Auguste-Marseille Barthélemy (1796 – 23 August 1867) was a French
satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual arts, visual, literature, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently Nonfiction, non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ...
poet. His name can hardly be separated from that of his friend and compatriot,
Joseph Méry
Joseph Méry (21 January 179717 June 1866) was a French writer, journalist, novelist, poet, playwright and librettist.
Career
An ardent romanticist, he collaborated with Auguste Barthélemy in many of his satires and wrote a great number of ...
(1798–1866), with whom he carried on so intimate a collaboration that it is not possible to distinguish their personalities in their joint works.
Life
Auguste-Marseille Barthélemy was born in 1796 in
Marseille
Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...
. After having established some local reputation as a poet, Barthélemy went to
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
, where by one of his first efforts, ''Le Sacre de Charles X'' (1825) he gained the favor of the court. His energies, however, were soon enlisted in the service of the opposition party. In 1825 appeared a clever
political satire
Political satire is a type of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics. Political satire can also act as a tool for advancing political arguments in conditions where political speech and dissent are banned.
Political satir ...
, ''Les Sidiennes'', followed by ''La Villéliade ou la prise du château de Rivoli'' (1827), ''La Corbiéréide'' (1827), ''La Peyronnéide'', the joint productions of Barthélemy and Méry. The success was immediate and pronounced; fifteen editions of the ''Villéliade'' were called for during the year. A rapid succession of political squibs and satires was now poured forth by the authors, among the most remarkable being ''Biographie des quarante de l’Académie française'' (1826) and ''Napoléon en Égypte'' (1828), which passed through nearly a dozen editions in a year.
In 1829 Barthélemy was
imprisoned
Imprisonment or incarceration is the restraint of a person's liberty for any cause whatsoever, whether by authority of the government, or by a person acting without such authority. In the latter case it is considered " false imprisonment". Impri ...
and fined 1000 francs for the publication of their ''Fils de l'homme'', a poem on the
Duke of Reichstadt
Napoleon II (Napoléon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte; 20 March 181122 July 1832) was the disputed Emperor of the French for a few weeks in 1815. He was the son of Emperor Napoleon I and Empress Marie Louise, daughter of Emperor Francis I of ...
, Napoleon's son. The
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution (), Second French Revolution, or ("Three Glorious ays), was a second French Revolution after French Revolution, the first of 1789–99. It led to the overthrow of King Cha ...
of 1830 liberated him; and in company with Méry, he celebrated the triumph of the people in one of their most brilliant efforts, ''L'Insurrection''. From March 1831 to April 1832 they produced a series of verse satires issued weekly, ''the Némésis'', attacking the government and ministers of
Louis Philippe
Louis Philippe I (6 October 1773 – 26 August 1850), nicknamed the Citizen King, was King of the French from 1830 to 1848, the penultimate monarch of France, and the last French monarch to bear the title "King". He abdicated from his throne ...
. The small pension of which Barthélemy was the recipient was stopped. When the publication ceased there was a strong suspicion that Barthélemy had been paid for his silence, although a collection of the satires went through several editions in the 1830s. In 1832 he published an
anonymous
Anonymous may refer to:
* Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown
** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author
* Anonym ...
poem, supporting some acts of the government which were peculiarly obnoxious to the liberal faction of the
Orléanist
Orléanist () was a 19th-century French political label originally used by those who supported a constitutional monarchy expressed by the House of Orléans. Due to the radical political changes that occurred during France in the long nineteenth ...
party. This change of front destroyed his influence and his later writings passed unnoticed.
For the next few years he enjoyed a handsome pension from the government and refrained from all satirical writing. He again resumed his old style in 1844. and a collection of 24 satires entitled "Nouvelle Némésis" was published in 1845, but, apparently, without the former success. From that date he contented himself with