Editing François-René de Chateaubriand (section)

=== Under the Restoration ===
{{further|Bourbon Restoration in France}}
[[File:Portrait_of_Francois_Rene_Vicomte_de_Chateaubriand,_1828.jpg|left|thumb|190px|Chateaubriand as a [[Peerage of France|Peer of France]] (1828)]]
Chateaubriand became a major figure in politics as well as literature.  At first he was a strong Royalist in the period up to 1824. His liberal phase lasted from 1824 to 1830. After that he was much less active.
After the fall of Napoleon, Chateaubriand rallied to the [[House of Bourbon|Bourbons]]. On 30 March 1814, he wrote a pamphlet against Napoleon, titled ''De Buonaparte et des Bourbons'', of which thousands of copies were published. He then followed [[Louis XVIII of France|Louis XVIII]] into exile to [[Ghent]] during the [[Hundred Days]] (March–July 1815), and was nominated ambassador to Sweden.

After Napoleon's final defeat in the [[Battle of Waterloo]] (of which he heard the distant cannon rumblings outside Ghent), Chateaubriand became [[Peerage of France|peer of France]] and [[state minister]] (1815). In December 1815 he voted for [[Michel Ney|Marshal Ney]]'s execution. However, his criticism of [[Louis XVIII of France|King Louis XVIII]] in ''[[La Monarchie selon la Charte]]'', after the ''[[Chambre introuvable]]'' was dissolved, resulted in his disgrace. He lost his function of state minister, and joined the opposition, siding with the [[Ultra-royalist]] group supporting the future [[Charles X of France|Charles X]], and becoming one of the main writers of its mouthpiece, ''[[Le Conservateur]]''.<ref>{{Citation |last=Goldman |first=Lawrence |title=Conservative political thought from the revolutions of 1848 until the fin de siècle |date=2011 |work=The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought |pages=691–719 |editor-last=Stedman Jones |editor-first=Gareth |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-nineteenthcentury-political-thought/conservative-political-thought-from-the-revolutions-of-1848-until-the-fin-de-siecle/FA5FCFA3FCC597BCE799A33ADE196AF5 |access-date=2024-05-02 |series=The Cambridge History of Political Thought |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-43056-2 |editor2-last=Claeys |editor2-first=Gregory}}</ref>

Chateaubriand sided again with the Court after the murder of the [[Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry|Duc de Berry]] (1820), writing for the occasion the ''Mémoires sur la vie et la mort du duc''. He then served as ambassador to [[Prussia]] (1821) and the United Kingdom (1822), and even rose to the office of [[Minister of Foreign Affairs (France)|Minister of Foreign Affairs]] (28 December 1822 – 4 August 1824). A [[plenipotentiary]] to the [[Congress of Verona]] (1822), he decided in favor of the [[Quintuple Alliance]]'s [[Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis|intervention in Spain]] during the ''[[Trienio Liberal]]'', despite opposition from the [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|Duke of Wellington]]. Chateaubriand was soon relieved of his office by Prime Minister [[Joseph de Villèle]] on 5 June 1824, over his objections to a law the latter proposed that would have resulted in the widening of the electorate. Chateaubriand was subsequently appointed French ambassador to [[Genoa]].<ref>{{cite book | author=Bernard, J.F. | title=Talleyrand: A Biography | publisher=Putnam | location=New York | year=1973 | isbn=0-399-11022-4 | url=https://archive.org/details/talleyrand00jack|page=503}}</ref>

Consequently, he moved towards the liberal opposition, both as a Peer and as a contributor to ''[[Journal des Débats]]'' (his articles there gave the signal of the paper's similar switch, which, however, was more moderate than ''[[Le National (newspaper)|Le National]]'', directed by [[Adolphe Thiers]] and [[Armand Carrel]]). Opposing Villèle, he became highly popular as a defender of [[Freedom of the press|press freedom]] and the [[Greek War of Independence|cause of Greek independence]]. After Villèle's downfall, Charles X appointed Chateaubriand ambassador to the Holy See in 1828, but he resigned upon the accession of the [[Jules, Prince de Polignac|Prince de Polignac]] as premier (November 1829).

In 1830, he donated a monument to the French painter [[Nicolas Poussin]] in the church of [[San Lorenzo in Lucina]] in Rome.