Les Essarts is the Forbes family estate at Saint-Briac, France, and the international family seat of the descendants of James Grant Forbes (b. Shanghai, China), a member of the Forbes family of China and Boston who settled in Brittany at Les Essarts. He is the grandfather of two famous politicians, Brice Lalonde, a socialist and Green Party candidate for President of France in 1981, and John Forbes Kerry, a Democrat candidate for President of the United States of America. Many of the Forbes family have socialized during summers spent in Brittany at Les Essarts.
Brice Lalonde (born February 10, 1946) is a former socialist and Green Party leader in France, who ran for President of France in 1981. In 1988 he was named Minister of the Environment, and in 1990 founded the Green Party Génération Ecologie.
He was a student leader during the May 1968 student uprisings in France, when riots and upheaval scared the French population away from Revolution and the old Left, but toward an adaptive and calmer socialism.
In 1968, Lalonde was President of the Union Nationale des Etudiants de France (UNEF), the French National Students' Union, which brought France to a standstill with protests and riots. The power of students in Europe and the power of his first cousin there caused Sen. John Kerry to rethink his support of the Vietnam War in the U.S., and caused him to become more agitated and aggressive in his own leadership of young people and demonstrations in the U.S.