INTRODUCTION

Jules Michelet, the author of this work, was born in Paris, August 21, 1798. His father was a printer, who had set up his press in a disused church. From an early âge Jules had to assist in the work of printing. However, his parents contrived to send him to school, and he profited so well by his opportunities as to become, in 1821, teacher of history at the Collège Sainte Barbe. History became his life-study, and in 1827 appeared his masterly Précis de P Histoire Moderne, In 1831 he published a Roman History, following the Unes of Niebuhr; and in the same year he became the head of the Historical Section of the National Archives (answering to our Record Office). He now began work on aFrench History, and between 1833 and 1843 issued six volumes covering the history of France from the earliest times to the death of Louis XI. Thèse six volumes are on the whole the best workMichelet didin history; they are more sober and impartial than his later work, and are founded on a wide study of documents, many of them unpublished. In 1838 Michelet became Professor of History and Moral Science at the Collège de France. Hère he threw himself into the struggle against the clérical reaction of the time, combating priestly influence in his work Le Prêtre^ la Femme et la Famille, He also wrote a history of the French Révolution — which, like Carlyle's work on that period, was a sort of prose epic.

Michelet, holding Republican views, gave up his professorship after the Coup d'Etat of 1851. In 1852, refusing to take the oath of allegiance to Napoléon III., he lost his post at the Archives. He retired into the country, and unable to pursue his historical researches as formerly, wrote a séries of br illiant popular Works on Natural History — L Oiseau (\Z^(>\ L Insecte (1857), La Mer (1861), &c. Resuming his historical labours, he carried his History of France on to 1789 ; but the later séries of volumes