GRANIER DE CASSAGNAC, BERNARD A DOLPHE, a name well known among Parisian journalists. and not unknown in the Palais de Justice, was born at Averon•Bergelle (dep. Gers), in 1808. He was educated at the college of Toulouse, and contributed for a short time to the southern press, but soon quitted the provinces for Paris, where Victor Hugo Introduced him to the Journal des Dibats. and Revue de Paris. Here his vehement style did not give satisfaction, and he was engaged by M. Girardin to write literary criticisms for La Presse. In 1840 be sailed for the Antilles, in hopes of politi• cal advancement, ingratiated himself with the planters, although he narrowly escaped being murdered by the blacks, married a Creole lady; Mademoiselle Beauvallon, and returned to Paris as deputy for Guadeloupe. Not being able to arrange a satisfactory engagement with La Presse, he founded the Globe, ultra-Orleanist, and violent to such a degree that the opposition journals agreed to ignore it (la conspiration'du silence, as it was called). The Globe failed; and In 1845 Grapier de Cassagnac started L'Epoque, also violent, and also a failure. It was merged in the Presse, not, however, before its editor had been openly accused in the chamber of deputies of selling his influence with the government. Shortly before the revolution, he was employed by M. Guizot to set up a ministerial paper at Rome. In 1848 lie returned to France, and after a while reap peared in Paris, as an ardent supporter of the prince president, and a bitter foe to his old patrons, the house of Orleans. He edited the Pouroir (1850), and wrote for the Constitutionnel with an excess of zeal and a pretense of exclusive information which led to an avertissement. In 1852 he was elected as the government candidate for Mirande (Gers), for which he was re-elected in 1857 and 1863. In'the chamber, he spoke in favor of the army dotation bill, advocated direct taxation on all descriptions of funded prop erty, additional protection for the interests of literature, and the formation of a local railway in his department. In 1857 he was made grand officer, and in 1865 com
mander of the legion of honor. In 1867 he founded Le 1?ereil, a weekly religious organ, which (lied the next year. He afterwards became principal editor of the semi official Pays, and in 1863 was manager of the _Nation. In 1870 on the fall of the empire, he retired to Brussels; in 1876 he was elected a member of the national assem bly. The appearance of Granier de Cassagnac before the courts of justice have been very numerous. In 1842 lie was tried for a duel with M. Lacrosse, of whose father be had written disrespectfully, and whom he lamed for life. In 1845 he prosecuted M. Hilbey for libel in his pamphlet on the Venality of the Press. In 1847 be was mixed up in the duel in which his brother-in-law, Beauvallon, killed Dujarrier of La Presse, and abort which strange things were said. He was also sued by Delasalle for a debt which he declared he had paid. N. Delasalle gained his cause. Iu 1355 his publisher pro ceeded against him for non-delivery of a MS. on the eastern war. The duel between Paul de Cassagnac of the Pays and a writer in the Soleil (in which Granier de Cassagnac seconded his son), and the unseemly quarrel between the Cassaguacs and M. Vermoul of the Courrier Francais, were matters of great notoriety. His most important works are: A Voyage to the Antilles (1844); The Queen of the Prairies, a romance (1845); The Causes of the French Revolution of 1789 (1850); The History of the Directory, a reprint from the Constitutionnel (1851-56); The Fall of Louis Phillippe (1857); The Girondins and the _Massacres of September (1860), etc. All his writings are remarkable for vigor of style, but the thorough-going partisanship of the author greatly impairs their historical value.