LACRETELLE, Charles de (1766-1855), historian and journalist, was born at Metz. Shortly before the Revolution he was introduced to some of the constitutionalist leaders, and oon joined the staff of the Moniteur and the Débats ; then ho became secretary to the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. He returned to journalism and joined Chénier and Roucher on the Journal de Paris. The triumph of the Jacobins was not without danger for him, and to avoid it he enlisted in the army, but after Thermidor returned once more to Paris and to newspaper work. The 13th Vendémiaire again drove him from both, and he took to serious composition. He had more than one fluctuation of fortune of the same kind still to undergo, and was actually imprisoned for a considerable time, but continued his historical work, to which after the establishment of Napoleon’s power he wholly devoted himself. He became a member of the Academy in 1811, and professor of history in the Parisian faculty of literature next year. The Restoration pleased him from the constitutional point of view, and after it the July monarchy. In 1848 he retired to Mâcon, where he died seven years later. Lacretelle’s chief work is a series of histories of the 18th century, the Revolution, and its sequel (Eighteenth Century, 1808; Revolution, 1821-26; Consulate and Empire, 1840; Restoration, 1846). He had previously given a Precis Historique of the Revolution (1801-6). Mr Carlyle’s sarcastic remark on Lacretelle’s History of the Revolution that it “exists but does not profit much” is partly true of all his books. The author was a moderate and fair-minded man, but possessed neither great powers of style, nor striking historical insight, nor the special historian’s power of uniting minute accuracy of detail with breadth ...