Barthélemy, Auguste-Marseille

Born 1796, in Marseille; died there Aug. 23, 1867. French satirical poet.

Barthélemy acquired fame among opposition circles during the period of the Restoration by means of his mock-heroic narrative poems The Jesuits (1826), The Villéliade (1827), and others. His narrative poems Napoleon in Egypt (1828), The Son of a Man (1829), and Waterloo (1829) made Barthélemy one of the creators of the legend that idealized Napoleon in French poetry. In the narrative poem The Insurrection (1830, written jointly with J. Méry), Barthélemy welcomed the July Revolution. In March of 1831 he began publishing a satirical weekly in verse entitled Nemesis (1831–32, in collaboration with J. Méry). Because it attacked the policy of the July Monarchy, and especially because it protested the reprisals taken against the Lyon weavers, the government was moved to close down this pamphlet-journal. Barthélemy also devoted many years to translating Vergil’s Aeneid.