18 Facts About Ernest Pinard

Pierre Ernest Pinard was a French prosecutor and Minister of the Interior.

Ernest Pinard is known for his indictments against Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal.

Pierre Ernest Pinard was born in Autun, Saone-et-Loire, on 10 October 1822.

Ernest Pinard was a brilliant and very pious student at the Petit-Seminaire of Autun.

Ernest Pinard went on to the College Stanislas de Paris.

Ernest Pinard studied law in Paris and became an advocate.

In January 1857 Ernest Pinard prosecuted Gustave Flaubert for "offense to public and religious morality and to good morals" for his 1856 novel Madame Bovary, which deals with adultery.

Ernest Pinard failed to win a conviction, although Flaubert was reprimanded by the court.

Ernest Pinard was appointed to the Conseil d'Etat in 1866, aged 44, seen as one of the new men who could rejuvenate the empire.

Ernest Pinard was appointed Minister of the Interior on 13 November 1867, replacing Charles de La Valette.

Ernest Pinard was not well liked by Eugene Rouher, the principal minister of the regime.

Ernest Pinard was in favor of a broad union between ultramontane Catholics who disagreed with imperial policy towards Rome and Bonapartists who supported reform, a combination that was opposed by Rouher.

Ernest Pinard drafted a new press law in which prison sentences were replaced by fines, and pushed it through against opposition from Rouher.

Ernest Pinard demanded firm action in a case against the journal La Lanterne.

Ernest Pinard made a clumsy attempt to use force to suppress a demonstration commemorating the death of Jean-Baptiste Baudin, which destroyed his authority.

Ernest Pinard was one of the small minority that protested the deposition of the emperor Napoleon III after the French lost the Battle of Sedan.

Ernest Pinard was imprisoned in 1871 for his Bonapartist activities.

Ernest Pinard died on 12 September 1909 in Bourg-en-Bresse, Ain, aged 86.