Thierry
THIERRY, the name of two French historians, the brothers Augustin and Amedee, both of whom, though their literary and historical powers were far from being equal, displayed the same devotion to historical study.
I. JACQUES NICOLAS AUGUSTIN THIERRY (1795-1856), the elder and more gifted, was born at Blois on the loth of May 1795. He had no advantages of birth or fortune, but was greatly distinguished at the Blois Grammar School, and entered the cole normale superieure (1811). In 1813 he left it, and was sent as a professor to Compiegne, but stayed there a very short time. His ardent and generous nature led him to embrace the ideas of the French Revolution with enthusiasm, and he became fired with Saint Simon's ideal society of the future. He became the secretary, and, as he would say himself, the " adopted son " of the famous visionary (1814-17); but, while most of Saint Simon's followers turned their attention to the affairs of life, devoting themselves to the problems, both theoretical and practical, of political economy, Thierry turned his to history. His imagination had been powerfully impressed by reading Les Martyrs, in which Chateaubriand had contrasted the two civilizations and the two races from which the modern world has sprung. His romantic ardour was later still further nourished by the works of Sir Walter Scott, and though he did not himself actually write romances, his conception of history fully recognized the dramatic element. His main ideas on the Germanic invasions, the Norman Conquest, the formation of the Communes, the gradual ascent of the nations towards free government and parliamentary institutions are already observable in the articles contributed by him to the Censeur europeen (1817-20), and later in his Leltres sur I'histoire de France (1820). From Fauriel he learnt to use the original authorities; and by the aid of the Latin chronicles and the collection, as yet very ill understood, of the Anglo-Saxon laws, he composed his Histoire de la Conquete de I'Angleterre par Us Normands, the appearance of which was greeted with great enthusiasm (1825). It was written in a style at once precise and picturesque, and was dominated by an idea, at once generous and false, that of Anglo-Saxon liberty resisting the invasions of northern barbarians, and reviving, in spite of defeat, in the parliamentary monarchy. His artistic talent as a writer makes the weaknesses and deficiencies of his scholarship less obvious. This work, the preparation of which had required several years of hard work, cost Thierry his eyesight; in 1826 he was obliged to engage secretaries and in 1850 became quite blind. Notwithstanding, he continued to produce works. In 1827 he republished his Lellres sur I'histoire de France, with the addition of fifteen new' ones, in which he described some of the more striking episodes in the history of the rise of the medieval communes. The chronicles of the nth and 1zth centuries and a few communal charters provided him, without requiring a great amount of erudition, with materials for a solid work. For this reason his work on the communes has not become so out of date as his Norman Conquest; but he was too apt to generalize from the facts furnished by a few striking cases which occurred in a small portion of France, and helped to spread among the public, and even among professional historians, mistaken ideas concerning one of the most complex problems relating to the social origins of France.
Thierry was ardent in his applause of the July Revolution and the triumph of liberal ideas; at this time, too, his brother Amedee was appointed prefect, and he went to live with him for four years. He now re-edited, under the title of Dix ans d'etudes historiques, his first essays in the Censeur ewopeen and the Courrier franc. ais (1834), and composed his Ricits des temps merovingiens, in which he reproduced hi a vivid and dramatic form some of the most characteristic stories of Gregory of Tours. These Ricits appeared first in the Revue des deux mondes; when collected in volume form, they were preceded by long and interesting Considerations sur I'histoire de France. From the 7th of May 1830, Thierry had already been a member of the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres; in 1841, on the motion of Villemain, the French Academy awarded him the first Prix Gobert, which became a kind of literary inheritance for him, being renewed in his favour fifteen years in succession. Moreover, he had been allotted the task of publishing in the series of the Documents inedits a selection of acts bearing on the history of the Third Estate. By the aid of zealous collaborators (including Bourquelot and Louandre) he compiled, in four volumes, a valuable Recueil des monuments inedits de I'histoire du Tiers tat (1850-70), which, however, bear only on the northern part of France. The preface appeared afterwards in a separate volume under the title of Histoire du Tiers tat. To Thierry belongs the credit for inaugurating in France the really critical study of the communal institutions, and we cannot make him responsible for the neglect into which it relapsed after his death. The last years of his life were clouded by domestic griefs and by illness. In 1844 he lost his wife, Julie de Qu6rengal, an intelligent woman, who had been to him a collaborator as capable as she was devoted. The revolution of 1848 inflicted on him a final blow.
by overturning that r6gime of the Liberal bourgeoisie the triumph of which he had hailed and justified as the necessary outcome of the whole course of French history. He began to distrust the rationalistic opinions which had hitherto estranged him from the Church. When Catholic writers animadverted on the " historical errors " in his writings he promised to correct them, and accordingly we find that in the final edition of his Histoire de la Conquete his severe judgments on the policy of the court of Rome, together with some faults of detail, are eliminated. Though he did not renounce his Liberal friends, he sought the conversation of enlightened priests, and just before his death he seems to have been disposed to enter the pale of the Church. He died in Paris on the 22nd of May 1856, after several years of suffering endured with heroism.
II. AMEDEE SIMON DOMINIQUE THIERRY (1797-1873) was the younger brother of Augustin, and was born on the 2nd August 1797. He began life as a journalist (after an essay, like his brother, at schoolmastering), was connected with the famous romantic harbinger the Globe, and .obtained a small government clerkship. His first book was a brief history of Guienne in 1825, and three years later appeared the first volume of the Histoire des Gaidois, which was received with much favour, and obtained him, from the royalist premier Martignac, a history professorship at Besancon. He was, however, thought too liberal for the government of Charles X., and his lectures were stopped, with the result of securing him, after the revolution, the important post of prefect of the Haute-Saone, which he held eight years. During this time he published nothing. In 1838 he was transferred to the council of state as master of requests, which post he held through the revolution of 1848 and the coup d' etat till 1860, when he was made senator a paid office, it must be remembered, and, in effect, a lucrative sinecure. He also passed through all the ranks of the Legion of Honour, became a member of the Academic des Inscriptions in 1841, and in 1862 received the honorary degree of D.C.L. at Oxford. He had, except during the time of his prefecture, never intermitted his literary work, being a constant contributor to the Revue des deux mondes, his articles (usually worked up afterwards into books) almost all dealing with Roman Gaul and its period. The chief were the Histoire des Gaulois, 3 vols. (1828, 1834, 1845; the 8th edition of vol. i. appeared in 1870); Histoire de la Gaule sous I' administration romaine (3 vols., 1840-47; 2nd ed. 1871); Histoire d'Altila, de ses fils el successeursjusqu'a I'ttablissement des Hongrois en Europe (1856; 5th ed. in 1874); Tableau de I' Empire romain (1862; 5th ed. in 1871; now quite out of date); Recits de I'histoire romaine au V' siecle: la lutte contre les Barbares, and les luttes religieuses (1860; 2nd ed. in 6 vols. 1880). He died in Paris on the 27th of March 1873. His son, Gilbert Augustin Thierry (born 1843), who began a literary career by articles on Les Revolutions d'Anglelerre (1864) and some Essais d'histoire religieuse (1867), afterwards confined himself to the writing of novels. (C. B.*)
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
