Vachon, Mademoiselle

She was an assistant governess in the Royal Household in Prague in May 1833.

BkXXXVII:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Valais, Switzerland

The Valais (also known in German as Wallis) is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland in the south-western part of the country, in the Pennine Alps around the valley of the Rhone from its springs to Lake Geneva. The Romans called the area Vallis Poenina (‘Upper Rhône Valley’). From 888 onwards the lands were part of the kingdom of Jurane Burgundy. King Rudolph III of Burgundy gave the lands to the Bishop of Sion in 999, making him Count of the Valais. It resisted Protestantization during the Reformation. In 1529, Valais became an associate member (Zugewandter Ort) of the Swiss Confederation. In 1628 it became technically a republic the République des Sept Dizains/Republik der Sieben Zehenden under the guidance of the prince-bishop of Sion and the bailli, until 1798 when Napoleon’s troops invaded and declared a Revolutionary République du Valais (March 16) which was swiftly incorporated (May 1) into the Helvetic Republic until 1802 when it became the independent Rhodanic Republic. In 1810 the Rhodanic Republic was annexed by Napoleonic France as the département of Simplon. Independence was restored in 1813, and in 1815 the Valais finally entered the Swiss confederation as a canton.

BkXV:Chap7:Sec2 BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 Napoleon nominated Chateaubriand as Minister to the Valais on 29th November 1803, and Chateaubriand heard the news on the 28th of December the day before he left for Naples.

BkXVI:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand returned to Paris on the 15th February 1804 and prepared to take up his post.

 

Valençay, Château de, France

The château was built in 1540 by Robert d’Estampes and most notably acquired in 1747 by the Scottish banker John Law. A wing was added in the late 18th century. In 1803 the castle was purchased by Talleyrand. In May 1808, the Spanish Princes, captured at Bayonne, were put in guarded accommodation at the château. They stayed there until March 1814, after the Spanish had signed the treaty of Valençay on December 11th 1813. The treaty gave the Spanish throne to Prince Ferdinand, despite the reserves expressed by the Cortès.

BkXXII:Chap6:Sec1 The Treaty of 1813.

 

Valence, France

The town is the capital of Drôme département, in the Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France. Built on a succession of terraces bordering the Rhône, the town is dominated by the ancient Cathedral of Saint-Apollinaire, which was consecrated by Pope Urban II in 1095 and completed early in the 12th century.

BkXX:Chap9:Sec1 BkXX:Chap9:Sec3 The French took Rome on 10th February, 1798, and proclaimed the Roman Republic on 15 February. Because Pius VI refused to submit, he was forcibly taken from Rome on the night of 20 February. At the end of March, 1799, though seriously ill, he was over the Alps to Valence, where he died. He was first buried at Valence, but the remains were transferred to St. Peter's in Rome in 1802.

BkXX:Chap9:Sec3 Bonaparte was stationed there at sixteen in 1785, as a second-lieutenant of artillery. There he met Caroline Colombier.

BkXXII:Chap 20:Sec1 Napoleon passed by on his way to Elba in 1814.

 

Valence, Mademoiselle de, see Celles, Comtesse de

 

Valentine

Footman at the London Embassy in 1822.

BkVI:Chap1:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Valentinian III

419-455. He was the Emperor of Rome in the West (425–455), whose reign was marked by numerous raids by Germanic tribes. His sister was Justa Grata Honoria.

BkXIX:Chap1:Sec1 Compared favourably with Francis I of Austria.

 

Valkyries

‘The Choosers of the Slain’ (Old Norse) were the twelve nymphs of Valhalla who mounted on swift horses charged into battle with drawn swords selecting those who would die. These they conducted to Valhall where they waited on them with mead and ale served in the skulls of the vanquished. The three most prominent were Mista, Sangrida and Hilda.

BkV:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned. The youngest of the Valkyrie was Brynhild which means ‘battle-ready’. Chateaubriand confuses the Valkyries with the three Norns, of whom the youngest was Skuld, the future.

BkXIII:Chap6:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Vallombrosa, Italy

A Benedictine abbey 21 miles south-east of Florence, in the Apennines, surrounded by forests of beech and firs. It was founded by Giovanni Gualberto, a Florentine noble in 1038. It was extended around 1450, reaching its current aspect at the end of the 15th century.

BkXX:Chap9:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Valmy

The French victory over the Prussians on the 20th of September 1792, took place near Valmy, a French village about 35 miles southwest of Rheims. The day after this first victory of the French Revolutionary troops, on 21 September, in Paris, the French monarchy was abolished and the First French Republic proclaimed.

BkXXXII:Chap11:Sec1 The young Duc d’Orléans fought there.

BkXXXVIII:Chap10:Sec1 Chateaubriand passes the battlefield in 1833.

 

Valois, Les

The Valois Dynasty succeeded the Capetian Dynasty as rulers of France from 1328-1589. They were descendants of Charles of Valois, the third son of King Philip III and based their claim on a reintroduction of the Salic law.

BkXXXII:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXXII:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Valois, Mademoiselle de, Charlotte Aglaé d’Orléans, Duchess of Modena

1700-1761. She was the third daughter of Philippe II d’Orléans, and married Francesco Maria III d’Este, Duke of Modena (1698-1780, Duke from 1737), on 21st July 1720. She received a dowry of 1.8 million livres, half of which was provided by the King of France.

BkXXXIV:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vallée-aux-Loups

The house, at Châtenay, Chateaubriand bought in August 1807. He was banished from Paris after publishing an article in the Mercure de France that annoyed the Emperor, and bought the property (by contract dated 22nd August 1807) for 20,000 francs with a loan raised by a mortgage on the property. (The house is now 87 Rue Chateaubriand in Châtenay-Malabry, Hautes-de–Seine. It was bought by the Département in 1987 and is open to the public.). He lived there at various times during the next ten years. The park was planted with saplings acquired from his travels in the Middle-East and North America. There he wrote Les Martyrs (1809), L'Itinéraire de Paris a Jerusalem (1811), Le Dernier Abencérage, and Moïse as well as large parts of the Mémoires.  After the publication of his Monarchie selon la Charte in 1816, Chateaubriand was sacked as a Minister and obliged to sell the property.

BkI:Chap1:Sec1 BkI:Chap2:Sec1 BkI:Chap3:Sec1 BkI:Chap5:Sec1 BkII:Chap5:Sec1 BkII:Chap7:Sec1 BkII:Chap8:Sec1 BkII:Chap9:Sec1 Chateaubriand mentions the house as the location where he is writing specific chapters of the Mémoires.

BkIII:Chap7:Sec1 The last lines written there before being forced to sell the property. The Chateaubriands do not appear to have returned there after their long summer wanderings of 1817. On returning to Paris, at the end of October, they took an apartment at 42 Rue du Bac.

BkXIV:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand planted out the gardens.

BkXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 His purchase of the house in 1807.

BkXIX:Chap1:Sec1 His presence there in 1813.

BkXXII:Chap9:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap1:Sec3 Mentioned in the context of 1814.

BkXXV:Chap6:Sec1 Sold at the Chamber of Notaries of Paris, 21 July 1818. Chateaubriand, after clearing charges on the property, netted only 15000 francs from the sale.

BkXXIX:Chap1:Sec5 Madame Récamier rented the property in 1817, going halves with Monsieur de Montmorency.

BkXXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXXVIII:Chap8:Sec1 BkXLII:Concl:SectI

Mentioned.

 

Vancouver, George

c1758-1798. A British navigator, he served his apprenticeship under Captain Cook, and set out for a long voyage in the Pacific in 1791. He visited Australia then proceeded north-west charting the west coast of America, and circumnavigating the island in British Columbia named after him.

BkVII:Chap1:Sec1 His voyage to map the north-west coastline of America.

 

Vandamme, Dominique Joseph René, Comte

1779-1830 A French military officer, who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. He was a brutal and violent soldier, renowned for insubordination and looting. Napoleon once said to him, ‘If I had two of you, the only solution would be to have one hang the other.’ At the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793 he was a Brigadier General. He was court-martialled for looting and suspended. Reinstated, he fought at the First Battle of Stockach in 1799, but disagreement with General Jean Moreau led to his being sent to occupation duties in Holland. At the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805 he led the charge that recaptured the Pratzen Heights. In the campaign of 1809, he fought in the battles of Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmuhl and Wagram, where he was wounded. In the campaign of 1813 Vandamme’s division was encircled by the Prussian General Kleist at Kulm and 13,000 men were captured, including Vandamme himself. Taken to Tsar Alexander of Russia, he was accused of looting, but is alleged to have replied, ‘I am neither a plunderer nor a brigand but in any case, my contemporaries and history will not reproach me for having soaked my hands in the blood of my father.’ (An allusion to the murder of Paul I of Russia.) In the campaign of 1815 he was in command of the 3rd Corps, under the direction of Marshal Grouchy. He urged Grouchy to join Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, but Grouchy preferred to pursue the Prussian 3rd Corps under General Johann von Thielmann, winning the Battle of Wavre, but losing the war. After the restoration of Louis XVIII, Vandamme was exiled to America, but was allowed to return in 1819.

BkXXII:Chap4:Sec1 Defeated at Kulm.

 

Vaneau

d. 1830 A student of the École Polytechnique in 1830.

BkXXXII:Chap5:Sec1 Killed in the fighting of 29th July 1830.

 

Vannes

The port in western France, capital of the Morbihan department on the Gulf of Morbihan, was an important Celtic settlement.

BkV:Chap2:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap3:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap11:Sec1

Mentioned.

 

Vannina d’Ornato, see Sampietro

c1516-1563. Vannina was executed by her husband, Sampietro, a piece of domestic history which interested Napoleon.

BkXIX:Chap5:Sec1 BkXIX:Chap5:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Varano, Alfonso

1705-1788. He was an Italian poet.

BkXL:Chap1:Sec1 He was born in Ferrara.

 

Varde, Pointe de la, Brittany

The promontory lies 4km from Saint-Malo between Rothéneuf and the beach at Pont.

BkXVIII:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Varennes-en-Argonne

The city in the department of the Meuse, is on the River Aire near Verdun. The French royal family were recognised and arrested there in June 1791 during their attempted flight to Montmedy.

BkV:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkVIII:Chap5:Sec1 Chateaubriand reads the news of the attempt, which reached America in late August.

 

Varna

The third largest city in Bulgaria after Sofia and Plovdiv, it is the capital of Varna Province and an important port in the eastern part of the country, located on the Black Sea coast close to Lake Varna.

BkXXIX:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec4 The Siege of Varna (July-September 29th, 1828) was an episode during the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829. Varna was held by the Ottoman army.

 

Vasco da Gama

1469-1524. Portuguese navigator, he rounded the Cape of Good Hope in his fleet of three ships in 1497. He crossed to Calicut in 1498. In a punitive expedition in 1502 he asserted Portuguese rights in the Indian Ocean, bombarding Calicut and returning with booty. Some 20 years later he returned to India as Portuguese Viceroy and died there.

BkVI:Chap3:Sec1 BkXXIV:Chap9:Sec1 His explorations.

BkXIV:Chap6:Sec1 An allusion to Camoëns’ Lusiades.

BkXX:Chap7:Sec1 It was Pedro Álvares Cabral (Portugal, 1467?-1520?) who, in 1500-1501, while commanding the second Portuguese expedition to India, crossing the Atlantic, discovered Brazil, though Da Gama had sailed close to South America on his wide detour over the Atlantic in 1497.

BkXXXIV:Chap1:Sec1 Bartholomew Diaz named the Cape, the Cape of Storms in 1486, but Da Gama changed it to the Cape of Good Hope when he doubled it in 1497 on his voyage to the Indies.

BkXL:Chap2:Sec2 See Tasso’s poem ‘Vasco, le cui felici…….’

 

Vatimesnil, Antoine Lefebvre de

1789-1860. Secretary-General of the Justice Ministry, he participated in Martignac’s Ministry from 1828. He was Deputy for Valenciennes 1830-1834, then a member of the Legislature under the Second Republic 1849-1851.

BkXXVIII:Chap16:Sec1 Education Minister 1828.

 

Vauban, Sébastien Le Prestre, Seigneur de, Marquis, Marshal of France

1633-1707. Commonly referred to as Vauban, he was the foremost military engineer of his age, famed for both his ability to design fortifications and to break through them. Between 1667 and 1707, he upgraded the fortifications of around 300 cities including Arras and Lille. He directed the building of 37 new fortresses, and fortified military harbours, including Toulon, Perpignan, Rochefort, Brest, Dunkirk, and Quebec.

BkIX:Chap16:Sec1 His fortification of Verdun.

BkXXIV:Chap16:Sec1 On 28 May 1808 Napoleon I honoured Vauban by arranging to have his heart placed in a monument erected under the dome of the Invalides.

BkXXXVIII:Chap10:Sec1 His fortification of Metz (1648), of which he said ‘Metz defends the State.’

 

Vaublanc, Vincent-Marie Viénot, Comte de

1756-1845. One of the French politicians who agitated vociferously for the return of slavery, he was a right-wing representative for the Seine-et-Marne departement in the French Legislative Assembly. Vaublanc was on the side of the royalists, against the French Revolution. From November 15, 1791 to November 18, 1791 he served as the president of the Assembly and from September 26, 1815 to May 7, 1816, he served as the French Interior Minister. He functioned as the President of the Legislative Body from April 21, 1803 to May 7, 1803.

BkXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 In Ghent during the Hundred Days.

 

Vaucluse, France

A department of south-eastern France, formed in 1793 out of the county of Venaissin, the principality of Orange, and a part of Provence. The Rhone is joined there by the Aygues, the Sorgue (rising in Petrarch’s celebrated fountain of Vaucluse, which has given its name to the department), and the impetuous Durance. Fontaine-de-Vaucluse is a medieval village tucked away in a ‘closed valley’ at the south-western corner of the mountainous Plateau de Vaucluse, 25 km east of Avignon. Petrarch had a property there from 1337 to 1353.

BkXIV:Chap2:Sec2 Chateaubriand visited in 1802.

 

Vaudoncourt, Frédéric François Guillaume de, Baron

1772-1845. A Napoleonic General, he fought in Italy and Russia. He supported Napoleon during the Hundred Days and went into exile thereafter, returning to France in 1825. Author of Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la guerre entre la France et la Russie en 1812 (1817).

BkXXI:Chap7:Sec1 The Mémoire cited is quoted.

 

Vaudran

He was a gravedigger at Saint-Mandé in 1837.

BkXLII:Chap4:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Vaudreuil, Joseph Hyacinthe François de Paule de Rigaud, Comte de

1740-1817. Soldier, Socialite, Monarchist, Patron of the Arts. Born in San Domingo, of a military line. His grandfather was Governor of Canada. He was a wealthy patron of the arts, a major influence at court and in fashionable society. His flight initiated the departure of the émigrés in 1789. He returned to Paris after the collapse of the First Empire and Louis XVIII appointed him to the Chambre des Pairs and to the Institut. He was also given the rank of Lieutenant General in the army and made Governor of the Tuileries. He was Vigée Le Brun's most important private patron and she painted numerous portraits of him and his circle. It was in large part thanks to him that Mme Le Brun's salon became fashionable, and she improvised in his honour her famous souper grec, one of the outstanding social events of the reign of Louis XVI.  Écouchard Lebrun linked them intimately in his poem entitled: ‘L'Enchanteur et la Fée’.

BkIV:Chap12:Sec3 Mentioned.

 

Vaudreuil, Madame de

Wife of Joseph.

BkV:Chap14:Sec1 Her fashionable soirees.

 

Vaufreland, Monsieur de

BkXXXV:Chap24:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vauquelin

A gentleman possessed of feudal taxation rights.

BkIV:Chap10:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de

1715-1747. A French moralist, essayist, and miscellaneous writer, he entered the army and served for more than ten years, taking part during the War of the Polish Succession in the Italian campaign of Marshal Villars of 1733, and in the disastrous expedition to Bohemia, in support of Frederick II of Prussia’s designs on Silesia, in which the French were abandoned by their ally.

BkXXXVII:Chap10:Sec1 BkXXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 Vauvenargues took part in Marshal Belle-Isle’s winter retreat from Prague. He suffered from frostbite, and never completely recovered.

 

Vauvert, Michel Bossinot de

1724-1809. Uncle of Chateaubriand by marriage, he was a member of the municipality of Saint-Malo from 1790. 

BkIX:Chap1:Sec2 His objections to the marriage.

 

Vauxelles, Jean Bourlet, Abbé de

He was a friend of Fontanes.

BkXI:Chap3:Sec1 He co-founded the Mémorial journal.

 

Vegetius, Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus

4th century. A military writer, his treatise, Epitoma rei militaris (also referred to as De Re Militari), was dedicated to the reigning emperor (possibly Theodosius the Great) and contains a series of military maxims which were the foundation of military learning, for every European commander, up to Frederick the Great.

BkXX:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Velázquez, Diego Rodríguez de Silva y,

1599-1660. A Spanish painter, he was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain.

BkXX:Chap7:Sec2 Mentioned.

BkXXIX:Chap6:Sec1 He visited Rome in 1629-31 and 1649-50.

 

Velléda

A Character in Les Martyrs, ou le triomphe de la religion chrétienne (1809) by Chateaubriand: the work was written to show the triumph of Christianity over paganism. In Armorica, the Christian Eudore meets with Velleda a Druidic priestess, who ultimately kills herself.

Preface:Sect2. BkIII:Chap7:Sec1 Mentioned by Chateaubriand.

BkVII:Chap8:Sec1 Brittany the setting for Les Martyrs.

BkXVII:Chap1:Sec1 See Les Martyrs (Books IX and X).

BkXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 The name derives from a Celtic (Batavian) prophetess, Veleda or Weleda, in Tacitus’ Histories (IV:61,65).

BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec2 The quotation is from Les Martyrs, Book X.

BkXXXIX:Chap12:Sec1 Mentioned. Les Martyrs of 1809 pre-dates Byron’s Childe-Harold of 1812.

 

Velly, Abbé Paul-Francois

1709-1759. A Jesuit historian, he was the author of a Histoire de France which started to appear in 1755.

BkVII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Venceslas VI, King of Bohemia, see Wenceslas

 

Vendôme, Duc de

A character in Voltaire’s play Adélaïde du Guesclin (1734) which helped bring dramatisations of the Middle Ages to the French theatre. 

BkXIII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vendramin, Andrea, Doge

1393-1478. He was Doge of Venice 1476-1478.

BkXXXIX:Chap7:Sec1 His tomb in Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice.

 

Vene del Tempio, Italy

The springs of Vene del Tempio, are at the source of the Clitunno River, in antiquity the Clitumnus, in Umbria. Its waters rise by the ancient Via Flaminia near the town of Campello sul Clitunno between Spoleto and Trevi: the spring was celebrated as a great beauty spot by the Romans but also by Byron; in the 19th century it was planted with willows.

BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec3 Chateaubriand there in October 1828.

 

Venice

The city in north-east Italy, the capital of Veneto, is a seaport built on over 100 islands in the Lagoon of Venice, an inlet of the Gulf of Venice at the head of the Adriatic. Founded around the 5th century, Venice was united in 697 under the first Doge. It became an independent Republic and a great commercial and maritime power, defeating its rival Genoa in 1380. It declined in the 16th century after the discovery of the Cape route to India. With Venetia it came under Austrian control in 1797 and was incorporated in the Kingdom of Italy in 1866.

BkI:Chap4:Sec4 BkIII:Chap9:Sec1 BkXIV:Chap7:Sec1 BkXXI:Chap4:Sec2 Mentioned.

BkIV:Chap8:Sec2 Its donne pericolanti, dangerous women i.e. courtesans.

BkXII:Chap4:Sec1 Byron’s presence there 1816-1819, Chateaubriand’s in 1806, 1833, and 1839.

BkXVIII:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in 1806 with Madame de Chateaubriand, on his way to the Levant.

BkXIX:Chap2:Sec1 Treviso is near Venice (and became a part of it in the 14th century).

BkXIX:Chap12:Sec2 Napoleon entered Venice on May 12th 1797.

BkXIX:Chap13:Sec1 Ceded to Austria in 1797.

BkXXIII:Chap20:Sec1 The League of Cambrai, 1508–10, was an alliance formed by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, King Louis XII of France, Pope Julius II, King Ferdinand V of Aragón, and several Italian city-states against the republic of Venice to check its territorial expansion.

BkXXVII:Chap3:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap4:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap8:Sec1

BkXXXIX:Chap20:Sec1 The Venice Arsenal, the shipyard and naval depot, contained The Bucentaur (from Venetian bucintoro, or buzino d’oro, golden barge, the latinized Virgilian derivation of ‘ox-headed’ from its figurehead, actually a Venetian lion, is fanciful) the state galley of the Doges of Venice, in which, every year on Ascension Day up to 1789, they put out into the Adriatic in order to perform the ceremony of wedding Venice to the sea. The last and most magnificent of the Bucentaurs, built in 1729, was destroyed by the French in 1798 less for the sake of its golden decorations than as a political gesture. Remains of it are preserved at Venice in the Museo Civico Correr and in the Arsenal, where a fine model of it can be found.

BkXXXI:Chap8:Sec1 I Piombi, the Leads, were the prisons of the Venetian Republic, having leaded roofs, in the Great Palace, which were entered from the Bridge of Sighs. The ruling Council of Ten of Venice met in an adjoining room, the Bussola. See Casanova’s The Story of My Escape from the Prisons of the Venetian Republic (1788).

BkXXXIX:Chap2:Sec1 The Duchesse de Berry asks Chateaubriand the meet here there, in 1833.

BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 The Brenta runs from the Trento Province to the Adriatic Sea just south of the Venetian lagoon in the Veneto region. It is 108 miles long and was first channelled in the 16th century when a long canal was built from the village of Stra to the Adriatic Sea. The work was planned by Giocondo.

BkXXXIX:Chap4:Sec1 The Hotel de l’Europe on the Grand Canal, was created by a conversion of the 15th century Palazzo Giustiniani in 1817. (See E.V. Lucas’ A Wanderer in Venice: XI) Turner, Verdi and Proust were its guests at various times. The Dogana di Mare is the Customs House, the Giudecca is an island in the Lagoon, as is that next to it of San Giorgio Maggiore with its Palladian church. The great piazza is that of San Marco with its Basilica, the Procuratie Nueve is one of the two great arcades in the piazza, the Zecca nearby was the city Mint until 1870, and gave its name to the zecchino or Venetian ducat. The Clock-tower, the Torre dell’Orologio is above an entrance to the square, the Campanile is the bell-tower, rebuilt after its collapse in 1902. The Lion column is that of San Marco on the Piazzetta surmounted by the Lion of St Mark in bronze (thought to be a Chinese chimera with wings added).

BkXXXIX:Chap5:Sec1 The Doge’s Palace and the Ducal Palace are one and the same.

BkXXXIX:Chap7:Sec1 The Frari is the Gothic church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (a corruption of Frati, or brothers) on the Campo dei Frari. The Accademia di Belle Arti was founded in 1750 by the painter Piazetta but moved in 1807 by Napoleon to the Campo della Carità and enlarged by works from monasteries and churches he suppressed.

BkXXXIX:Chap8:Sec1 The Arsenale was founded in the 12th century and enlarged in the 14th and 16th to become the greatest naval shipyard in the world. The word arsenal derives from the Arabic darsina’a, house of industry. At peak efficiency it could turn out a galley a day.

BkXXXIX:Chap9:Sec1 The island of San Cristoforo della Pace was off the Fondamente Nuove, the new cemetery. The isle was used as a cemetery by Napoleon’s decree of December 1807. In 1836 it was merged with San Michele, whose cemetery is now full in turn. San Michele with its dark cypresses lies opposite the Fondamente, and contains Ezra Pound’s grave among others.

BkXXXIX:Chap11:Sec1 The Riva degli Schiavoni, or Quay of the Dalmatians (the Schiavoni), which Chateaubriand translates as the Quai des Esclavons or Quay of Slavs/Slaves, is Venice’s main waterfront, built on silt dredged from the bed of the Grand Canal during the 9th century. The Schiavoni were Slav merchants who delivered meat and fish to its wharves. The Riva degli Schiavoni commences at the Doges Palace, then crosses the Rio del Palazzo by means of the Ponte della Paglia (Bridge of Straw), so-called because imported straw was once unloaded there

BkXXXIX:Chap12:Sec1 The Lido is an 8 mile long sandbank which forms a natural barrier between Venice and the sea, it is now both a residential suburb and a seaside resort. The Mocenigo Palace (c1730), formed of four linked Palazzos, on the Grand Canal has a plaque to Byron who lived there in 1818.

BkXXXIX:Chap18:Sec1 Florian’s and Quadri’s cafes still grace St Mark’s Square. San Pietro di Castello, on its island, with its free-standing tilting campanile was the cathedral of Venice until 1807 when San Marco took its place. The existing church is mid-16th century with a Palladian design. The Giudecca, the name possibly deriving from the 13th century Jews, the giudei, who lived there, is an island, was a pleasure ground of palaces and gardens in the days of the Republic.

BkXXXIX:Chap19:Sec1 The Piazetta runs from the Molo San Marco to the main Piazza, and Chateaubriand stood near the Columns of San Marco and San Teodoro looking towards the Torre dell’Orologio, then turned round to look across the Grand Canal.

BkXXXIX:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap20:Sec1 Pellestrina is an island forming a barrier between the southern Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea, lying south west of the Lido. The island is 11 kilometres long and has since the eighteenth century been bounded to its seaward side by large embankments. There are four main villages: San Pietro in Volta, Porto Secco, San Antonio and Pellestrina, known for their colourfully-painted houses. Malamocco in the Lido chain is a small town with a fine harbour built on sand dunes outside the lagoon, at the sea outlet of a former branch of the River Brenta, which once linked the town on the edge of the open sea to Padua and its inland areas.

 

Venoux, General

He was Commander of the 25th Brigade at Acre in 1799.

BkXIX:Chap16:Sec2 Killed at Acre?

 

Ventadour, Duc de, see Lévis, Duc de

 

Venus

The Roman Goddess of Love, she was the daughter of Jupiter and Dione. She was the Greek Aphrodite, born from the waves, an incarnation of Astarte, Goddess of the Phoenicians. The mother of Cupid by Mars (See Botticelli’s painting – Venus and Mars – National Gallery, London)

BkIII:Chap8:Sec1 BkXLII:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXIII:Chap6:Sec1 The type of beauty.

BkXVIII:Chap3Sec5 The statue of Aphrodite of the Gardens at Athens was a work of Alcamenes (fl. 5th century BC), a pupil of Phidias. There is a Roman copy of the work in the Louvre. (See Pausanias, Description of Greece: Attica 19.2: ‘Concerning the district called The Gardens, and the temple of Aphrodite, there is no story that is told by them, nor yet about the Aphrodite which stands near the temple. Now the shape of it is square, like that of the Hermae, and the inscription declares that the Heavenly Aphrodite is the oldest of those called Fates. But the statue of Aphrodite in the Gardens is the work of Alcamenes, and one of the most noteworthy things in Athens.’

BkXIX:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXXII:Chap12:Sec1 She was the mother of Aeneas by Anchises, and Iulus and the Julian House were descended from her according to legend.

BkXXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 The Graces were her attendants.

BkXLI:Chap2:Sec1 The planet Venus was indeed rising in Leo, and close the star Regulus, in the east north-east between 2 and 3 am, as seen from the neighbourhood of Linz, on the morning of the 25th of September 1833 (Checked with Redshift 4 star charting software)

 

Verdun

The town is in north-east France on the River Meuse, in the Meuse department. Strategically positioned on the eastern approaches to the Paris basin, it was long an important fortress.

BkIX:Chap16:Sec1 BkXIV:Chap5:Sec1 BkXXII:Chap4:Sec1

BkXLII:Chap2:Sec1 Surrendered to the anti-Revolutionary allies on 2nd September 1792. Chateaubriand arrived there on the 23rd September. The forty young women had been condemned to death by the criminal tribunal of the Meuse in April 1794.

BkXXXVIII:Chap10:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in June 1833.

 

Vereia, Russia

A town west of Moscow.

BkXXI:Chap5:Sec1 Napoleon there on the 27th October 1812. The 27th Bulletin is dated from there.

 

Veremond, Bermudo II the Gouty, of Leon and Galicia

956-999. King of Leon 982-999.

BkXXXVII:Chap5:Sec1 His son Alphonso V (994-1028) was King of Leon in 1001.

 

Vernet, Joseph

1714-1789. Seascape painter, b. Avignon, studied with his father, Antoine Vernet, a decorative painter, and in Rome, where he acquired a reputation for fine work. He was summoned to Paris in 1753 and commissioned by the king to paint the famous series of seaports of France. He finished 14 of them (Louvre).

BkXVII:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vernet, Émile Jean Horace

1789-1863. One of the most popular military painters of the 19th cent, he is best known for his decorations of the Constantine Room at Versailles and his Defense of the Barrier at Clichy (Louvre). He was the grandson of Joseph.

BkXXIX:Chap6:Sec1 Chateaubriand sees him in Rome in 1828.

 

Verneuil, Henriette d’Entragues, Marquise de

1579-1633. Mistress of Henri IV after the death of Gabrielle d'Estrées, she subsequently bore him two children, Henri 1601-1682 and Gabrielle-Angelique 1603-1627. Henriette and her family were discovered to be plotting to have Spain recognise her son Henri, as rightful heir to the throne on the death of Henri IV, though she was eventually reconciled with the King.

BkIV:Chap8:Sec4 Her sister a mistress of Bassompierre.

BkXXVII:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Verona

An ancient town, episcopal see and province in the Veneto, Northern Italy, in a loop of the Adige River near Lake Garda. The Congress of Verona, 1822, was the last European conference held under the provisions of the Quadruple Alliance of 1814. The main problem discussed was the revolution in Spain against Ferdinand VII, and the congress decided that a French army, under mandate of the Holy Alliance, should suppress the rebellion. This decision was protested by the British foreign minister, George Canning, and led to a growing rift between Great Britain and the other powers.

BkXX:Chap12:Sec1 BkXXVII:Chap3:Sec2 BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1

Chateaubriand was French Plenipotentiary there. Alexander I of Russia was present in person. The Countess von Lieven was able to meet her lover Metternich at the various Congresses.

BkXXVII:Chap8:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec1 The convening of the Congress in 1822.

BkXXX:Chap13:Sec1 BkXXXV:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s Le Congrès de Vérone was published on the 28th of April 1838.

BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in September 1833.

BkXLI:Chap7:Sec1 Chateaubriand recollects his 1822 visit.

 

Veronese, Paulo Caliari, known as

1528-1588. An Italian painter of the Venetian school, his large, richly coloured, and harmonious works include The Rape of Europa (1576).

BkXIX:Chap13:Sec1 Napoleon shipped artworks back to France.

BkXXXIX:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXL:Chap5:Sec1 His Martyrdom of St Justina in Santa Giustina in Padua.

 

Versailles

The town in North Central France chiefly famous for its baroque palace the residence of the French kings between 1678 and 1769. It was built for Louis XIV between 1676 and 1708 on the sire of a hunting lodge, with architecture by Mansart, interior decoration by Le Brun and gardens by Le Nôtre.

BkII:Chap8:Sec2 The Treaty of Versailles whereby Britain recognised American Independence and the European powers agreed a peace, was signed there 3rd September 1783, but the preliminaries took several months. Motte-Picquet’s squadron, arriving from Cadiz reached Brest on the 1st April. That under the Marquis de Vaudreuil entered the roads on the 17th June.

BkIV:Chap1:Sec3 Chateaubriand passed through in 1786 on the way to Paris.

BkIV:Chap8:Sec1 BkIV:Chap9:Sec1 Chateaubriand went there to be presented to the King in 1787.

BkIV:Chap9:Sec3 The hunt there which Chateaubriand attended after being presented.

BkV:Chap8:Sec1 Chateaubriand passed through in June 1789 on his way to Paris. He visited again in July 1789.

BkV:Chap8:Sec2 Chateaubriand points up the distance being the ruling class in Versailles and the people of Paris, such that Necker’s dismissal echoed differently in the city.

BkV:Chap9:Sec1 A synonym for the Court in 1789.

BkV:Chap10:Sec1 The Flanders Regiment summoned there, arriving on the 29th September.

BkV:Chap11:Sec1 The National Assembly transferred from Versailles to Paris in October 1789.

BkVIII:Chap5:Sec2 Versailles, Kentucky.

BkIX:Chap11:Sec 1 The heart of the Court.

BkXIX:Chap4:Sec1 Corsica was sold to France by Genoa for 2 million livres by the Treaty of Versailles of 15th May 1768. However it was not until the Battle of Ponte-Nuovo in May 1769 that the island finally fell to the new owners.

BkXX:Chap5:Sec3 Philip V born there.

BkXXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 Troops there on the 31st of July 1830.

BkXLI:Chap6:Sec1 The Grand and Petit Trianons, buildings used by the Kings’ and their intimate circles, there.

BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 The Parc-aux-Cerfs was the site of a second Versailles, created from Louis XIII’s Deer Park, where Louis XIV’s pleasure house was located.

 

Vesoul

A French town and commune located in the Haute-Saône département. The town is the préfecture of the département. It is 48km from Besançon.

BkXXXV:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vespasian, Vespasianus Augustus

9-79. Known originally as Titus Flavius Vespasianus and usually referred to as Vespasian, he was emperor of Rome from 69 to 79. He was the founder of the short-lived though influential Flavian dynasty.

BkXXXVIII:Chap8:Sec1 The Roman Colosseum was commenced in his reign.

 

Vesuvius, Mount

A volcano, 1,281 m (4,200 ft) high, in southern Italy it lies on the eastern shore of the Bay of Naples. A violent eruption in AD 79 destroyed the nearby cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Since that time it has erupted about three dozen times.

BkXIV:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXV:Chap7:Sec3 Chateaubriand climbed it in January 1804.

 

Viazma (Vyazma), Russia

A town about halfway between Smolensk and Mozhaysk, on the Vyazma River, a tributary of the Dnieper, founded in the 9th century Vyazma became an important trade and military centre that was an object of contention between Russia, Lithuania, and Poland.

BkXXI:Chap2:Sec1 BkXXI:Chap5:Sec2 Mentioned. There was a battle there on 3rd November 1812.

 

Vibicki, see Wibicki

 

Vibraye, Anne-Victor-Denis Hurault, Marquis de

1766-1843. A former émigré, he was named as a Peer in 1815. As colonel of cavalry he was aide de camp to Monsieur, father of the Duc de Berry. He became a Marshal in 1823.

BkXXV:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned, in 1820.

 

Vic, Dominique de, Vicomte de’Ermenonville, known as Le Capitaine Sarrède

1551-1610. Henri IV’s close friend and Councillor of State (1610), he died three months after him in August 1610.

BkXXXVII:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vicence, Duc de, see Caulaincourt

 

Vicenza, Italy

The capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monti Berici, straddling the Bacchiglione, Vicenza is approximately 60 km west of Venice and 200 km east of Milan.

BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in September 1833.

 

Vichy, France

The spa town in central France is in the Allier department on the River Allier. Its waters, known to the Romans, are bottled and exported worldwide.

BkXVII:Chap3:Sec1 Chateaubriand was there in 1805.

BkXXXIII:Chap1:Sec1 Madame la Dauphine arrived from there in July 1830.

 

Victoire, Madame

1733-1799 She was the youngest daughter of Louis XV. She emigrated with her sister Adélaïde in 1791 and after sojourns in Rome and Naples settled in Trieste.

BkV:Chap9:Sec1 She remained with the King Louis XVI after the fall of the Bastille.

BkV:Chap15:Sec1 She and her sister, as aunts of the King, were referred to as Mesdames. They left for Rome in February 1791.

BkXXVIII:Chap17:Sec1 They died in Trieste, see Book XXXIX:11

 

Victor, Claude Victor-Perrin, Duke of Belluno, Marshal of France

1764-1841. Marshal of France: for his bravery at the siege of Toulon in 1793 he was raised to the rank of general of brigade. He afterwards served for some time with the army of the Eastern Pyrenees, and in the Italian campaign of 1796-97 and in 1800 played an important role at Marengo. In 1802 he was governor of the colony of Louisiana for a short time, in 1803 he commanded the Batavian army. He distinguished himself at Saalfeld, Jena, and at Friedland Napoleon made him a Marshal. After the peace of Tilsit he became governor of Berlin, and in 1808 was created duke of Belluno. In the same year he was sent to Spain, where he took a prominent part in the Peninsular War (especially at Espinosa, Talavera, Barrosa and Cadiz), until his appointment in 1812 to a corps command in the invasion of Russia. Here his most important service was in protecting the retreating army at the crossing of the Beresina. He took an active part in the wars of 1813-14, till he had the misfortune to arrive too late at Montereau-sur-Yonne. The result was a scene of violent recrimination and his super-session by the emperor, who transferred his command to Gerard. Victor transferred his allegiance to the Bourbon dynasty, and in December 1814 received from Louis XVIII the command of the second military division. In 1815 he accompanied the king to Ghent, and on the second restoration he was made a peer of France. He was also president of a commission which inquired into the conduct of the officers during the Hundred Days, and dismissed Napoleon’s sympathizers. In 1821 he was appointed war minister and held this office for two years. In 1830 he was major-general of the royal guard, and after the revolution of that year retired into private life.

BkXX:Chap2:Sec1 In action at Marengo on the 14th June 1800.

BkXXI:Chap7:Sec1 At the Berezina.

BkXXII:Chap 22:Sec1 At the Restoration.

BkXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 Present at Ghent during the Hundred Days.

 

Victoria, Alexandrina Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

1819-1901. Victoria’s father, the Duke of Kent and Strathearn, was the fourth son of King George III and Queen Charlotte. Her mother was Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She was only 18 when she became queen on the death of her uncle, William IV. In 1840 she married her first cousin Albert, the German son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

BkXXVI:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vidal, Pierre (Peire)

fl 1183-1204. A significant Provençal troubadour from Toulouse, he wrote a famous love poem to Loba (the She-Wolf) of Carcasonne. See Ezra Pound’s ‘Pier Vidal Old’ from Personae (1910)

BkXXXVI:Chap5:Sec1  Mentioned.

 

Vidocq, Eugène François

1775-1857. A self-confessed French criminal who later became the foudner and first director of the Sûreté Nationale (the plainclothes division). He was forced to resign in 1832 and subsequently founded the first modern private investigation bureau. The information about him mostly comes from his ghost-written autobiography. Vidocq is credited with having introduced record-keeping, criminology and ballistics to criminal investigation. He made the first plaster casts of shoe impressions. He also created indelible ink and unalterable bond paper with his printing company.

BkXXXV:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vidoni, Pietro, Cardinal

1759-1830. Cardinal from 1816, he was an administrator in the Curia.

BkXXIX:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vieillard, Narcisse

1791-1857. A former artillery officer in the Grand Army, and fervent Bonapartist, he was tutor to Queen Hortense’s children. He was Deputy for La Manche, 1842-1846, and 1848-1851. He became a Senator.

BkXXXV:Chap20:Sec1 A guest at Arenenberg on the 29th of August 1832.

 

Vienna, Austria

The capital of Austria on the Danube, it was the seat of the Habsburgs (1278-1918) and the residence of the Holy Roman Emperor (1558-1806). It became an important political and cultural centre, associated with many great composers.

BkVI:Chap8:Sec1 BkXX:Chap8:Sec1 Napoleon occupied Vienna in May 1809.

BkXIX:Chap12:Sec2 Mentioned.

BkXX:Chap5:Sec2 BkXX:Chap10:Sec1 The Schonbrünn Palace site dates back to medieval times. The Ottomans attacked Vienna in 1683 and destroyed the elegant complex. Three years later Emperor Leopold I decided to build an opulent palace on the estate, and architect Johann von Erlach developed the design for the structure. Construction activities commenced in 1696, and the palace was completed in 1700. Under the rule of Empress Maria Theresa, it became the hub of royal life.

BkXXIX:Chap12:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec3 The Ottoman Siege of 1529, represented the farthest westward advance into central Europe of the Ottoman Empire. The Battle of 1683, following a siege, confirmed the limit to Ottoman ambition in the West.

BkXLII:Chap8:Sec1 The reference is to Kaunitz (1711-1794), Chancellor of Austria at the time of Maria-Theresa.

 

Vienna, Congress of

1814-15. The Congress of European powers met following the fall of Napoleon. The chief countries represented were Austria (by Metternich), Britain (Castelreagh and Wellington), France (Talleyrand), Russia, Prussia, and the Papacy. Its Final Act created a Kingdom of the Netherlands, a German Confederation of 39 states, Lombardy-Venetia subject to Austria, and the Kingdom of Poland. Legitimate monarchs were restored in Spain, Naples, Piedmont, Tuscany and Modena, and Louis XVIII was confirmed as King of France.

BkXXII:Chap 24:Sec1 Talleyrand leaves Paris to attend the Congress.

BkXXIII:Chap3:Sec1 The decision regarding Naples.

BkXXVII:Chap8:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap12:Sec1 BkXXXVII:Chap14:Sec1

Mentioned.

BkXXXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 BkXXXIX:Chap1:Sec1 In the Treaty of Vienna of 1815 most of the territorial gains of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Nassau under the agreements of 1801-1806 were recognized. Bavaria also gained control of the Rhineland Palatinate and parts of the Napoleonic Duchy of Würzburg and Grand Duchy of Frankfurt.

 

Viennet, Guillaume

1777-1868. A former soldier turned Liberal Deputy, and a versifier hostile to Romanticism, he was an Academician, and later a Peer of France, in 1839.

BkXXXII:Chap15:Sec1 At the Hôtel de Ville on the 31st of July 1830.

 

Viganoni, Giuseppe

Italian singer at the Opera-Buffa, Paris.

BkV:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vigaroux, Doctor

A provincial doctor.

BkXIII:Chap6:Sec2 Quoted.

 

Vignali, Abbé Ange Paul

1784-1836. Born at Bisinchi in Morasaglia canton, Corsica, he was Napoleon’s junior chaplain at St Helena (from September 1819), and was the priest who gave Napoleon extreme unction and conducted his funeral ceremony.

BkXXIV:Chap11:Sec2 Mentioned.

 

Vignola, Giacomo Barozzi da

1507-1573. An Italian 16th century Mannerist architect, his two great masterpieces are the Villa Farnese at Caprarola and the Jesuits’ Chiesa del Gesù in Rome. The three writers who spread the Italian Renaissance style throughout Western Europe are Vignola, Serlio and Palladio. He designed Villa Giulia for Pope Julius III, in Rome (1550‑1553). Here Vignola was working with Ammanati, who designed the nymphaeum and other garden features under the general direction of Vasari, with guidance from the knowledgable Pope and Michelangelo.

BkXXIX:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Villach

The second largest city in Carinthia it is in the south of Austria, on the river Drava (Drau).

BkXLI:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in September 1833. Paternion is about 18 kilometres north-west of Villach.

 

Villars, Claude Louis Hector de, Prince de Martigues, Marquis and Duc de Villars and Vicomte de Melun

1653-1734. The last of Louis XIV’s great generals, he was one of only six Marshals promoted to Marshal General of France.

BkXXXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Villedeneu or Vildéneux or Ville-De-Neuf, Demoiselles Loaisel de

BkI:Chap4:Sec1 Three sisters, neighbours of Madame de Bedée.

BkXVII:Chap5:Sec1 Recalled.

 

Villehardouin, Geoffroi de

c.1160–c.1212, French historian and Crusader. As marshal of Champagne, he was a leader of the Fourth Crusade which resulted in the conquest (1204) of Constantinople and the creation of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Villehardouin, in his De la conquête de Constantinople (1585) described the Crusade and the subsequent struggles of the Latin nobles against their Greek and Bulgarian neighbours, from 1198 to 1207, with vivid detail and disarming frankness. Reliable as a historical source, Villehardouin’s account stands as an early masterpiece of French prose.

Preface:Sect4 An example of a writer who was also involved with warfare.

BkXXXIX:Chap12:Sec1 See his Conquest of Constantinople 38.

 

Villejuif, France

A town now part of the southern suburbs of Paris.

BkXXII:Chap14:Sec1 Napoleon there in 1814. Henri IV had learned there of the death of his mistress Gabrielle d’Estrées in 1599.

 

Villèle, Jean-Baptiste Guillaume Joseph Marie Anne Séraphin, Comte de

1773-1854. French statesman and premier (1822–28), he was elected (1815) a deputy after the Bourbon restoration, he became leader of the extreme royalists in the chamber of deputies. He entered the ministry of the Duc de Richelieu in 1820, and in 1822 King Louis XVIII named him President of the Council, or Premier. He stabilized France’s finances to such a degree that they remained sound until the 20th cent. His reactionary government suppressed press freedom, intervened (1823) in Spain against Spanish revolutionaries, prolonged (1824) the term of the chamber of deputies from four to seven years, gave the Roman Catholic Church increasing control of education, and indemnified (1825) the émigrés for lands confiscated during the French Revolution. Assailed in 1827 by both the liberals and the extreme ultra-royalists, who found his methods too slow, he dissolved the chamber. He was defeated in the new elections and resigned.

BkIV:Chap1:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkIV:Chap10:Sec1 BkXXVI:Chap10:Sec1 His resignation on the 27th of July 1821 over a mater of the censure. Chateaubriand resigned his embassy out of loyalty.

BkXIX:Chap16:Sec3 He had joined the ‘Bayonnaise’ at Brest in July 1788 and served in the West and East Indies. Arrested in the Isle of Bourbon under the Terror, he was set free by the revolution of Thermidor (July 1794). He acquired some property in the island, and married, in 1799, Mélanie, the daughter of M. Henri Desbassyns de Richemont whose estates he had managed.

BkXXV:Chap8:Sec1 Chateaubriand acquainted with him in 1816. A reference to his naval service in his youth.

BkXXV:Chap9:Sec1 Involved with the Conservateur.

BkXXV:Chap13:Sec1 His appointment to office in 1820. He had been Mayor of Toulouse in 1814-5.

BkXXVI:Chap7:Sec1 BkXXVI:Chap11:Sec1 Finance Minister from 14th December 1821 to 4th January 1828.

BkXXVII:Chap8:Sec1 Chateaubriand applies to him for support over the Spanish situation.

BkXXVII:Chap10:Sec1 BkXXVII:Chap11:Sec1 His letter to Chateaubriand confirming the latter’s attendance at the Congress of Verona.

BkXXVIII:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXVIII:Chap2:Sec1 He dismisses and replaces Chateaubriand in a note on the 6th of June 1824. Chateaubriand had been made Foreign Minister on the 28th of December 1822, after the Congress of Verona, where he had supported French intervention in Spain to restore the monarchy there. Chateaubriand’s dismissal by the King was brought about by his ‘treason’ in refusing to defend, though voting for, a finance bill to reduce the interest paid on Government bonds proposed by Villèle, on the 3rd of June 1824. Villèle considered Chateaubriand responsible for the bill’s defeat in the Chamber of Peers, but it was probably Louis’ decision. The Chamber of Deputies had been dissolved on the 24th of December 1823, the February/March 1824 elections had brought in Louis’ ‘Unparalleled Chamber’ which now hastened to vote for a seven-year rather than five-year term for renewal. Chateaubriand supported this but judged it inadequate.

BkXXVIII:Chap3:Sec1 His settlement letter.

BkXXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 At the ceremony for the Knights of the Orders on the 30th of May 1825.

BkXXVIII:Chap9:Sec1 He arranges a pension for Chateaubriand.

BkXXVIII:Chap11:Sec1 Chateaubriand complains of his behaviour towards him.

BkXXVIII:Chap15:Sec1 Provoked by the Opposition in 1827.

BkXXVIII:Chap16:Sec1 BkXXXIII:Chap10:Sec1 The events surrounding the fall of his Ministry in 1827.

BkXXVIII:Chap17:Sec1 An examination of Chateaubriand’s differences with him.

BkXXXI:Chap1:Sec1 His opposition to Polignac becoming Ambassador to London.

BkXXXI:Chap7:Sec1 A potential Minister still in 1830.

BkXXXV:Chap24:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXXXVII:Chap2:Sec1 The Dauphin’s correspondence with him during the Spanish War.

BkXXXVIII:Chap4:Sec1 Chateaubriand recommends him to the Dauphine, who criticises him (May 1833).

BkXLI:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned as a possible member of Charles X’s Chateaubriand-led government in 1833!

 

Villemain, Abel François

1790-1870. A French scholar and critic, he was a professor at the Sorbonne from 1816, held several government posts after 1830, and was permanent secretary of the French Academy from 1832. His reputation as a literary critic was established by his Cours de littérature française (1830), several times re-edited and enlarged, which included his notable Tableau de la littérature au moyen âge and Tableau de la littérature française au XVIIIe siècle.

BkXII:Chap4:Sec2 His article on Byron, of 1835, for the Biographie Michaud.

BkXXIX:Chap10:Sec1 Professor of the Sorbonne, academician since 1821, he had been sanctioned for protesting against Peyronnet’s law on the Press. Martignac allowed him to resume his course.

BkXXX:Chap5:Sec1 He writes to Chateaubriand in Rome in March 1829.

BkXXXV:Chap7:Sec1 He visits Chateaubriand under house arrest in 1832.

 

Villemoisson-sur-Orge, France

A town in the Essonne, it is in the Île-de-France region.

BkXVIII:Chap8:Sec1 Cardinal de Bausset lodged there for twenty years with the Bassompierre family, his cousins, who owned the château.

 

Villeneuve, La

She was nurse to Chateaubriand when he was a small child.

BkI:Chap3:Sec2 BkI:Chap4:Sec6 BkI:Chap4:Sec8 BkI:Chap5:Sec2

BkVI:Chap2:Sec2 Mentioned.

BkIII:Chap14:Sec1 Her unconfirmed death in 1786.

 

Villeneuve, Léontine de, Comtesse de Castelbajac

1803-1897. A platonic admirer of Chateaubriand, she exchanged a number of letters with him. She married the Count of Castelbajac, a magistrate of Toulouse, on the 23rd of November 1829.

BkXXXI:Chap1:Sec2 She met Chateaubriand in Cauterets in August 1829, when she was twenty-six, not sixteen. She met him again in Toulouse in 1838. While she was a fanatical admirer the relationship appears to have been purely platonic, and the incident seems to have undergone some literary reconstruction!

 

Villeneuve, Pierre

He was supercargo on board the Saint-Pierre Chateaubriand’s ship to America.

BkVI:Chap2:Sec2 Described.

 

Villeneuve-Bargemont, Alban de

1789-1850. A former Prefect under the Restoration.

BkXXXV:Chap3:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, France

The beautiful and historic walled town is in Burgundy, near Joigny and Sens.

BkXIII:Chap7:Sec1 The Château de Passy nearby lived in by Joubert.

BkXIII:Chap7:Sec2 Chateaubriand visited Joubert there.

BkXVII:Chap4:Sec1 BkXVII:Chap5:Sec1 Arrangements to meet there in 1805.

BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec1 The Chateaubriands were there in September 1828.

BkXXXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 Chateaubriand recalls the poplars of Villeneuve on his journey through Bavaria in June 1833.

 

Villeneuvois

The term here describes the inhabitants of Villeneuve-sur-Lot in Lot-et-Garonne, or more properly now the region around it.

BkXXXV:Chap27:Sec1 They send Chateaubriand a goblet in 1833.

 

Villeroi, Francois de Neufville, Duc de

1644-1730. Marshal of France and favourite of Louis XIV, in the War of the Grand Alliance, he succeeded (1695) Marshal Luxembourg as commander in Flanders, where he was unsuccessful against William III of England. In the War of the Spanish Succession, he replaced Nicolas Catinat in Italy, was defeated by the Austrian commander Prince Eugene of Savoy at Chiari (1701), and was taken prisoner at Cremona (1702). In 1706 he was defeated by the Duke of Marlborough at Ramillies. Villeroi held several high posts between 1717 and 1722, when he fell into disgrace for intriguing against the Regent. He died, in virtual exile, as governor of Lyons

BkXXIV:Chap5:Sec1 Louis XIV’s magnanimous comment to him after Ramillies.

BkXXXVII:Chap14:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Villeroy, Nicholas IV de Neufville, Seigneur de

1543-1610. Secretary of State and Minister to Charles IX, Henri III and Henri IV.

BkXXX:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Villette, Charles-Michel, Marquis de

1734-1793. Writer, and husband of Reine. Wealthy nobleman born in Paris he earned a law degree, and served in the Army during the Seven Year’s War (1756-1763). He was pupil, godson and favourite of Voltaire who was a friend of his mother. As a deputy for l’Oise, he voted against the King’s death. He was savagely libelled in satirical pamphlets as a rich wastrel, coward and sodomite. He died of natural causes.

BkV:Chap15:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Villette, Charlotte de

1786-1802. Daughter of the Marquis.

BkV:Chap15:Sec1 Parny wrote an elegy on her at her death.

 

Villette, Reine-Philiberte Rouph de Varicourt, Marquise de

1757-1822. Voltaire’s ‘niece’, his ‘Belle et Bonne’. A girl of noble family, she was rescued by him from a convent, and he adopted her in 1776. He married her to Charles.

BkV:Chap12:Sec2 Chateaubriand met Mirabeau at her house in the Rue de Beaune, on the 30th July 1789.

BkV:Chap15:Sec1 Her daughter died in March 1802.

BkIX:Chap2:Sec1 Le Petit Villette consisted of the old Hôtel d’Elbeuf on the Rue de Vaugirard, where the Marquise retired after the death of her husband in 1793, and the Petit Hôtel d’Elbeuf in the cul-de-sac Férou, on the west side of the Rue Ferou, next to the Saint-Sulpice Seminary.

 

Villo, Gonzalo (Gonçalo Velho Cabral de Mello)

1390-1460. Portuguese navigator. Discoverer of the Azores in 1432. Maternal grandfather of Camoëns according to Chateaubriand.

BkVI:Chap4:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vilna (Vilnus), Lithuania

The Capital of Lithuana was initially a Baltic settlement, it was also inhabitated by Slavs and, from at least the 11th century, by Jews. Between 1503 and 1522 the city was surrounded by walls with nine city gates and three towers. Vilnius reached the peak of its development under the reign of Sigismund August who moved his court there in 1544.

BkXXI:Chap1:Sec1 Napoleon entered Vilna on June 28th 1812.

BkXXI:Chap7:Sec1 The retreating French reached Vilna on the 8th of December 1812, Napoleon having already left for France. Typhus and dysentery were rife.

 

Vincennes

The Château de Vincennes is a 14th and 17th century French royal castle in the town of Vincennes, to the east of Paris, now a suburb of the metropolis. Like other more famous châteaux it had its origins in a hunting lodge, set up for Louis VII about 1150 in the forest of Vincennes. Abandoned in the 18th century, the chateau still served, first as the site of the Vincennes porcelain manufactory, the precursor to Sèvres, then as a state prison, which housed the marquis de Sade, Diderot and Mirabeau, and then in 1796 an arms manufactory, suiting it to its current occupants, the historical sections of the French Armed Services.

BkIV:Chap11:Sec1 Delisle de Sales imprisoned there according to Chateaubriand. Actually he was imprisoned in the Chatelet.

BkX:Chap8:Sec2 Diderot imprisoned there in 1749.

BkXVI:Chap2:Sec2 BkXXIV:Chap16:Sec1 The Duc d’Enghien held there. He arrived from Strasbourg at four the evening on the 20th of March 1804.

BkXX:Chap9:Sec3 BkXXII:Chap2:Sec1 Napoleon imprisoned several Cardinals there in 1810.

BkXXII:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned as a Parisian landmark.

BkXXXIV:Chap2:Sec1 The Ministers held there after the July revolution, Polignac, Peyronnet, Chantelauze and Guernon-Ranville, were charged with high treason, and the trial took place between 15th and 21st December 1830, leading ton various disturbances.

 

Vincent, Nicolas-Charles, Baron de (=Karl Freiherr, Baron von)

1757-1834. A Belgian (born in Florence) in Austrian service at the time of Waterloo, where he was one of the four Allied Commissioners observing and was wounded, he had a prominent early military career, and was Governor General of Belgium from May to August 1814 on behalf of the Allied Powers. Aide-de-camp to Francis II, he had previously helped negotiate the Peace of Campo-Formio in 1797. He was Austrian Ambassador to Paris (1806 and 1814-1826). He had also been with the Tsar at Erfurt (1808-1809) and in Sweden (1813). He held the Barony of Bioncourt in Lorraine where he died.

BkXXIII:Chap15:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXXIII:Chap17:Sec1 Wounded at Waterloo.

 

Vincent de Paul, Saint

1581-1660. Ordained in 1600, he devoted his life to the poor. Captured by Turkish pirates in 1605 he was released in 1607 after converting his owner. He established a foundling home in Paris, and founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity and the Congregation of the Priests of the Mission (Lazarists)

BkXXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 The foundling home mentioned.

 

Vinkovo

Allowed to slip into a false sense of security by the Russians, Marshal Murat was caught completely by surprise, on the 18th of October 1812, when attacked by an army of 36,000 men under Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov. With his 18,000 men assailed from three sides, Murat fought a dogged action. The French eventually broke out of the trap and escaped. They left behind 3500 dead, injured and captured, the Russians lost some 1500.

BkXXI:Chap4:Sec4 Mentioned.

 

Vintimille, Angélique de La Live de Jully, Madame de

1763-1831. She married the Vicomte Hubert de Vintimille (1740-1817), a naval officer. The niece of Madame de La Briche and Madame d’Houdetot, and the sister of Madame de Fezensac.

BkXIII:Chap7:Sec2 A friend of Pauline de Beaumont.

BkXIII:Chap7:Sec2 Celebrated by Laharpe. Described.

BkXIV:Chap1:Sec1 Visiting her aunt Madame de La Briche in 1802.

BkXVII:Chap1:Sec1 Her cousins Alexandre de Laborde (1773-1842) and Natalie de Noailles (1774-1835), separated from her husband and later Duchesse de Mouchy, did the honours at Méréville (between Étampes and Pithiviers) on the banks of the Juine, built for their father the banker John Joseph de Laborde, and with a famous eighteenth century garden. Chateaubriand visited in 1805 and Natalie was enamoured of him.

BkXVIII:Chap8:Sec2 Introduced Chateaubriand to the Abbé Morellet in 1811.

 

Violante

She was a 15th century Jewish woman in Venice, whose grave Chateaubriand visits.

BkXXXIX:Chap20:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Violet

He was a French scullion to General Rochambeau, and later dancing-master.

BkVII:Chap2:Sec1 He played for the Iroquois. Madelon Friquet is an old fairground contredanse.

BkX:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vire, France

The town is in lower Normandy.

BkXIII:Chap8:Sec1 Chênedollé living there in the summer of 1802.

 

Virgil

71-19BC. The Roman Augustan poet was author of the Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, the epic of Aeneas of Troy and the founding of Rome.

BkI:Chap1:Sec10 Chateaubriand quotes Aeneid I.630 ‘Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco’ words spoken by Dido of Carthage to the shipwrecked Aeneas, i.e. ‘Not being unknown to evil, I’ve learned to aid the unhappy.’

BkI:Chap4:Sec3 Chateaubriand quotes Aeneid II.21. ‘est in conspectus Tenedos: Tenedos is in sight’, i.e. the island of Tenedos was visible from Troy.

BkII:Chap3:Sec4 Chateaubriand refers to Book IV of the Aeneid, which describes the love of Dido for Aeneas.

BkII:Chap4:Sec2 BkXXXVI:Chap4:Sec1 Chateaubriand perhaps misquotes or mingles two quotations. ‘Macte nova virtute puer, sic itur ad astra’: Blessings on your fresh courage boy, such is the path to the stars’ is from Aeneid IX 640-641. ‘Macte animo, iuvenis!’ appears in Statius, Silvae V.

BkIII:Chap7:Sec2 A love poet in depicting Dido.

BkIII:Chap14:Sec2 Chateaubriand quotes Aeneid III:10-11. ‘Litora cum patriae lacrimans portusque relinquo, et campos ubi Troia fuit: I left my native shore with tears, the harbour and the fields where Troy once stood’.

BkV:Chap14:Sec1 For the souls on the banks of Lethe see Aeneid VI 713-715.

BkVI:Chap3:Sec1 For the correct quote ‘aequora tuta silent’ see Aeneid I. 164.

BkVI:Chap5:Sec2 For flentes, see Aeneid V:615 ‘Pontum aspectebant flentes: they gazed at the sea, in tears.’

BkVIII:Chap5:Sec2 Chateaubriand quotes from Aeneid III:302-303 where Andromache makes offering to Hector’s Ashes by a false, second river Simois (a river of Troy), in Epirus.

BkIX:Chap8:Sec3 Chateaubriand quotes from Aeneid VI:269.

BkX:Chap3:Sec3 Chateaubriand quotes Aeneid IX: 212

BkX:Chap9:Sec2 Virgil is portrayed as Dante’s Guide through the Inferno and Purgatorio in the Divine Comedy.

BkXI:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand quotes from Aeneid I:353-354. The image of Dido’s murdered husband, Sycheus, appears to her in a dream.

BkXI:Chap2:Sec2 The Georgics translated by the Abbé Delille (1770).

BkXI:Chap3:Sec3 Chateaubriand quotes from Aeneid III:395.

BkXII:Chap1:Sec1 BkXXIV:Chap11:Sec1 BkXXIX:Chap9:Sec1

BkXXXV:Chap15:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXIII:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand refers to the famous passages from  Aeneid Book VI where Aeneas has to pluck a golden bough in order to enter the underworld. (The Golden Bough is the title of the monumental work on mythology written by James Frazer.)

BkXIV:Chap2:Sec3 Chateaubriand refers to Aeneid I:450-493 where Aeneas is amazed by frescoes of his own history in the Temple of Juno.

BkXVIII:Chap3Sec3 Possibly a reference to Aeneid V:320, proximus huic, longo sed proximus intervallo. A quotation follows from Aeneid III:4

BkXIX:Chap12:Sec2 A festival celebrating him mentioned.

BkXX:Chap4:Sec1 The quotation is from lines 144-145 of Maffeo Vegio’s (1407-1458) attempt to continue Virgil’s Aeneid, in 1428. (The first attempt was made by Pier Candido Decembrio, in 1419, but Decembrio abandoned the effort after only 89 lines.) Sometimes called the ‘thirteenth book of the Aeneid,’ Vegio’s Supplementum regularly appeared in fifteenth and sixteenth-century editions of Virgil’s works, and elicited commentaries, first from Jodocus Badius Ascensius (1501) and later from Nicolaus Erythraeus (1538-39). A Scots translation, by Bishop Gavin Douglas (1513) was published in 1553, and an English translation in 1584, by the physician Thomas Twyne.

BkXX:Chap5:Sec3 Lake Garda  is exposed to sudden and violent winds, which Virgil alludes to in Georgics ii:160: fluctihus et fremitu assurgens, Benace, marine.

BkXXII:Chap4:Sec1 Adapted from the words spoken to Hercules in Aeneid VIII:296, indicating Cerberus the watchdog of the Underworld.

BkXXII:Chap 26:Sec1 Aeneid X:174. ‘Island generous in those inexhaustible metals the Chalybes forge.’

BkXXVI:Chap10:Sec1 See Aeneid XI:547-563, where Metabus hurls his daughter Camilla across the river Ausenus tied to his spear shaft.

BkXXVIII:Chap17:Sec1 The quotation is from Aeneid VI:256-257, where Aeneas prepares to descend into the Underworld.

BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec1 The quotation is from Aeneid IV:23, Dido speaks.

BkXXIX:Chap2:Sec3 The reference is to Georgics II:146-7.

BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec4 The greatness of his writing.

BkXXX:Chap11:Sec2 Mentioned.

BkXXX:Chap13:Sec1 See Eclogue VI.

BkXXXI:Chap1:Sec1 See Aeneid VII:27.

BkXXXI:Chap2:Sec1 See Aeneid II:428.

BkXXXIV:Chap14:Sec1 See Georgics III:474-566.

BkXXXVIII:Chap1:Sec1 See Georgics IV:514.

BkXXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 See Aeneid VI:893-896 for the ivory gate that allows illusory dreams to escape to the world above, as opposed to the gate of horn whose dreams prove true. See also Homer Odyssey XIX: 562-567.)

BkXXXIX:Chap21:Sec1 Virgil died of fever after returning from a voyage to Greece.

BkXL:Chap1:Sec1 He was born near Mantua.

BkXL:Chap2:Sec3 The Aeneid is incomplete, and Virgil was so dissatisfied that he requested the remaining manuscript be destroyed.

BkXLII:Chap2:Sec1 See Georgics IV:86

 

Virginie

She was the muse of Bernardin.

 

Virginia

d 449BC. A Roman virgin, she was killed by her father, Virginius, to save her from Appius Claudius, one of the Roman Decemvirs.

BkXXII:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Virginia, USA

A mid-Atlantic coastal state, it was one of the 23 original colonies, named after Elizabeth I of England, the Virgin Queen. It was the site of the first permanent English settlement in the New World by the Virginia Company in 1607. It provided many leaders for the American Revolution becoming a state in 1788. Four of the first five Presidents were Virginians.

BkVI:Chap6:Sec1 Chateaubriand’s ship becalmed off the coast.

 

Virginie

Maid-servant to Lucile.

BkXVII:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Visconti, Pietro Ercole

1803-1880. He was Commissioner of Antiquities in Rome in 1829.

BkXXIX:Chap16:Sec1 He directed Chateaubriand’s excavations at Torre Vergata.

 

Vishnu

The most popularly worshipped form of God in Hinduism. Within the Vaishnava tradition he is viewed as the Ultimate Reality or Supreme God (similarly to Shiva within Shaivism).

BkXXXIV:Chap15:Sec1 With Vishnu representing Cosmic Time, Yama as an incarnation or ‘son’ of Vishnu represents Mortal Time and Death. In this sense Yama (the First Ancestor) is Vishnu’s eldest son, and time and death carried off Bonaparte as they did the plague victims. Yama is elsewhere regarded as the first man and the first to die, and as the son of Surya, the sun, in turn an incarnation of Vishnu, so again Yama is an eldest son of Vishnu.

 

Vistula

The Vistula (Polish: Wisła) is the longest river in Poland at 678 miles and drains an area of 75,000 sq. miles. Its source is in the south of the country, at Barania Góra (1220 m high) in the Beskidy Mountains. It flows over the Polish plains, passing several cities along its way, including Kraków, Warsaw and Gdańsk. It empties into the Vistula Lagoon and Gdańsk Bay of the Baltic Sea.

BkXX:Chap6:Sec1 Napoleon’s troops were at the river in December 1806.

BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec2 The Russian presence there in 1828.

 

Vitebsk, Belarus

Vitebsk is situated in north-East of the Belarus in the land of glacier lakes on the picturesque banks of the three rivers: the Zakhodnyaya Dzvina river, the Vitba and the Luchesa river. It became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1320 and its citizens obtained merchant privileges and self-government. In 1597 Vitebsk was granted the Magdeburg Code of Law.  It became part of the Russian Empire in 1772.

BkXXI:Chap1:Sec1 Napoleon was there from 29th July-12th August 1812, during the invasion of Russia.

BkXXI:Chap2:Sec1 The battle of 28th July 1812 when Napoleon’s troops defeated Barclay de Tolly.

BkXXI:Chap5:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vitellius, Aulus, Roman Emperor

15-69AD. Roman emperor (AD 69), he was made commander of the legions on the lower Rhine by Galba in AD 68. On Galba’s death he was proclaimed emperor at Colonia Agrippina (now Cologne). The generals who favoured him defeated his rival, Otho, in Italy, and Vitellius was briefly the emperor. He distinguished himself by extravagance, debauchery, and general incompetence. When his rival in the East, Vespasian, moved into Italy, Vitellius quickly lost his supporters. His troops were defeated at Cremona, and Vitellius fought with Vespasian’s brother, Flavius Sabinus, in Rome. When Vespasian’s troops entered Rome, Vitellius was captured while in hiding and murdered.

BkV:Chap8:Sec2 BkXXIX:Chap6:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Viterbo, Italy

An ancient city and comune in the Lazio region of central Italy, the capital of the province of Viterbo. It is approximately 60 miles north of Rome on the Via Cassia, and it is surrounded by the Monti Cimini and Monti Volsini. When the Popes had difficulty asserting their authority over Rome, Viterbo became their favourite residence, beginning with Pope Eugene III (1145-1146)

BkXXX:Chap2:Sec1 Clement IV buried there.

 

Vitré

A town in Brittany, one of the best preserved medieval towns in France, on the left bank of the Vilaine, twenty-four miles east of Rennes.

BkV:Chap2:Sec 2 Mentioned. Madame de Sevigné’s château of Rochers was nearby.

 

Vitré, Baron de

BkI:Chap1:Sec6 Mentioned.

 

Vitrolles, Eugène-François-Auguste Arnaud, Baron de

1774-1854. Made a Baron by Napoleon in 1812, he played a key role in the Bourbon return, acting as a go-between with Talleyrand from April 1814.

BkXXII:Chap11:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXXV:Chap9:Sec1 Involved with the Conservateur.

BkXXXII:Chap6:Sec1 At Saint-Cloud on the 29th of July 1830.

BkXXXII:Chap7:Sec1 Rebuffed in Paris on the 29th.

 

Vitrolles, Thérésia de Follevie, Baronne de

She was the adopted daughter of the Duchesse de Bouillon. She was arrested for conspiracy on the 4th of April 1815, and transferred to Vincennes, where Napoleon was tempted to have her shot. But Fouché playing his double game protected her, and sent her to Ghent on a mission.

BkXXIII:Chap10:Sec1 In Ghent at the start of May 1815.

 

Vitry-le-François, France

The town is on the River Marne north-east of Troyes.

BkXXII:Chap9:Sec1 Napoleon fighting there in 1814.

 

Vitry, Philippe de

d. 1745. A French officer killed at Fontenoy.

BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vittoria (Vitoria), Spain

Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital city of the province of Álava and of the Basque Country was founded in 1181 by the King of Navarre, Sancho VI the Wise as ‘Nueva Victoria’ on the hill where the old settlement of Gasteiz was located. In 1200, Vitoria passed to the Kingdom of Castile, taken by the troops of Alfonso VIII. The city was progressively enlarged and in 1431 was granted the title of ‘City’ by King Juan II of Castile. The Battle of Vitoria was fought on June 21, 1813 during the Peninsular War, between 78,000 British, Portuguese and Spanish troops, with 96 guns, under the Marquis of Wellington, and 58,000 French with 153 guns under King Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jourdan.

BkXXII:Chap3:Sec1 Joseph defeated there.

 

Vitzingerode for Wintzingerode, Ferdinand Ferdinandovich, Baron

1770-1818. A soldier and diplomat, he initially fought the French as an officer for Austria before joining Tsar Alexander’s staff. With his knowledge of the Austrian army he proved invaluable in his new position and, as the Tsar planned war with France, was sent back to Vienna to coordinate preparations. He fought at Austerlitz, but was captured by the French, and when released earned the Tsar’s displeasure by loudly opposing the Treaty of Tilsit between France and Russia. Recalled to face the French invasion in 1812, Wintzingerode was again captured but was rescued while on his way to Paris. In 1813, he led a Russian corps with the Swedish army and fought at Leipzig. Advancing into France he was beaten by Napoleon, the French emperor’s second-last victory, at St Dizier.

BkXXI:Chap5:Sec1 Brought before Napoleon at Borowsk.

 

Viviers, Monsieur de

An attaché charged with carrying Chateaubriand’s despatch of the 12th of January 1829 to Paris.

BkXXIX:Chap16:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Vizier, Grand

Laz Ahmet Pasha, Grand Vizier 1811-1812, led the Ottoman armies during the 1811 campaign on the Danube. Inexperienced but energetic, he forced Kutuzov back across the big river and re-captured Silistria and Nikopol. He defeated Kutuzov again at Rustchuk, but allowed his army to become trapped on the north bank. Ahmed managed to extract an armistice from the Russians, however, and rescued his army from disaster.

BkXXI:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.

BkXXIX:Chap13:Sec3 The Turkish Grand Vizier from October 26th 1828 to January 1829 was Darendeli Topal İzzet Mehmed Pasha (1st time), he was followed by Reşid Mehmed Pasha until February 17th 1833.

 

Vöcklabruck, Upper Austria

Vöcklabruck’s name derives from the River Vöckla which runs through the town lying between Salzburg and Linz.

BkXLI:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand there in 1833.

 

Volga, River

The Volga River, the largest river system of Europe rises northwest of Moscow in the Valday Hills and flows 2,300 miles southeast before emptying into the Caspian Sea near the city of Astrakhan.

BkXXI:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Volney, Constantin-François de Chasseboeuf

1757-1820. A French scholar, he travelled in Egypt and Syria in the 1780s and wrote an account of his journey, Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte (1787); notable for its exact descriptions, which was useful to Napoleon during his Egyptian campaign. Volney served as deputy (1789) to the States-General, as Secretary (1790) of the National Assembly, and later, after spending some time in the United States, as senator under Napoleon, who made him a count in 1808; he was also a member of the chamber of peers under Louis XVIII. His principal work, Les Ruines; ou, Méditation sur les révolutions des empires (1791), which popularized religious scepticism, was influential not only in France but also in England and the United States; it went through many translations and editions and stimulated much controversy. His writings also include works on the United States, on ancient history, and on Arabic.

BkXIX:Chap9:Sec3 Dissuaded Napoleon from emigrating in 1795.

 

Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet

1694-1778. Poet, dramatist, philosopher, his work encapsulated the Age of Enlightenment. He fought against injustice and intolerance in a series of sparkling works. Briefly imprisoned in the Bastille (1717) he went into exile in England (1726-1729). After the publication of his Lettres philosophiques (1734) which preached toleration he fled to Cirey in Champagne, where he lived with his mistress, Madame de Châtelet. He subsequently lived in Germany (1750-1753) after being earlier befriended by Frederick the Great, and in Switzerland (from 1754) chiefly at Ferney near Geneva. His writings covering history, science, philosophy and verse drama, include the satirical fable Candide (1759), Traité de la tolérance (1763), and the Dictionnaire philosophique (1764).

BkI:Chap1:Sec1 The legend of Voltaire’s birth at Châtenay is here repeated by Chateaubriand. It was affirmed by Condorcet in 1789, and repeated by Michaud in 1827. Since then doubt has been cast on the information, and Paris is suggested as the correct birthplace.

BkI:Chap4:Sec5 He attacked and mocked the Abbé Trublet.

BkIV:Chap1:Sec1 BkIV:Chap1:Sec2 BkXXVI:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand viewed his room in Potsdam, in 1821.

BkIV:Chap12:Sec4 His age, the age of Voltaire.

BkV:Chap12:Sec2 His niece the Marquise de Villette.

BkVI:Chap1:Sec1 Chateaubriand adapts lines from Voltaire’s Épître a Philis: ‘Ah! Madame, que votre vie….’

BkX:Chap3:Sec2 Chateaubriand quotes from the Henriade, Canto I: 240-241, where the hermit of Jersey prophesies the future kingship of Henri IV.

BkX:Chap7:Sec1 A reference to his tale L’homme aux quarante écus of 1768.

BkXI:Chap3:Sec1 Fontanes was in Paris by 1778 when Voltaire died.

BkXII:Chap4:Sec3 Chateaubriand suggests that Byron was strongly influenced by him.

BkXIII:Chap10:Sec1 BkXIII:Chap11:Sec1 Voltaire’s followers, seen as opposed to established religion.

BkXIV:Chap4:Sec1 A reference to Voltaire’s epithet for superstition, in which he classed traditional and organised religion, of l’infâme, the infamy…as in his frequently used motto: Ecrasez l’infâme!

BkXVII:Chap2:Sec1 He gave his name to a literary age.

BkXIX:Chap2:Sec1 The quotation is from Mérope (I:3)

BkXIX:Chap5:Sec1 Voltaire mocked Baron Neuhof in Chapter 26 of Candide.

BkXX:Chap7:Sec2 His impiety as perceived by Chateaubriand.

BkXXIII:Chap5:Sec1 A reference to the opening of the Henriade: ‘I sing of the heroes who ruled French earth, both by right of conquest and right of birth.’

BkXXVI:Chap2:Sec1 BkXXVI:Chap6:Sec1 BkXXXVIII:Chap6:Sec1

His association with Frederick the Great.

BkXXVI:Chap9:Sec1 The reference is to his letter from Berlin to Madame Denis, of 26th December 1750.

BkXXVIII:Chap10:Sec1 As a model of 18th century style.

BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec2 His dispute in 1759 with De Brosses.

BkXXIX:Chap7:Sec3 His clarity of style.

BkXXXIV:Chap2:Sec1 His followers.

BkXXXIV:Chap7:Sec1 Voltaire’s life at Ferney.

BkXXXIV:Chap9:Sec1 The quotation is from a brief treatise of 1749 on French poetry.

BkXXXV:Chap16:Sec1 See Mahomet ActI:Scene2, line 110.

BkXXXV:Chap21:Sec1 His disinterest in Nature.

BkXXXVIII:Chap5:Sec1 His Funeral oration for the officers dead in the War of 1741 published in 1749.

BkXXXVIII:Chap6:Sec1 See the last lines of Voltaire’s Lines to Madame du Châtelet, which is a lament for lost youth.

BkXXXIX:Chap3:Sec1 See Candide XXV of which what follows is an amusing summary.

BkXL:Chap2:Sec3 Author of the Henriade. A reference to his atheism.

BkXL:Chap4:Sec1 See Candide: XXVI

BkXLII:Chap2:Sec1 Chateaubriand uses Welches, Voltaire’s mocking term for his ‘barbarous’ compatriots. The word Welsh in English derives from the Old English word meaning foreigners or Celts. 

BkXLII:Chap10:Sec1 The intellectual leader of his age.

 

Voralberg, Austria

The province of extreme Western Austria, borders on Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Germany.

BkXX:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned.

 

Voss, Mademoiselle

Mistress of Frederick-William II.

BkXXVI:Chap2:Sec1 Mentioned in Mirabeau’s Secret History.