Gustave Cunéo d'Ornano (15 November 1845 – 17 May 1906) was a French lawyer, journalist and politician who was a Bonapartist deputy for the department of Charente for thirty years. He represented the rural constituency of Cognac, and often supported the distillers in parliament. Although he supported democracy, he was in favour of plebiscites and opposed the republicans of the French Third Republic for most of his career. He took every opportunity to speak out against the government in the chamber of deputies. At one point an article he had written led to a duel with another deputy.
Early years
Gustave Cunéo d'Ornano was born on 15 November 1845 in Rome. His grandfather was a former comrade-in-arms of Napoleon who remained attached to the Bonaparte family. His parents were François Joseph Antoine Cunéo d'Ornano (1798–1863), former officer and prefecture councilor, and Adélaïde Françoise Dyonnet. He attended the Collège Stanislas de Paris, run by the Marianists, as did the Royalist pretender and his main spokesman in the Chamber of Deputies, Fernand de Ramel(fr). He studied law and received a license. During the Second French Empire he was employed by the Prefecture of the Seine. During the Siege of Paris (1870–71) he served in Paris as a lieutenant in a battalion of Garde Mobile. He then joined the army of the Versailles government, and helped suppress the Paris Commune.
Journalist
In 1872 Cuneo d'Ornano became one of the editors of the Courrier de France. From 1873 to 1874 he edited the Charentais in Angoulême. After contributing to la Presse for a short period, he returned to Charente and founded a Bonapartist newspaper, the Suffrage universel des Charentes, and became known for his extremely lively polemics. In 1876, in Bassac, Charente, he married Marie-Léontine-Claire-Sara Plantevigne-Dubosquet. They had one son, born in 1883, who was held on the baptismal font by Victor, Prince Napoléon.
Politician
Cunéo d'Ornano had a combative personality and great powers as a speaker and a journalist. He was not interested in the return of the Empire so much as in a plebiscitary republic modelled on the French Consulate of 1799–1804 with universal suffrage and an elected president. He was a determined opponent of the parliamentary system of the Third Republic. Despite being an outsider born far away, and despite being a conservative Bonapartist intellectual, he won great affection from the common people of the Charente countryside and was elected tens times in a row by the voters of the Cognac district.
Cunéo d'Ornano was one of the most prominent leaders of the Bonapartist party in Charente during the 1876 legislative elections. He engaged in noisy demonstrations against the republican government, and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Cognac district of Charente in the second round of voting. There were many protests against the election, which was invalidated by the House on 5 April 1876 due to defamatory posters and attacks on the constitution. He was reelected with an improved majority on 21 May 1876. He sat with the Appel au peuple parliamentary group, consistently voted with the monarchical minority and often intervened in debates. In 1876, as a result of an article published in his le Suffrage universel, Cunéo d'Ornano fought a duel with André Duclaud(fr), a republican deputy in Charente. Cunéo d'Ornano supported the act of 16 May 1877 and supported the policy of the Broglie-Fourtou government.
As official candidate in the 14 October 1877 elections he famously stated in his profession of faith that he would make "the republic and the republicans a meal that even dogs would not eat." He was elected by 9,911 votes to 7,704 for the republican candidate. In the Chamber he continued his opposition and interruptions in debates, and was often called to order. He voted against the election of Jules Grévy as President of France, against the law on freedom of the press, and constantly fought for the appel au peuple (referendum). On 8 December 1878 he attacked the persecution of La Jeune Garde by the government, saying, "there is no liberty if it does not exist equally for everyone". He said the republican government allowed shameful caricatures against religion and past regimes, but banned drawings that targeted republican officials.