By Cosima Glaister
6:37PM GMT 18 Dec 2012
A study by ancestry.com has shown that Hugo was a colleague of French financier and politician Achille Fould, Bonham Carter's first cousin five times removed. The two men served together, Hugo in the constitutional and legislative assembly, Fould as minister of finance, in the postrevolutionary French government of the 1840s.
Fould was a great supporter of Louis-Napoleon III who seized power through a coup d'état in 1851, whereas Hugo declared him a traitor.
Whilst Bonham Carter's ancestor rose through the ranks of the new regime, Hugo relocated to Brussels then Jersey, finally settling in Guernsey where he wrote contemptuously about the treachery of his former colleagues, including Fould.
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