Comte de Auguste Louis Charles La Garde-Chambonas

A French nobleman and man of letters, he is generally listed as Auguste Louis Charles de La Garde and was born in 1783. Library records identify him as a comte and describe him as a writer; the Bibliothèque nationale de France notes that he was baptized Auguste Louis Charles de La Garde and raised by his relative Scipion de Chambonas.

He is chiefly known today for memoir-like works about the Congress of Vienna, including Fêtes et souvenirs du Congrès de Vienne; tableaux des salons, scènes anecdotiques et portraits, 1814–1815. English-speaking readers may know him through Anecdotal Recollections of the Congress of Vienna, which helped preserve his colorful observations of diplomats, salons, and court life during a crucial moment in European history.

Some catalog records give his dates as 1783–1853?, with the year of death marked as uncertain. Because the available sources are brief and not fully consistent, it is safest to present him as a minor 19th-century French memoirist whose reputation rests mainly on his eyewitness-style recollections of Vienna’s political and social world.