Joseph-François Michaud

Michaud was born at either La Biolle or Albens in the Duchy of Savoy (then a part of the Holy Roman Empire and a possession of the King of Sardinia).

He was educated at Bourg-en-Bresse, and afterwards engaged in literary work at Lyon, where the French Revolution first aroused the strong dislike of revolutionary principles which manifested itself throughout the rest of his life.

In 1806, with his brother Louis Gabriel Michaud and two colleagues, he published Biographie moderne ou dictionnaire des hommes qui se sont fait un nom en Europe, depuis 1789, the earliest work of its kind.

His brochure Histoire des quinze semaines ou le dernier règne de Bonaparte (1815) met with extraordinary success, passing through twenty-seven editions within a very short time.

[1] His political services were now rewarded with the cross of an officer in the Legion of Honour and the modest post of king's reader, of which last he was deprived in 1827 for having opposed Peyronnet's "Loi d'Amour" against the freedom of the Press.