Emmanuel Henri Louis Alexandre de Launay, comte d'Antraigues (25 December 1753 Montpellier22 July 1812 Barnes, London) was a French pamphleteer, diplomat, spy and political adventurer during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Early life At the age of 14, d'Antraigues joined the army. Initially a member of the Garde du Corps at the Palace of Versailles, he eventually became a captain of the Royal Piedmont Cavalry Regiment. Increasingly, though, he became dissatisfied with army life as he became acquainted with several of the leading lights of the Age of Enlightenment. In 1770, he met Jean-Jacques Rousseau and struck up a relationship with him that lasted until Rousseau's death. Later, in 1776, he spent several months at Ferney with Voltaire. Imbued with the democratic ideals of these mentors, d'Antraigues happily resigned his military post in 1778. Soon afterward, he accompanied his uncle, François-Emmanuel Guignard, comte de Saint-Priest, the French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, to Constantinople. Later that year, he made an excursion to see Egypt. In 1779, he began his trip home, visiting the cities of Warsaw, Cracow and Vienna. On his return to Paris, he entered the circles of philosophes and artists, where he became friendly with the future revolutionaries Nicolas Chamfort and Mirabeau. French Revolution Initially a firm supporter of the French Revolution, d'Antraigues published a Mémoire sur les Etats Généraux ("Dissertation on the Estates-General") in 1788. In it, he was one of the first to identify the Third Estate as "the nation". In a famous passage, he wrote: "The Third Estate is the People and the People is the foundation of the State; it is in fact the State itself... It is in the People that all national power resides and it is for the People that all states exist." In 1789, he was elected as a deputy to the Estates-General by the noblesse of Vivarais. Although he opposed the creation of the National Assembly, he took the Tennis Court Oath, and subsequently joined the National Constituent Assembly. Later, however, he abandoned his revolutionary principles when Versailles was stormed by an angry mob from Paris on 5 October 1789. Horrified at the near death of Queen Marie Antoinette, whom it was rumored he had unsuccessfully tried to seduce years earlier, he suddenly changed his vision completely, becoming a defender of the Bourbon Monarchy. He soon became part of a plot by the Marquis de Favras to help