Vocation : Law : Other Law

René Waldeck-Rousseau (27 April 1809 Avranches, Manche – 17 February 1882 Nantes, Loire-Atlantique) was a French politician, father of Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau who was a statesman during the Third Republic.
During the 1848 Revolution, he was elected as a Republican deputy of Loire-Inférieure to the Constituent Assembly of April 1848 to May 1849. He then became mayor of Nantes, from 1870 to 1871 and a second time from 1872 to 1874.
With Jules Simon, Louis Blanc and others he sat on the commission appointed to inquire into the labour question during the Second Republic, making many important proposals, one of which, for the establishment of national banks, was partially realized in 1850. After the election of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to the presidency he returned to his practice at the bar, and for some time after the coup d'état was in hiding to escape arrest.
He came back to political life in the crisis of 1870, when he became mayor of Nantes in August and took part to the proclamation of the Third Republic there on September 4. He shortly afterwards resigned municipal office in consequence of differences with his colleagues on the education question.

Michel Crépeau (30 October 1930, Fontenay-le-Comte, Vendée – 30 March 1999, Paris) was a French centre-left politician.
Born in 1930, barrister, he joined the Radical Party. When it split in 1972, he founded the Movement of Left Radicals (MRG) which chosen the alliance with the Socialist Party and the French Communist Party. Elected Mayor of La Rochelle in 1971, and Member of French National Assembly representing of Charente Maritime département in 1973, he kept these terms until his death in 1999.
MRG candidate in the 1981 presidential election, he obtained 2.2% of votes in the first round, then he called to vote for François Mitterrand in the second round. He became his Environment Minister from 1981 to 1983, then his Trade and Craft Industry Minister from 1983 to 1986. When Robert Badinter was nominated President of the Constitutional Council, in February 1986, he succeeded him as Justice Minister but the Left lost the legislative election one month later and, consequently, he was forced to resign.
Michel Crépeau died in Paris on 30 March 1999, after a heart attack which had arisen few days earlier during a parliamentary session of the National Assembly.

Fernand Meyssonnier (1931–2008) was an executioner in the last years of French Algeria. He acted as an executioner from 1947 to 1961 and killed more than 200 people.
He is the author of a book "The Executioner's Tale" (Paroles de bourreau : Témoignage unique d'un éxécuteur des arrêts criminels) answering questions about his career as an executioner.He inherited the job of executioner from his father Maurice Meyssonnier in 1947 when he ended compulsory education. His ancestors had been executioners from ages ago. When Algeria became independent from France in 1961, the guillotine was replaced by execution by firing squad.In 1961, shortly before Algerian independence, Fernand Meyssonnier went to Tahiti where he met his future wife with whom he had a daughter, and founded several businesses. After his retirement, he went to metropolitan France. He bought a house in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse where he died on August 8, 2008.
Meyssonnier had been erroneously called the "last (French) executioner alive". In fact, he died the same year as Marcel Chevalier, the last French chief executioner, who served from 1976 to 1977.

Pierre Brochand (born 4 July 1941, in Cannes) is a former director of the French Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). He was previously a diplomat. He was a witness to Operation Frequent Wind and the Fall of Saigon in April 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War.Alumnus of the École nationale d'administration (ENA), he is also a graduate of the École des Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC).