Ludovic Vitet

At the École he took courses in philosophy and studied law, practicing and teaching until 1824, when he abandoned these professions to travel around France and to Italy, since he was interested in history, architecture, archeology and music.

In the 1820s, Vitet became one of the contributors to the Globe, a liberal-leaning journal founded by Paul-François Dubois which also featured the writing of Charles de Rémusat, Victor Cousin, and Étienne-Jean Delécluze.

The report submitted by Vitet in 1831 at the end of his first tour in the north of France shows that he was in charge not only of monuments but also of museums, libraries, archives and schools of artistic education.

Vitet made two other tours: one to Burgundy, Lyons and its environs, and Puy in 1831; the other to the southwest in 1833, which gave him the opportunity to save the cloister of Moissac.

In the Chamber, he voted for the endowment of the Duke of Nemours, for the census, for the Pritchard indemnity, and wrote the official report for the law on patents.

Hostile to the policy of the prince-president, he was among the deputies who met at the town hall of the 10th arrondissement of Paris to protest against the coup d'état of 2 December 1851, that ended the Second Republic and gave Louis-Napoleon presidential powers for ten years, effectively beginning the Second Empire.

The disasters of 1870-71 reawakened Vitet's interest in public affairs, and he published in the Revue des deux mondes his optimistic "Lettres sur le siège de Paris.

"[1] He joined the Republic after its inception on 4 September 1870, and during the Siege of Paris he published a series of articles in the Revue des deux Mondes in which he advocated resistance.

Elected deputy again for Seine-Inferieure in the National Assembly on 8 February 1871, he was, from the start, one of the chamber's vice-presidents and was part of the commission headed by Adolphe Thiers to negotiate peace with the Germans.