Francois Chateaubriand

Francois Chateaubriand (1768-1848) was a Breton, a native of St. Malo. The literary influence of Chateau-briand can hardly be exaggerated, for he is said to have reinstated Christianity in France. The story of his life, written by himself, published after his death, reads like a romance. Born at St. Malo, September 14th, 1768, of noble parentage, in the chateau which is now the Hotel de France, he became, at nineteen, a captain in the French army. Being a Royalist, he escaped to America during the French Revolution, and lived a roving life among the Indians. In 1801 he wrote his Indian romance "Atala," a prose "Hiawatha," which charmed all Europe, and which has been powerfully illustrated by Gustave Dore; "Rene" and other romances followed. Chateaubriand looked to Rousseau as his literary father. He went from America to London, and lived in a garret, so poor as to be often in want of food while he was writing the work that made him famous, his "Genius of Christianity," which aided in arresting the infidel tendencies of his age. The eighteenth century had used against Christianity the powerful weapons of sarcasm and ridicule; Chateaubriand set up against this method, "by genius rather than by reasoning," poetry and romance. "Christianity," he said, "is the most poetical of all religions, the most attractive, the most fertile in literary, artistic, and social results." This theme he developed in such a masterly way in his "Genius of Christianity" and his "Martyrs" that infidel writers lost caste. For these works Napoleon made him Secretary of Legation at Rome in 1803, and offered him higher positions, which as a staunch Royalist he declined. He returned with the Bourbons to France and became a noted states-man; but his strength lay in his pen. Louis XVIII. declared that "one of his pamphlets was worth an army of 100,000 men."

In 1830 he retired from public life and devoted himself entirely to literature. He died in Paris in 1848, having previously made every arrangement for his burial. He had wandered far from home, but he was a true Breton at heart, and he wrote a letter to the authorities at St. Malo requesting them to prepare a mausoleum for him upon the rocky promontory of the Isle "Grand Bay," which he had so often looked upon from the window of the room in which he was born at St. Malo. An intense love of the grand in nature was one of the chief characteristics of Chateaubriand. The fathers of St. Malo, much complimented, at once complied with the request; and in the simple mausoleum, hewn out of the solid granite, surrounded by a Gothic iron railing, surmounted with a beautiful granite cross that can be seen afar where the music of the waves never ceases, the great Breton of romance and history lies buried.