AbstractsLaw & Legal Studies

Life began for Louis de Donald in the manner in which it was to be immortalized - aristocratic, feudal and, above all, Catholic. Born at Milieu, Prance on October 2, 1754, the descendant of one of the old families of the Rouergue, Louis-GabrielAmbroise, Vicomte de Donald later took great pride in retracing his lineage to the time of the Reformation when one of his forebears, Etienne de Donald ,(then a member of the Parlament of Toulouse), was largely responsible for the city's complete rejection of the new religious ideas. The title of Vicomte did not, as is sometimes erroneously supposed, originate with Louis himself; but was acquired in the seventeenth century by the family of Bonald when the estate of la Rode came into their possession. It was as the Vicomte de la Rode that Louis de Donald took his seat in the 1789 Assembly of the Nobility of the Rouergue.