LACRETELLE, JEAN CHARLES DOMINIQUE DE, called LACRETELLE LE JEUNE (1766-1855), historian and jour nalist, was born at Metz on Sept. 3, 1766. He went to Paris in 1787 and, during the Revolution, belonged to the party of the Feuillants. He was for some time secretary to the duc de la Roche f oucauld-Liancourt, the celebrated philanthropist, and afterwards joined the staff of the Journal de Paris, then managed by Suard, where he had as colleagues Andre Chenier and Antoine Roucher. His monarchist sympathies brought him in peril of his life, so he enlisted in the army, but after Thermidor he returned to Paris and to his newspaper work. He was involved in the royalist move ment of the 13th Vendemiaire, and condemned to deportation after the i8th Fructidor but, thanks to powerful influence, he was left "forgotten" in prison till after the i8th Brumaire, when he was set at liberty by Fouche. Under the empire he became a pro fessor of history in the Faculte des lettres of Paris (1809), and a member of the Academie francaise (181 I). In 1827 he was prime mover in the protest made by the French Academy against the minister Peyronnet's law on the press, which led to the failure of that measure, but this step cost him, as it did Villemain, his post as censeur royal. Under Louis Philippe he devoted himself
entirely to his teaching and literary work. In 1848 he retired to Macon; but there, as in Paris, he was the centre of a brilliant cir cle, for he was a wonderful causeur, and an equally good listener, and had many interesting experiences to recall. He died on March 26, 1855.
J. C. Lacretelle's chief work is a series of histories of the i8th century, the Revolution and its sequel: Précis historique de la Revo lution francaise, appended to the history of Rabaud St. Etienne, and partly written in the prison of La Force (5 vols., 1801-06) ; Histoire de France pendant le siecle (6 vols., 1808) ; Histoire de l'Assemblee Constituante (1821) ; L'Assemblie Legislative (1822) ; La Convention Nationale (1824-25) ; Histoire de France depuis la restauration (1829-1835) ; Histoire du consulat et de l'empire (1846).