Joseph François Michaud was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 and publicist

Publicist

A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a public figure, especially a celebrity, a business, or for a work such as a book, film or album...

.

He was born at Albens

Albens

Albens is a commune in the Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France....

, Savoie

Savoie

Savoie is a French department located in the Rhône-Alpes region in the French Alps.Together with the Haute-Savoie, Savoie is one of the two departments of the historic region of Savoy that was annexed by France on June 14, 1860, following the signature of the Treaty of Turin on March 24, 1860...

, educated at Bourg-en-Bresse

Bourg-en-Bresse

Bourg-en-Bresse is a commune in eastern France, capital of the Ain department, and was capital of the former province of Bresse . It is located north-northeast of Lyon.The inhabitants of Bourg-en-Bresse are known as Burgiens.-Geography:...

, and afterwards engaged in literary work at Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

, where the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 first aroused the strong dislike of revolutionary principles which manifested itself throughout the rest of his life. In 1791 he went to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, where, at great risk to his own safety, he took part in editing several royalist journals. In 1796 he became editor of La Quotidienne

La Quotidienne

-History:It was set up in 1790 by M. de Coutouly. It ceased publication in the face of events in 1792, before returning to print in July 1774 under the title Le Tableau de Paris, returning to its original title in 1817....

, for which he was arrested after the 13th of Vendémiaire

13 Vendémiaire

13 Vendémiaire Year 4 is the name given to a battle between the French Revolutionary troops and Royalist forces in the streets of Paris...

; he evaded his captors, but was sentenced to death par contumace by the military council. Having resumed the editorship of his newspaper on the establishment of the Directory

French Directory

The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...

, he was again proscribed on the 18th of Fructidor, but after two years returned to Paris, when the Consulate

French Consulate

The Consulate was the government of France between the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire in 1804...

 had superseded the Directory.

His Bourbon

House of Bourbon

The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...

 sympathies led to a brief imprisonment in 1800, and on his release he temporarily abandoned journalism, and began to write and edit books. Along with his brother and two colleagues he published in 1806 a Biographie moderne ou dictionnaire des hommes qui se sont fait un nom en Europe, depuis 1789, the earliest work of its kind; and in 1811 appeared the first volume of his Histoire des croisades (History of the Crusades) and also the first volume of his Biographie universelle. In 1814 he resumed the editorship of La Quotidienne, and in the same year was elected Academician

Académie française

L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

. In 1815 his brochure entitled Histoire des quinze semaines ou le dernier règne de Bonaparte met with extraordinary success, passing through twenty-seven editions within a very short time.

His political services were now rewarded with the cross of an officer in the Legion of Honour and the modest post of king's reader, of which last he was deprived in 1827 for having opposed Peyronnet's "Loi d'Amour" against the freedom of the Press. In 1830-1831 he travelled in Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

 and Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

 for the purpose of collecting additional materials for the Histoire des croisades; his correspondence with a fellow explorer, Jean Joseph François Poujoulat

Jean Joseph François Poujoulat

Jean Joseph François Poujoulat , was a French historian and journalist.Poujoulat was co-author with Joseph François Michaud of the Bibliothèque des Croisades, and traveled with him through European and Asiatic Turkey in the study of the scenes of the Crusades...

, consisting practically of discussions and elucidations of various points in that work, was afterwards published (, 7 vols., 1833-1835). Like the Histoire, it is more interesting than exact. The Bibliothèque des croisades, in four volumes more, contained the "Pièces justificatives" of the Histoire. Michaud died at Passy

Passy

Passy is an area of Paris, France, located in the XVIe arrondissement, on the Right Bank. It is traditionally home to many of the city's wealthiest residents.Passy was formerly a commune...

, where his home had been since 1832.

His Histoire des croisades was published in its final form in six volumes in 1840 under the editorship of his friend Poujoulat (9th ed., with appendix, by Huillard-Bréholles, 1856). Michaud, along with Poujoulat, also edited Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir de l'histoire de France (32 vols., 1836-1844). See Sainte-Beuve

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was a literary critic and one of the major figures of French literary history.-Early years:...

, Causeries du lundi, vol. vii.