Gaeta, Italy

A fishing port in southern central Italy in Lazio on the Bay of Gaeta, it was a popular resort in Roman times. The (second) Siege of Gaeta was a battle of the War of Polish Succession. The Austrians at Gaeta withstood four months of siege from the Bourbon armies under Charles, Duke of Parma (later Charles III of Spain). They were defeated on August 6 1734 when the Spanish and French stormed the city. The Jacobite pretender Charles Edward Stuart participated in this battle.

BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Gagarin, Grigory Ivanovich, Prince

The Russian Ambassador in Rome in 1828, he was exiled to Rome after having been a rival to Alexander I for the beautiful Madame Narischkin.

BkXXIX:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Gaillard

Doctor at St Helena, at Napoleon’s exhumation in 1840.

BkXXIV:Chap16:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Gaillard, Maurice-André

1757-1844. A former colleague of Fouché at the College of Juilly (Oratorien), he was his ‘éminence grise’ in the Ministry of Police. He was named in 1810 as a Councillor to the Imperial Court.

BkXXIII:Chap10:Sec1 In Ghent in 1815 during the Hundred Days.

BkXXIII:Chap11:Sec1 His intrigues regarding the Congress of Vienna.

 

Galeffi, Pier Francesco, Cardinal

1770-1837. A Cardinal from 1803, he was Bishop of Albano and succeeded Pacca as Camerlingo in 1824.

BkXXX:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned in 1829.

BkXXX:Chap4:Sec1 Rejected as a Papal candidate by France.

 

Galerius

d.310 Roman emperor (305–10). Diocletian appointed him Caesar for the eastern part of the empire in 293 (Constantius I was Caesar of the West). On the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian in 305, he and Constantius succeeded as emperors. Galerius tried to increase his power, and after Constantius died in 306 he recognized Severus (d.307) as co-emperor in the West. Severus and he attempted without success to put down the claims of Maxentius. After they were defeated and Severus was captured, Galerius had Diocletian approve the appointment of Licinius as emperor of the West. Constantius’ son Constantine (Constantine I) and Maximin (d.313) then both claimed power. Galerius died before the confusion was eliminated by the victory of Constantine. Galerius had prompted the persecution of Christians under Diocletian but issued (309) an edict of toleration shortly before his death.

BkXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 References to him, allusions to Napoleon, in Les Martyrs.

 

Galicia

The medieval kingdom in North-west Spain, now an autonomous region with its own language and culture.

BkI:Chap1:Sec9 Chateaubriand’s father attacked and robbed there.

 

Gall, François-Joseph

1758-1828. Austrian anatomist. He devoted most of his life to a minute study of the nervous system, especially the brain. With the collaboration of a favourite pupil, John Caspar Spurzheim (1776–1832), he incorporated his research into a four-volume work and atlas that appeared from 1810 to 1819. Gall demonstrated that the white matter of the brain consists of nerve fibres, and he launched the doctrine of localization of various mental processes in the brain. Derided for his later involvement with the pseudoscience of phrenology, he left Austria but was received with honour in France and died a wealthy man in Paris. Spurzheim carried the teachings of Gall to England and the United States, also with great success.

BkXIV:Chap1:Sec2 Present at a dinner at Madame de Custine’s.

 

Gallienus, Publius Licinius Valerianus Egnatius

 d. 268, Roman emperor. He ruled as the colleague (253–60) of his father, Valerian, and alone from 260–68. Gallienus checked the Alemanni near Milan. Later, however, the provinces became too rebellious. Postumus established his independence in Gaul, and in the East Odenathus. A force sent by Gallienus against Zenobia was defeated. Gallienus himself was murdered by his men at Milan, while resisting a revolt, eventually suppressed by his successor Claudius II. During his reign Gallienus reversed his father’s program of persecuting the Christians and managed to nurse the empire through a crucial period.

BkXIII:Chap10:Sec2 His patronage of Plotinus.

 

Gallon or Gadlon or Gradlon, Celtish King

c330. King of Cornouailles in Brittany, and of the legendary drowned city of Ys in, what is now, the Bay of Douarnenez. He founded Quimper.

BkV:Chap2:Sec 2 Mentioned.

 

Gama, see Vasco de Gama

 

Gamba, Bartolomeo

1766-1841. He was a Librarian at the Marciana Library (facing the Doge’s Palace) in Venice. A former Inspector General of the Library under the French, he became Director of Censorship, and was also a publisher and editor.

BkXXXIX:Chap5:Sec1 Chateaubriand visits him on the 11th of September 1833.

BkXXXIX:Chap6:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap15:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap18:Sec1

Mentioned.

BkXXXIX:Chap16:Sec1 He introduces Chateaubriand to Contessa Albrizzi.

 

Gamberini, Antonio Domenico, Cardinal

1760-1841. A lawyer he was ordained in 1824, subsequently consecrated Bishop of Orvieto, and was made a Cardinal in 1828.

BkXXX:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned in 1829.

 

Gand, see Jean de Gand

 

Ganges, River

The great river of Northern India, rising in the Himalayas, at the Cow’s Mouth (Gaumukh) in the Gangotri Glacier, flows east across the Ganges plain to join the Brahmaputra and, as the Padma, flows into the Bay of Bengal. It is the Hindus’ most sacred river.

BkIII:Chap9:Sec1 BkXVIII:Chap3Sec3 BkXXXVIII:Chap2:Sec1

BkXLII:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXXXIV:Chap15:Sec1 Source of the Cholera epidemic of 1817-1832. It reached England in early February 1832, dying down by May, then Paris in late March where it remained until late September, killing over eighteen thousand people.

 

Ganymede

The son of Tros, brother of Ilus and Assaracus, he was loved by Zeus because of his great beauty. Zeus, in the form of an eagle, abducted him and made him his cup-bearer.

BkXXXIX:Chap5:Sec1 A statue of the abduction.

 

Gap

The capital of the Hautes-Alpes department of south-east France, on the Luye River at the foot of the Dauphiné Alps, it was founded by Augustus c.14 BC and was the capital of medieval Gapen Cais, which was annexed to the crown of France in 1512. The city was devastated during the Wars of Religion in the 16th century.

BkXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 Napoleon passed through in March 1815 during his return from Elba.

 

Garat, Joseph-Dominique

1749-1833. He was minister of justice (1792-93) during the trial of Louis XVI and notified the king of the death verdict. Appointed (1793) minister of the interior, he proved inadequate in the post. He was twice imprisoned during the Terror, and held high government posts after the terrorists were overthrown. He also served under the Empire. After the Restoration he was forced to retire (1816). Garat wrote many works of political reminiscence and history, notably his Mémoires historiques sur le XVIIIe siècle et sur M. Suard (1820).

BkXI:Chap3:Sec1 His unkind article regarding Fontanes in the Mercure de France of 1st April 1780.

BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 He read Louis XVI’s sentence to the king on the evening of 20th January 1793.

 

Garda, Lake

The largest lake in Italy, it is located about half-way between Venice and Milan. The lake and its shoreline are divided between the provinces of Verona (to the south-east), Brescia (south-west), and Trent (north). The ancient fortified town of Sirmione is located on the south of the lake: Catullus stayed there in a family villa. Virgil also celebrated the location.

BkXX:Chap5:Sec3 Mentioned.

 

Garonne

A river of southwest France flowing about 350 miles generally northwest from the Spanish Pyrenees to join the Dordogne River north of Bordeaux and form the Gironde estuary.

BkXX:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Gasc, Honorine

fl. c1830. A French singer, she sang in Paris, and married the Danish consul. She was admired by Chateaubriand and Lamartine.

BkXIV:Chap2:Sec5 Mentioned.

 

Gaspari, Monsieur

A contact made by Chateaubriand on his travels.

BkXVIII:Chap3Sec4 His letter to Chateaubriand.

 

Gaugres

A village in Brittany, part of the titled estates of Chateaubriand’s father.

BkIV:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Gay, Marie-Françoise-Sophie, Madame

1776-1852. The French authoress, who married the Receiver-General of the départment of the Riser or Ruhr. Her salon came to be frequented by all the distinguished litterateurs, musicians, actors and painters of the time. Her first literary production was a letter written in 1802 to the Journal de Paris, in defence of Madame de Staël’s novel, Delphine; and in the same year she published anonymously her first novel Laure d’Estell. Leonie de Montbreuse, which appeared in 1813, is considered by Sainte-Beuve her best work; but Anatole (1815), the romance of a deaf-mute, has perhaps a higher reputation.

BkXVIII:Chap8:Sec2 Her intervention on Chateaubriand’s behalf.

 

Gay, Delphine

1804-1855. Daughter of Sophie, the contemporary sketches which she contributed from 1836 to 1839 to La Presse, under the nom de plume of Charles de Launay, were collected as Lettres parisiennes (1843), and obtained a brilliant success. Contes d’une vieille fille a ses neveux (1832), La Canne de Monsieur de Balzac (1836) and Il ne faut pas jouer avec la douleur (1853) are among the best-known of her romances; and her dramatic pieces in prose and verse include L'École des journalistes (1840), Judith (1843), Cléopâtre (1847), Lady Tartufe (1853), and the one-act comedies, C'est la faute du mari (1851), La Joie fait peur (1854), Le Chapeau d'un horloger (1854) and Une Femme qui deteste son mari, which did not appear till after the author’s death. She ran an influential salon.

BkXXXIV:Chap6:Sec1 She married Émile de Girardin on the 1st of June 1831.

 

Gaysruck or Gaisruck, Monsignor Kar Kajetan Graf von,

1769-1846. Bishop (1801) of Derbe, he was Archbishop of Milan (from 1818) in 1829, having been made a Cardinal in 1824. Lombardy was then an Austrian province.

BkXXX:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned in 1829.

 

Gazette de France

It was founded by Théophraste Renaudot the Royal historiographer to Louis XIII, in 1631, to record royal events. The word gazette from the Italian gazetta signified a small coin, the cost of the first ‘gazette’ published in Venice in the seventeenth century. Richelieu used the Gazette to promote his political ideas.

BkIV:Chap9:Sec2 It recorded Chateaubriand’s participation in the royal hunt, (on the 19th February 1787) in the edition of the 27th February 1787.

BkXXIX:Chap15:Sec1 As an ultra-Royal paper it was hostile to Chateaubriand in the 1820’s.

BkXXXIX:Chap10:Sec1 A reference to gazettes as Venetian in origin.

 

Gazette de Leyde

Founded in 1677, the French language newspaper was published in Leiden. With Jean Luzac (1746-1807) as its editor it championed the cause of the American Revolution, and was read widely in Europe and America. It was muzzled by the Dutch Republicans in 1798.

BkIV:Chap6:Sec1 Read by Chateaubriand’s father.

 

Gébert, for Gesbert, Jean-Baptiste

 

Gelée, Claude, see Claude Lorrain

 

Gellone

Saint William of Gellone (755-c.812 or 814), was the second count of Toulouse from 790 until his replacement in 811. He is the hero of the Chanson de Guillaume, an early chanson de geste, and of several later sequels, which were categorized by thirteenth-century poets as the geste of Garin de Monglane. In 803, he took Barcelona from the Moors and in the next year (804) founded the monastery of Gellone (now Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert) near Lodève in the Diocese of Maguelonne, and made it subject to the famous Saint Benedict of Aniane, whose monastery was nearby. He became a monk there in 806, and later died there.

BkXXX:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Gemünd

A town near Villach.

BkXLI:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in 1833.

 

Genesee River

The Genesee River's name is derived from the Iroquois meaning fine valley or pleasant valley. It flows northward through western New York from its source south of the town of Genesee in Pennsylvania and empties into Lake Ontario north of the City of Rochester, New York.

BkVII:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Geneva, Switzerland

The city in southwest Switzerland located on Lake Geneva and bisected by the Rhône River. Originally an ancient Celtic settlement, it was a focal point of the Reformation after the arrival of John Calvin in 1536.

BkXVII:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in 1805.

BkXVII:Chap3:Sec2 The 19th century Fort d’Écluse (really two forts, one above and one below, connected by a stairway cut in the rock), southwest of Geneva, in a spectacular mountain situation, stands in a natural gateway between the Alps and the Jura, overlooking the Rhône valley. Gates once barred the defile.

BkXXVII:Chap6:Sec1 BkXXXIV:Chap7:Sec1 The Pâquis Quarter is a somewhat bohemian area of Geneva on the right bank of the Rhône near the lake. Chateaubriand stayed there in 1831.

BkXXIX:Chap9:Sec1 Simond died there in 1832.

BkXXXIV:Chap5:Sec1 Chateaubriand states his intention of going there in 1831.

BkXXXIV:Chap6:Sec1 Chateaubriand and his wife arrived there 23rd May 1831, and stayed in the Hotel des Etrangèrs or the Hotel Dejean, and soon took a furnished house with a garden in the same Pâquis quarter (on the 25th).

BkXXXV:Chap20:Sec1 Chateaubriand arrived on the 11th September 1832 and took an apartment at what is now 13 Grand’ Rue on the 19th. Madame Récamier arrived from Zurich on the 7th October, stayed at the Hôtel du Nord and left on the 25th. Chateaubriand left for Paris on the 13th of November.

BkXXXV:Chap24:Sec1 Geneva overlooks the valley of the River Arve, which flows along the Salève mountain in France.

 

Genève, Mont

A southern pass through the Alps at Mont Genève, was possibly used by Hannibal.

BkXX:Chap2:Sec1 Napoleon’s troops (General Turreau) passed through in 1800.

 

Geneviève, Saint

422-512. Born at Nanterre, near Paris, during the siege of Paris by Childeric, king of the Franks, she went out with a few followers and procured grain for the starving citizens. Childeric, though a pagan, respected her, and at her request spared the lives of many prisoners. When Attila and his Huns were approaching the city, the inhabitants asked her aid; and listening to her exhortations undertook prayer and penance, thus averting the impending scourge, as she had foretold. Clovis, when converted from paganism by his holy wife, Saint Clotilda, made Genevieve his constant adviser. Sainte-Geneviève Abbey, on a hill-top, is one of the oldest churches of Paris. Here were buried the Saint, patroness of the city, and Clovis, the first Frankish Merovingian king. Nearby is the Pantheon. All over the hill colleges and schools took up residence, as well as the University, the Sorbonne.

BkXVIII:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXXXIV:Chap15:Sec1 Her reliquary paraded during the plague in Paris in 1832.

 

Geneviève de Brabante

A heroine of medieval legend, probably based on the history of Marie of Brabant, wife of Louis II, Duke of Bavaria and Count Palatine of the Rhine. Marie of Brabant was supposed of infidelity and subsequently tried by her husband, found guilty and beheaded on the 18th January 1256. The charge was false and Louis afterwards had to do penance. The change in name from Marie to Genevieve may be traced back to a cult of St Genevieve (c420-c500), patroness of Paris. The Genevieve tale first obtained wide popularity in L'Innocence reconnue, ou vie de Sainte Genevieve de Brabant (1638) by the Jesuit René de Cerisiers (1603-1662).

BkXXXVIII:Chap8:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Génie du Christianisme, Le

The Genius of Christianity, a work by Chateaubriand, started in England and completed at the country house at Savigny-sur-Orge of his mistress, Comtesse Pauline de Beaumont. Published complete in 1802, though an episode from it, Atala was published separately in April 1801 as a trial, and caused a sensation. It also contained René, another story ‘designed to illustrate the vagueness of the passions’ which made the mal du siècle, or mal du René the most fashionable ailment of the time and set the pattern for Romantic heroes and heroines for half a century. Chateaubriand dedicated the second edition to Napoleon. It satisfied a public need for colour and passion in literature, and supported Napoleon’s need for a Concordat with the Church.

BkI:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand mentions it, as a proof of his fame comparable to that of Voltaire.

BkII:Chap6:Sec3 Mentioned. See the work itself I.1.7

BkIV:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned. See the preface to the work.

BkIV:Chap5:Sec1 BkVI:Chap1:Sec1 BkXII:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkVI:Chap6:Sec1 Chateaubriand refers to Part 1, Book V, Chapter 12. The moon was full on the 16th June 1791.

BkXI:Chap2:Sec2 Chateaubriand refers to this re-shaping of Montlosier’s phrase: ‘If you covet their cross of gold, they will take up a cross of wood; it is a cross of wood that saved the world!’

BkXI:Chap4:Sec1 BkXI:Chap5:Sec1 The origin of the work.

BkXII:Chap4:Sec2 BkXIII:Chap6:Sec1 BkXXIII:Chap7:Sec1

BkXXVIII:Chap17:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXII:Chap5:Sec1 Partly written at Richmond in the summer of 1799.

BkXII:Chap6:Sec1 BkXIII:Chap3:Sec2 The part printed work taken to France in 1800.

BkXIII:Chap6:Sec2 BkXIII:Chap6:Sec2 The effect of its publication.

BkXIII:Chap7:Sec1 Heralded and advertised by Fontanes.

BkXIII:Chap8:Sec1 The work continued in 1801.

BkXIII:Chap10:Sec1 Lucien Bonaparte would have read the proofs in early 1802, and reported in favour of the work. It went on sale in April 1802.

BkXIII:Chap10:Sec2 René, an episode within the overall work.

BkXIII:Chap11:Sec1 BkXIII:Chap11:Sec2 The impact of the work.

BkXIV:Chap4:Sec1 Its effect on Napoleon.

BkXIV:Chap7:Sec1 BkXX:Chap9:Sec3 Chateaubriand sent the Pope a copy of the work in 1803.

BkXVI:Chap1:Sec1 It acted as a door-opener to Chateaubriand’s political career.

BkXVII:Chap1:Sec1 An inspiration for further work.

BkXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 It gained Chateaubriand spurious admiration.

BkXVIII:Chap8:Sec2 Proposed for the Decennial Prize in 1810 but rejected.

BkXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 Extracts from Les Natchez used for descriptive passages.