Background
Pierre Louis de Lacretelle was born at Metz on the 9th of October 1751.
Pierre Louis de Lacretelle was born at Metz on the 9th of October 1751.
In 1803 Pierre Louis de Lacretelle became a member of the Institute, taking the place of La Harpe.
Pierre Louis de Lacretelle practised as a barrister in Paris; and under the Revolution was elected as a depute suppliant in the Constituent Assembly, and later as deputy in the Legislative Assembly. He belonged to the moderate party known as the " Feuiliants, " but after the 10th of August 1792 he ceased to take part in public life. In 1803 he became a member of the Institute, taking the place of La Harpe. Under the Restoration he was one of the chief editors of the Minerve franqaise; he wrote also an essay, Sur le 18 Brumaire (1799), some Fragments politiques et littiraires (1817), and a treatise Des partis politiques et des factions de la pretendue aristocratie d'aujourd'hui (1819). tHis younger brother, Jean Charles Dominique de Lacre- telle, called Lacretelle le jeune (1766 - 1855), historian and journalist, was also born at Metz on the 3rd of September 1766. He was called to Paris by his brother in 1787, and during the Revolution belonged, like him, to the party of the Feuiliants.
He was for some time secretary to the due de la Rochefoucauld- Liancourt, the celebrated philanthropist, and afterwards joined the staff of the Journal de Paris, then managed by Suard, and where he had as colleagues Andre Chenier and Antoine Roucher.
He made no attempt to hide his monarchist sympathies, and this, together with the way in which he reported the trial and death of Louis XVI, brought him in peril of his life; to avoid thisdanger he enlisted in the army, but after Thermidor he returned to Paris and to his newspaper work.
In 1827 he was prime mover in the protest made by the French Academy against the minister Peyronnet's law on the press, which led to the failure of that measure, but this step cost him, as it did Villemain, his post as censeur royal.
Under Louis Philippe he devoted himself entirely to his teaching and literary work.
He died on the 26th of March 1855.
C. Lacretelle's chief work is a series of histories of the 18th century, the Revolution and its sequel: Precis historique de la Revolution franqaise, appended to the history of Rabaud St Etienne, and partly written in the prison of La Force (5 vols. , 1801 - 1806); Histoire de France pendant le XVIIIе si'ecle (6 vols. , 1808); Histoire de I'Assemblee Constituante (2 vols. , 1821); L'Assemblee Legislative (1822); La Convention Nationale (3 vols. , 1824 - 1825); Histoire de France depuis la restauration (1829 - 1835); Histoire du consulat et de I'empire (4 vols. , 1846).
Carlyle's sarcastic remark on Lacretelle's history of the Revolution, that it " exists, but does hot profit much, " is partly true of all his books.
