page_title: Léon Gambetta
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Léon Gambetta / Personal life
context_page_description: Léon Gambetta was a French statesman, prominent during and after the Franco-Prussian War.
context_section_description: The romance of his life was his connection with Léonie Léon, the full details of which were not known to the public till her death in 1906. She was the daughter of a creole French artillery officer. Gambetta fell in love with her in 1871.  She became his mistress, and the liaison lasted until he died. Gambetta constantly urged her to marry him during this period, but she always refused, fearing to compromise his career; she remained, however, his confidante and intimate adviser in all his political plans. It seems she had just consented to become his wife, and the date of the marriage had been fixed, when the accident which caused his death occurred in her presence. Contradictory accounts of this fatal episode exist, but it was certainly accidental, and not suicide. Her influence on Gambetta was absorbing, both as lover and as politician, and the correspondence which has been published shows how much he depended upon her.
  However, some of her later recollections are untrustworthy.  For example, she claimed that an actual interview took place in 1878 between Gambetta and Bismarck. That Gambetta after 1875 felt strongly that the relations between France and Germany might be improved, and that he made it his object, by travelling incognito, to become better acquainted with Germany and the adjoining states, may be accepted, but M. Laur appears to have exaggerated the extent to which any actual negotiations took place. On the other hand, the increased knowledge of Gambetta's attitude towards European politics which later information has supplied confirms the view that in him France lost prematurely a master mind, whom she could ill spare. In April 1905 a monument by Dalou to his memory at Bordeaux was unveiled by President Loubet.
caption: Léonie Léon in 1875
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