879), was a member of the Guard of Honor in Napoleon’s Army during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1821, he conspired to make the son of Napoleon king of France in place of Louis XVIII, was captured and sentenced to death. With the aid of his older brother Eugène, and the influential Madame Recamier, Coudert obtained a conseil de révision, a reprieve, escaping prison and fleeing France. He moved to New York in 1824, with 200 francs to his name, and found work teaching French and horsemanship, eventually opened a French school, located in St Marks place in Manhattan and later New Jersey. In 1826 he married a 17 year-old French girl named Jeanne Clarisse du Champ (1809-1845). Together they had a daughter and three sons, Frederic René, Charles Jr. and Louis Léonce. These three brothers founded the prominent international law practice Coudert Brothers. His son Frederic René helped bring Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty to New York and spoke at the 1876 dedication of the same artist's portrait of Lafayette in Union Square Park in 1876. His great-grandson Frederic R. Coudert was a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York.