![]() ![]() He returned to Paris and gained a promotion as the Emperor’s Inspector of Accounts, spending a couple of years moving among the highest echelons of French Imperial society. In this capacity, in 1809, he travelled through war-torn Germany and, in the town of Stendhal, was particularly affected by the horrific devastation he saw there. His association with the French army continued, however, when he was appointed a War Commissar. He came under fire during the campaign but also contracted syphilis, and eventually resigned his commission. Beyle became a clerk in the War Ministry but subsequently accepted a commission in a French Dragoon regiment so that he could take part in Bonaparte’s invasion of the Italian states, then occupied by the Austrians. His real name was Marie-Henri Beyle, and his star was joined irrevocably with that of Napoleon when he moved to Paris in 1799, literally on the day after Bonaparte’s coup d’état and appointment as First Consul of France. The classic French author who wrote under the pen name of Stendhal was born in Grenoble in 1783. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |