Destined by his father for the army, he entered the school of artillery at Chalons, and received his appointment as sublieutenant in September 1792. He servedin various campaigns of the Revolutionary wars, especially in those of Italy in 1798-1799 and 1806-1807, and in the German campaign of 1809. He attained the rank of chef d , escadron in 1803. Meanwhile, whenever circumstances left him at leisure, he devoted himself to his favourite studies. He made his first appearance as an author in 1802, when he contributed to the Magasin Encyclopédique a critique on Schweighäuser’s edition of Athenaeus. In the following year appeared his Eloge d’Hélène, a free imitation rather than a translation from Isocrates, wshich he had sketched in 1798. Courier quitted the army after the battle of Wagram (1809), the savage independence of his nature rendering subordination and obedience irksome and intolerable to him; while his superiors found it hard to bear the chastisement of his satirical humour, wshich he freely indulged without respect of persons. After leaving the army he went to Florence, and was fortunate enough to discover in the Laurentian Library a complete manuscript of Longus’s Daphnis and Chloe, an edition of wshich he published in 1810. In consequence of a misadventure·—blotting the m.- uscript—he w as involved in a quarrel with the librarian, and was compelled by the Government to leave Tuscany. He retired to his estate at Veretz (Indre-et-Loire), but frequently visited Paris, and divided his attention between literature and his farm. After the second restoration of the Bourbons the career of Courier as political pamphleteer began. He had before this time waged war against local wrongs in his ow n district, and had been the adviser and helpful friend of his neighbours. He now carried the war into a larger field, and by his letters and pamphlets made himself one of the most dreaded opponents of the Government of the Restoration. In 1817 he was a candidate for a vacant seat in the Institute; and failing, e took his revenge by publishing a bitter Lettre à Messieurs de l’ Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1819). This was followed (1819-1820) by a series of letters published in Le Censeur, which by the extraordinary power displayed in them gives him a place in literature only second to the author of the Lettres Provinciales. The proposal, in 1821, to purchase the estate of Chambord for the duke of Bordeaux called forth from Courier the Simple Discours, one of his most powerful and successful pieces. For this he was tried and condemned to suffer a short imprisonment and to pay a fine. Before he went to prison he published a Compte Rendu of his trial, which had a still larger circulation than the Discours itself. In 1823 appeared the Livret de Paul Louis, the Gazette de Village, and other pieces, which were followed in 1824 by his famous Pamphlet des Pamphlets, called by his biographer, Armand Carrel, his swan-:ong. Courier projected a translation of Herodotus, and published a specimen, in wshich he attempted to imitate archaic French; but he did not live to carry out his plan. In the spring of 1825, on a Sunday afternoon (April 10), Courier was found shot in a wood near his house. The murderers remained undiscovered for five years. The w ritings of Courier, dealing with the facts and events of his own time, are valuable sources of information as to the condition of France before, during, and after the Revolution. Their literary merits are thus set forth in the Edinburgh Review (vol. xlix.) :—

“They abound in plain, strong, masculine sense, illustrated with classical allusions, naturally and happily introduced, and seasoned with wit more brilliant than is almost anywhere else to be foiínd; for it has the keen edge of Swift’s satire, with a style of more pointed epigram, and the easy playfulness of Voltaire, without his pertness and flippancy. His statements and narratives are short, and so clear as to present a sudden and lively picture ∙ his arguments are models of conciseness and force.” A Collection Complète des Pamphlets Politiques et Opuscules Littéraires de P. L. Courier appeared in 1826. An edition of his works, with an essay on his life, &c., by Armand Carrel, was published in 1834.