MICHAUD, JOSE211 FRANcots, 1767-1839; b. in Savoy, educated in the ecclesiastical college of Bourg; at 19 employed in a book-store at Lyons; author:the following year, of Voyage au Mont Blanc, followed by other essays. In 1790 he had the good fortune to meet the comtess Fanny de Beauhaeuais who persuaded him to go to Paris, where he became a hearty follower of Voltaire and Rousseau, espoused republicanism by the force of the current around him, but was at heart, and by his social liens remained, a conservative and royalist. After the fall of Robespierre he contributed to the Quotidienne articles so sqnarely favoring the restoration that it became necessary for him to leave Paris. He was arrested, condemned to death, escaped, and passed four years in Switzerland and south France, occupied in light literary work. Returned to Paris in 1799; in 1803 pub lished the poem Printemps d'un Proscrit. In 1806, in partnership with a younger brother, a printer, he undertook the great work Biographie Moderne in which the public men who were actively engaged in the great revolution were painted with dark colors.
Michaud -was led into history by a request of Mme. Cotton to write an introduction to her Mathilde, which called for an examination of original documents on the crusades, in which he became so deeply interested that it resulted in a work entitled Tableaux Histor ique des Trois Primiere Croisades, in the form of a romance published in 1807. Michaud was made member of the French academy in 1812. After the return of Louis XVIII. lie was a pronounced adherent of the old dynasty, and in the Quotidienne, which he then edited, advocated all the tyrannous reactions of the Bourbon government. His poems though numerous, and in their time popular with those who sympathized with his opin ions, are not of a high order. His L'Apotheose de Franklin, 1792, is interesting to Ameri cans. The Bernier Regne de Buanaparte, published in 1815, is a valuable contribution to the history of that time.