Claude-Carloman de Rulhière

Claude Carloman de Rulhière

Claude-Carloman de Rulhière (born June 12, 1735 in Bondy near Paris , † January 30, 1791 ibid) was a French poet and historian .

Rulhiere accompanied Marshal von Richelieu as an adjutant ("aide de camp") during the Seven Years' War in Germany against Hanover and followed him in 1758 to Bordeaux . In 1760 he accompanied the French ambassador, Baron de Breteuil, as the secretary of the embassy to Saint Petersburg , where he witnessed the coup of Catherine II in 1762, in which the French secret service was involved (Tsar Peter was too friendly to Prussia ). At the urging of his friends, he wrote a manuscript about it and circulated it. Katharina repeatedly demanded that it be destroyed, and Rulhiere was only able to publish it after her death. These "anecdotes" about the Russian Revolution established his fame and ultimately gave him admission to the academy in 1787. In 1765 he left the army. In 1771 he got a job as a political writer at the Foreign Office. In 1773 he was also secretary of the Comte de Provence, later Louis XVIII. He was a well-known figure in the Paris salons, where he a. a. associated with Nicolas Chamfort and Antoine de Rivarol . Until the almost inevitable quarrel when dealing with him, he also looked after the old Jean-Jacques Rousseau . After a trip to Germany and Poland in 1776, he began to write a history of Poland that appeared posthumously and unfinished. In his biography of Friedrich II, Thomas Carlyle praises her style, but laments the poor presentation of facts for a historical work. In 1788 he also wrote a work on the withdrawal of the Edict of Nantes , at a time when the Protestants were to regain more rights. As a poet he tried his hand at Les jeux de main (Paris 1808).

Works

• Auguis (Editeur) Oeuvres , 6 vols. 1819
• Anecdotes sur la revolution de Russie en l'annee 1762 (Paris 1797 and more), Gallimard 2006 (an English translation was published in London in 1797 and in Boston in 1798, as reprint New York in 1971)
• Eclaircissements historiques sur les causes de revocation de l'edit de Nantes (Paris 1788, 2 volumes)
• Histoire de l'anarchie de Pologne et du demembrement de cette republique (edited by Pierre Claude François Daunou , Paris: H. Nicolle et Desenne, 1807, 4 volumes), 4th edition, Paris 1862, 3 volumes

literature

• Jules Le Fèvre-Deumier (1797–1857) wrote his biography in Célébrités d'autrefois: essais biographiques et littéraires . - Paris: Amyot 1853
• Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve Causeries des Lundis , Vol. 4
• Asse, biography in the foreword of de Rulhieres Anecdotes de Marechal de Richelieu 1890
• Ruth P. Dawson: “Gender, sexuality, legitimation: Claude-Carloman de Rulhière on Catherine the Great.” In: Falko Schnicke u. Christian Klein (ed.): Mechanisms of legitimation of the biographical: contexts - actors - techniques - limits. Peter Lang, Bern 2016. 117-133. [Yearbook for International German Studies 117]

Web links

• Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)