RULHIERE (or RumilkRES),

See also:

• CLAUDE, JEAN (1619-1687)

CLAUDE

See also:

• CARLOMAN
• CARLOMAN (751-771)
• CARLOMAN (828-88o)
• CARLOMAN (d. 754)
• CARLOMAN (d. 884)

CARLOMAN DE (1735–1791)  , French poet and historian, was born at Bondy, near Paris, on the 12th of June 1735 . He became aide-de-camp to Marshal Richelieu, whom he followed through the Hanoverian campaign of 1757 and to his government at Bordeaux in 1758; and at twenty-five he was sent to St Petersburg as secretary of legation . Here he actually saw the revolution which seated Catherine II. on the throne, and thus obtained the facts of Anecdotes sur la revolution de Russie en 1762 . Catherine made repeated efforts to secure the destruction of the MS., which remained unpublished until after the empress's death . Rulhiere became secretary to the comte de Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII.) in 1773, and he was admitted to the Academy in 1787 . The later years of his life were spent chiefly in Paris, where he held an appointment in the Foreign Office and went much into society; but he visited Germany and Poland in 1776 . His unfinished Histoire de l'anarchie de Pologne (4 vols., 1807) was published posthumously under the editorship of P . C . F . Daunou . The only important historical work which he published during his lifetime was his Eclaircissements historiques sur les causes de la revocation de l'edit de Nantes . . (2 vols., 1788), undertaken in view of the restoration to the Protestants of their civil rights .

Rulhiere died at Bondy on the 3oth of

January 1791 . His short sketch of the Russian revolution is justly ranked among the masterpieces of the kind in French . Of the larger Poland Carlyle, as justly, complains that its allowance of fact is too small in proportion. to its bulk . The author was also a fertile writer of vers de societe, short satires, epigrams, &c., and he had a considerable reputation among the witty and ill-natured group also containing Nicolas Chamfort, Antoine de Rivarol, Louis Rene de Champcenetz, &c . On the other hand he has the credit of caring for J . J . Rousseau in his morose old age, until Rousseau as usual quarrelled with him . Rulhiere's works were edited, with a notice by P . R . Anguis, in 1819 (Paris, 6 vols . 8vo) . The Russian Revolution may be found in the Chefs-d'wuvre historiques of the Collection Didot, and the Poland, with title altered to Revolutions de Pologne, in the same collection .

See also a notice by

Eugene Asse prefixed to an edition 189o) of Rulhiere's Anecdotes sur le Marechal de Richelieu; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi (vol. iv.) .