THIERRY, JACQUES NICOLAS AUGUSTIN (1795-1856), French historian, who was born at Blois on May 1o, 1795. He was educated at the Blois Grammar School, and at the Ecole normale superieure. He embraced the ideas of the French Revolution with enthusiasm, and he became fired with Saint Simon's ideal society of the future. He became the secre tary, and, as he would say himself, the "adopted son" of the famous visionary (1814-17) ; but, while most of Saint Simon's followers turned their attention to the affairs of life, devoting themselves to the problems, both theoretical and practical, of political economy, Thierry turned his to history. His imagina tion had been powerfully impressed by reading Les Martyrs, in which Chateaubriand had contrasted the two civilizations and the two races from which the modern world has sprung. His ro mantic ardour was later still further nourished by the works of Sir Walter Scott, and though he did not himself actually write romances, his conception of history fully recognized the dramatic element. His main ideas on the Germanic invasions, the Nor man Conquest, the formation of the communes, the gradual as cent of the nations towards free government and parliamentary institutions are already observable in the articles contributed by him to the Censeur europeen (1817-2o), and later in his Lettres sur l'histoire de France (182o). From Fauriel he learnt to use the original authorities; and by the aid of the Latin chronicles and the collection, as yet very ill understood, of the Anglo Saxon laws, he composed his Histoire de la Conquete de l'Angle terre par les Normands (1825). This book, the preparation of
which had required several years of hard work, cost Thierry his eyesight ; in 1826 he was obliged to engage secretaries and in 183o became quite blind. Nevertheless he republished (1827) his Lettres sur l'histoire de France, with the addition of fifteen new ones, in which he described some of the more striking episodes in the history of the rise of the mediaeval communes.
Thierry was ardent in his applause of the July Revolution and the triumph of liberal ideas. He now re-edited, under the title of Dix ans d'etudes historiques, his first essays in the Censeur europeen and the Courrier francais (1834), and composed his Recits des temps merovingiens, in which he reproduced in a vivid and dramatic form some of the most characteristic stories of Gregory of Tours. These Recits appeared first in the Revue des deux mondes; when collected in volume form, they were pre ceded by long and interesting Considerations sur l'histoire de France. Thierry became a member of the Academie des Inscrip tions et Belles Lettres; in 1841, on the motion of Villemain, the French Academy awarded him the first Prix Gobert, which be came a kind of literary inheritance for him, being renewed in his favour fifteen years in succession. By the aid of zealous collabo rators (including Bourquelot and Louandre) he compiled, in four volumes, a valuable Recueil des monuments inedits de l'histoire du Tiers Etat (1850-7o), which, however, bear only on the northern part of France. He died in Paris on May 22, 1856.