Jules Michelet was born on Aug. 21, 1798, in Paris.

His father was a printer by trade, and his

mother's family was from peasant stock. The family was poor, especially after Napoleon ordered
the closing of his father's press. This family background prompted Michelet's initial sympathy
with the French Revolution. 1 Michelet was the son of a modest printer who managed to give
Jules an education. A brilliant student, Michelet at 29 was teaching history and philosophy at the
cole Normale Suprieure. He had already published textbooks and a translation (1827)
of Giambattista Vicos Scienza nuova (New Science). The July Revolution (1830) confirmed
Vicos influence on Michelet in stressing mans own part in the making of history, conceived as a
continuous struggle of human freedom against fatality. This, the main theme of the Introduction
lhistoire universelle (1831), was to underlie Michelets later writings. After the Histoire
romaine, 2 vol. (1831), Michelet devoted himself to medieval and modern history; his
appointment as head of the historical section of the Record Office in the same year provided him
with unique resources for carrying out his monumental lifes work, the Histoire de France. The
first six volumes (183343) stop at the end of the Middle Ages; they include the Tableau de la
France, in which the emergence of France as a nation is seen as a victory over racial and
geographic determinism; they also include his treatment of Joan of Arc as the very soul of France
and the living symbol of his own patriotic and democratic ideals.
Michelet deliberately threw his intimate self into his narrative, convinced that this
was the way to achieve the historians ultimate aim: the resurrection (or re-creation)
of the past. Such a resurrection must be integral: all the elements of the past
artistic, religious, economic, as well as politicalmust be brought back, intertwined,
as they once were, in a living synthesis. Arbitrary and overambitious as the
undertaking seems, Michelets compassionate genius and romantic imagination
enabled him to conjure up an effective evocation, unsurpassed for poetic and
dramatic power. 2 The events of 1830 which initiated the "liberal" monarchy of Louis

Philippe unmuzzled Michelet as a liberal, anti-clerical and very patriotic historian and writer, and
also put him in a better position for study by obtaining for him the position of head of the
Historical Section of the National Archives and a deputy-professorship under Guizot in the
literary faculty of the Sorbonne.
Soon afterwards he began his chief and monumental work Histoire de France (History of
France) in which he immersed himself in the narrative and stressed the development of France as
a nation. It was in these years of his early thirties that Michelet seems to have begun to drift
somewhat away from a previous acceptance of catholicism and royalism and towards more
radical views.

1 http://biography.yourdictionary.com/jules-michelet
2 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jules-Michelet

The completion of the Histoire de France was to involved intermittently sustained efforts over
more than thirty years from 1833 but Michelet also produced other many works during these
years. Some of the earlier of these other works included Oeuvres choisies de Vico, the Mmoires
de Luther crits par lui-mme, and the Origines du droit franaise.
In 1838 he was appointed professor at the Collge de France, where he held the chair of History
and Ethics. He published, in 1839, his Histoire romaine. The results of his lectures appeared in
the volumes Le Prtre, la femme, et la famille (1843), and Le Peuple (1846).
In his Le Peuple, Michelet describes the spirit and qualities of the French working class. It is
widely considered to be his best single volume. On its initial day of publication it sold a thousand
copies and was immediately translated into English. It discussed various economic and political
transformations as France and Europe shifted from an agrarian to an industrial society and
examined the condition of the social classes. According to Michelet, modernization and
industrialization were heightening political and ideological conflict. He called for a love of one's
country to solve many of France's problems and placed faith in the innate goodness of the
masses, seeing "the people" as the source of progress in history. Le Peuple looks to the people to
unify France and make her great. Michelet believed they were the true custodians of the spirit of
Joan of Arc, and that their revolution had been a revelation of the inherent nobility of
humankind.
Michelet visualized himself throughout his life as a champion of the people and, as the
principles, (associated with disenchantment with Louis Phillipe's bourgeoise monarchy), that
precipitated the outbreak of revolution of 1848 became more distinct and widely shared he was
one of those who condensed and propagated them. When the revolutionism of 1848 actually
broke out he devoted himself even more strenuously to his literary work.
One outcome of this period of unrest in France and Europe being the replacement of Louis
Phillipe's monarchy by a republic headed by Louis Napoleon a putative nephew of Bonaparte.
Before many months passed Louis Napoleon, leader of the Second French Republic was
accepted as the Emperor Napoleon III of France.
Given Michelet's sympathies for some radical aspects of the recent revolution, the government
of Napoleon III suspended his popular lectures at the Collge de France in 1851. Michelet,
though not in any way identified with the Second Republic administratively had refused to take
the oaths of allegiance to the empire of Emperor Napoleon III, and lost his position at the
National Archives.
A period of relative poverty now began for Michelet and his second wife.
The establishment of the new rgime only kindled afresh his republican zeal. In the ensuing
years until the fall of Napoleon III (1870), Michelet completed his enthusiastic Histoire de la
rvolution franaise.
His entering into marriage for a second time seems to have stimulated his literary powers.

While his history studies made steady progress, a crowd of extraordinary little books
accompanied them as subjects of his creative efforts. Two of the most acclaimed of
these, L'Oiseau (1856) and La Montagne(1868), being on an area of interest he began to share
with his new wife - natural science.
The authorship of these numerous titles, together with his major studies of French history took
up a great deal of Michelet's time over the two decades after 1850. He lived partly in France and
partly also in Italy and became habituated to the spending of the winter months at Hyres on the
Riviera.
The term renaissance, meaning literally "rebirth," was first employed around 1855-8 by Jules
Michelet to refer to the "discovery of the world and of man" in the 16th century. The great Swiss
historian Jakob Burckhardt, in his classic The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860),
expanded on Michelet's conception. Defining the Renaissance as the period between the Italian
painters Giotto and Michelangelo, Burckhardt characterized the epoch as nothing less than the
birth of modern humanity and consciousness after a long period of decay.
In 1867 Michelet's massive study Histoire de France was completed - its content now extending
over some 19 volumes. Michelet was perhaps the first historian to devote himself to anything
like a picturesque history of the middle ages, and his account is still the most vivid that exists. Its
style, its emotional strength, and its powerful evocation make it a masterpiece of French
literature. Michelet traced the biography of the nation as a whole, instead of concentrating on
persons or groups of persons. His most convincing pages deal with the Middle Ages. Michelet
had vast knowledge of factual detail and original documents - his inquiry into manuscript and
printed authorities had been most laborious. This history, especially the latter part, views the past
through Michelet's strong anti-clericalism and his leftist political prejudices, and is marred by
emotional bias against the clergy, the nobility, and the monarchic institutions.
Dramatic, and sometimes bloody, events associated with the French Revolution are presented as
unfortunate, but perhaps understandable, episodes that were associated with a crucial French
mission to secure the liberty of the people at home and abroad.
Two chapters of the Histoire de France, present the most impressive of all romantic
interpretations of Joan of Arc. Michelet dealt with Joan as an inspired girl from the people, as an
incarnation of French patriotism. The chapters in question have been reprinted separately many
times as a biography of the Maid of Orleans and such a separate presention have been referred to
by some French people as "our national Bible".
Uncompromisingly hostile as Michelet was to the empire of Napoleon III, its downfall in the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1, and the accompanying disasters of the country, once more
stimulated him to activity. Not only did he write letters and pamphlets during the struggle, but
when it was over he set himself to complete the vast task which his two great histories had

almost covered by a Histoire du XIX sicle. He did not, however, live to carry it further than
Waterloo.
The new republic that followed the downfall of Napoleon III was not altogether a restorarion
for Michelet. His professorship, at the Collge de France of which he contended that he had
never properly been deprived, was not given back to him.
He died at Hyres in February 1874.
In many ways Michelet's Le Peuple and other historical works expressed the romanticism of his
age and reflected the credo of the liberal petite bourgeoisie. He believed in the federation of the
social classes and not their disappearance, in the nation state, in improved relations between
capital and labour, in Deism, in anti-clericalism, and in the infallibility of the people.
Although the Marxists criticized him because of his faith in the reconciliation of classes and the
permanence of the nation state, the twentieth historian Lucien Febvre, a founder of
the Annales school, viewed his work as an inspiration for a new variety of history because of
Michelet's concern for "a total history" and "la longue dure" in history. Consequently, there has
been a revival of interest in Michelet, an historian whose works reflect many of the changes,
conflicts, trends, and hopes of the nineteenth century. Thus, he has had a significant impact on
French historiography in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - an influence which
continues to shape much popular historical thinking in France.
Michelet is indeed regarded by many in France as the countries greatest 'national' historian. 3

3 http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/history/historian/jules_michelet.html