Editing François-René de Chateaubriand (section)

=== July Monarchy ===
{{further|July Monarchy}}
[[Image:House of Chateaubriand 120 rue du Bac.jpg|thumb|upright|His last home, 120 [[rue du Bac]], where Chateaubriand had an apartment on the ground floor]]

In 1830, after the [[July Revolution]], his refusal to swear allegiance to the new [[House of Orléans]] king [[Louis-Philippe of France|Louis-Philippe]] put an end to his political career. He withdrew from political life to write his ''[[Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe]]'' ("Memoirs from Beyond the Grave"), published posthumously in two volumes in 1849–1850. It reflects his growing pessimism regarding the future. Although his contemporaries celebrated the present and future as an extension of the past, Chateaubriand and the new Romanticists couldn't share their nostalgic outlook. Instead he foresaw chaos, discontinuity, and disaster. His diaries and letters often focused on the upheavals he could see every day — abuses of power, excesses of daily life, and disasters yet to come. His melancholy tone suggested astonishment, surrender, betrayal, and bitterness.<ref>Peter Fritzsche, "Chateaubriand's Ruins: Loss and Memory after the French Revolution." ''History and Memory'' 10.2 (1998): 102-117. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/25681029 online]</ref><ref>Peter Fritzsche, "Specters of history: On nostalgia, exile, and modernity." ''American Historical Review'' 106.5 (2001): 1587-1618.</ref>

His ''Études historiques'' was an introduction to a projected ''History of France''. He became a harsh critic of the "bourgeois king" Louis-Philippe and the [[July Monarchy]], and his planned volume on the arrest of [[Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, duchess de Berry|Marie-Caroline, duchesse de Berry]] caused him to be (unsuccessfully) prosecuted.

Chateaubriand, along with other Catholic traditionalists such as [[Pierre-Simon Ballanche|Ballanche]] or, on the other side of the political divide, the socialist and republican [[Pierre Leroux]], was one of the few men of his time who attempted to conciliate the three terms of [[Liberté, égalité, fraternité|''Liberté'', ''égalité'' and ''fraternité'']], going beyond the antagonism between liberals and socialists as to what interpretation to give the seemingly contradictory terms.<ref name=Ozouf/> Chateaubriand thus gave a Christian interpretation of the revolutionary motto, stating in the 1841 conclusion to his ''Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe'':

{{bquote|Far from being at its term, the religion of the Liberator is now only just entering its third phase, the political period, liberty, equality, fraternity.<ref name=Ozouf>[[Mona Ozouf]], "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", in ''Lieux de Mémoire'' (dir. [[Pierre Nora]]), tome III, Quarto Gallimard, 1997, pp.4353–4389 {{in lang|fr}} (abridged translation, ''Realms of Memory'', Columbia University Press, 1996–1998 {{in lang|en}})</ref><ref>French: "''Loin d'être à son terme, la religion du Libérateur entre à peine dans sa troisième période, la période politique, liberté, égalité, fraternité.''</ref>}}

In his final years, he lived as a recluse in an apartment at 120 [[rue du Bac]], Paris, leaving his house only to pay visits to [[Jeanne Françoise Julie Adélaïde Récamier|Juliette Récamier]] in [[Abbaye-aux-Bois]]. His final work, ''Vie de Rancé'', was written at the suggestion of his confessor and published in 1844. It is a biography of [[Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé]], a worldly seventeenth-century French aristocrat who withdrew from society to become the founder of the [[Trappist]] order of monks. The parallels with Chateaubriand's own life are striking. As late as 1845–1847, he also kept revising ''Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe'', particularly the earlier sections, as evidenced by the revision dates on the manuscript.

Chateaubriand died in Paris on 4 July 1848, aged 79, in the midst of the [[The Revolutions of 1848 in France|Revolution of 1848]], in the arms of his dear friend Juliette Récamier,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Gribble|first=Francis Henry|url=http://archive.org/details/chateaubriandhis00grib|title=Chateaubriand and his court of women|date=1909|publisher=London : Chapman and Hall, Ltd.|others=The Centre for 19th Century French Studies - University of Toronto}}</ref> and was buried, as he had requested, on the tidal island [[Grand Bé]] near [[Saint-Malo]], accessible only when the tide is out.