BARON DE AMABLE

See also:

• GUILLAUME
• GUILLAUME, JEAN BAPTISTE CLAUDE EUGENE (1822-1905)

GUILLAUME PROSPER BRUGIERE

See also:

• BARON DE AMABLE GUILLAUME PROSPER BRUGIERE BARANTE (1782-1866)

BARANTE (1782-1866)  , French statesman and historian, the son of an advocate, was born at Riom on the loth of June 1782 . At the age of sixteen he entered the Ecole Polytechnique at 38o Paris, and at twenty obtained his first appointment in the civil service . His abilities secured him rapid promotion, and in 18o6 he obtained the post of auditor to the council of state . After being employed in several political missions in Germany, Poland and Spain, during the next two years, he became prefect of Vendee . At the time of the return of Napoleon I. he held the prefecture of Nantes, and this post he immediately resigned . On the second restoration of the Bourbons he was made councillor of state and secretary-general of the ministry of the interior . After filling for several years the post of director-general of indirect taxes, he was created in 1819 a peer of France and was prominent among the Liberals . After the revolution of July 183o, M. de Barante was appointed ambassador to Turin, and five years later to St Petersburg . Throughout the reign of Louis Philippe he remained a supporter of the government; and after the fall of the monarchy, in February 1848, he withdrew from political affairs and retired to his country seat in Auvergne . Shortly before his retirement he had been made grand cross of the Legion of Honour . Barante's Histoire des ducs de Bourgogne de la maison de Valois, which appeared in a series of volumes between 1824 and 1828, procured him immediate admission to the French Academy . Its narrative qualities, and purity of style, won high praise from the romantic school, but it exhibits a lack of the critical sense and of scientific scholarship .

Amongst his other

literary works are a Tableau de la litterature francaise au dixhuitieme siecle, of which several editions were published; Des communes et de l'aristocratie (1821); a French translation of the dramatic works of Schiller; Questions constitutionnelles (185o); Histoire de la Convention Nationale, which appeared in six volumes between 1851 and 1853; Histoire du Directoire de la Republique francaise (1855); Etudes historiques et biographiques (1857); La Vie politique de M . Royer-Collard (1861) . The version of Hamlet for Guizot's Shakespeare was his work . He died on the 22nd of November 1866 . His Souvenirs were published by his grandson (Paris, 189o-99) . See also the article by Guizot in the Revue des deux Mondes, July 1867 .