François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand (4 September 1768 - 4 July 1848) was a French writer and politician considered to be one of the leading figures of the Romantic era in France. He is best known for writing The Genius of Christianity (1808), a work written in defense of the Catholic faith during the The French Revolution; and Memoirs from Beyond the Grave (1849-50), a collection of memoirs he wrote and had published posthumously.
Chateaubriand was born in Saint-Malo on 4 September 1768, the last of ten children, to René de Chateaubriand, a sea captain turned ship-owner and slave trader of a sullen, foul-tempered character, and Apolline de Bedée, a pious woman who contrasted her husband in every way. He grew up in an atmosphere of gloomy solitude, broken by long walks in the Breton countryside and a close friendship with his sister Lucile. Nevertheless, this desperately lonely upbringing once drove Chateaubriand to attempt suicide with a hunting rifle, but the gun did not go off; any further attempts were thwarted when a gamekeeper entered the room.
Chateaubriand studied at Dol, then at Rennes, and later at Dinan. He was torn between a naval or an ecclesiastical career, but in 1786, shortly before the death of his father, he obtained a commission as lieutenant in the French Army in the regiment of Navarre. During this time, he spent some time in Paris, where he was caught in the middle of the French Revolution; he saw the storming of the Bastille and the subsequent unrest as well as the National Assembly in Paris. He foresaw the downfall of the monarchy and was sympathetic to some republican ideas, but he disapproved of the mob violence employed by the revolutionaries, embarking for America on 8 April 1791.
On 10 July 1791, Chateaubriand arrived in Philadelphia, where he was granted an interview with George Washington, whom he called "General"; Chateaubriand described him as a "soldier-citizen, the liberator of a world". Afterwards, Chateaubriand visited New York, Boston, Lexington, Massachusetts, Albany, Niagra Falls, the Carolinas, and Florida, and he followed the Mississippi as far as the Natchez country. The American wilderness furnished his poetic mind with an inexhaustible supply of imagery, and he made use of his travel experiences to write down the novellas Atala (1801), René (1802), and Les Natchez (1826).
When King Louis XVI was arrested in an attempt to escape France, Chateaubriand felt it was his duty to stand and fight in defence of imperilled royalty and returned to France 2 January 1792. He married his sister's friend, Céleste Buisson de la Vigne, joined the Émigrés' Army of the Princes of Condé, and participated in the campaign against the revolutionaries. Unfortunately, he was wounded and left for dead during the expedition against Thionville, and succeeded in escaping to England in 1793. Here he lived in London in the most abject misery, being unable to return to France until 1800, and even then only under an assumed name; he attempted to make a living by doing translations and teaching French, and he published his first work Historical, Political, and Moral Essay on Revolutions, Ancient and Modern (1797), wherein he attempts to explain the French Revolution, to little fanfare.
On 1 July 1798, Chateaubriand's sister wrote him of his mother's death, her dying request being the conversion of her son; Chateaubriand returned to the Christian faith. He returned to France on 6 May 1801 and published The Genius of Christianity (1802), making a case for the Christian faith from its contributions to the arts and literature. This work made him famous, and Napoleon I appointed him secretary of the embassy at Rome and then minister at Valais, Switzerland, but he resigned from the post even before he occupied it. When he witnessed the execution of the Duc d'Enghien, the last of the Bourbon-Condé royal princes, on 21 March 1804, he resigned the next day and never served in Napoleon's regime again. He then made a voyage to the Middle East, on the advice of his wife, on 13 July 1806. He then wrote an account of the voyage called The Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem (1811), which went on to be praised for its accuracy and used as a 19th-century model for nearly all the French travellers of the region.
Chateaubriand returned to the political fray when the monarchy was restored in 1814; he was made a viscount and a member of the House of Peers a year later. He then became a member of the French delegation to the Congress of Verona in October 1822, worrying about the Spanish situation at the time. Chateaubriand was one of the key players in favour of French military intervention, restoring Ferdinand VII to the Spanish throne in 1824. However, his haughtiness led the king to dismiss him, and Chateaubriand subsequently attacked the ministerial departments, even royalty, on behalf of Liberal principles. He was made ambassador to Rome in 1828, but he resigned the next year upon the ascension of Jules de Polignac as premier. Chateaubriand's refusal to swear allegiance to Louis-Philippe, the new king from the House of Orléans, ended his political career; he withdrew from politics altogether to write Memoirs from Beyond the Grave (1849-50), which he began writing as early as 1810; it was a history of his thoughts as it was an autobiography, and it went on to become one of his most enduring works.
He spent the last years of his life as a recluse, living in an apartment at Rue du Bac in Paris; he left his house only to pay visits to Juliette Récamier, a socialite, in Abbaye-aux-Bois. At the encouragement of his confessor, he wrote his last work, Life of Rancé (1844), a biography of Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé, the founder of the Trappists, whose life parallels that of Chateaubriand. Chateaubriand even continued revising Memoirs from Beyond the Grave as late as 1845-47.
Chateaubriand died in Paris on 4 July 1848, in the midst of the Revolution of 1848, in the arms of Récamier. At his request, he was buried on the tidal island Grand Bé near Saint-Malo, accessible only when the tide is out.
Chateaubriand's writings of Nature and analysis of emotion had a major impact on Romantic writers, in France and beyond; Lord Byron admired René, and a fourteen-year-old Victor Hugo famously wrote in his journal: "I will be Chateaubriand or nothing."
Major Works:
- Historical, Political, and Moral Essay on Revolutions, Ancient and Modern (1797)
- The Genius of Christianity (1802)
- Life of Rancé (1844)
- Memoirs from Beyond the Grave (1849-50)
