Armand Carrel

Biography

Wire of an easy merchant, Armand Carrel makes his studies with the college of Rouen then it integrates Saint-Cyr military school of which it leaves with the rank Sous-lieutenant. Entered the army, it takes share with the conspiracy of Belfort, a military plot aiming reversing the Bourbons and at proclaiming the Republic.

When the war with the Spain bursts in 1823, it gives its resignation and engages in a French battalion of the Spanish Foreign legion which fights for the causes constitutional against his/her former comrades. Captive fact close to Figueres, after the rendering of the Legion, by the general Damas, it initially is condemned to died by a Conseil of war, and escapes only with sorrow from the execution (1824). He is discharged by another court and is released.

Of return to Paris, he becomes the secretary of the historian Augustin Thierry who initiates it with the style. He writes, at that time, his Histoire of the counter-revolution in England . He also writes articles for Constitutional the , the Earth , the Producer , the American Review and the French Review .

At the beginning of 1830, it founds the National with Thiers and Mignet, daily newspaper which exerts a great influence on the opinion as of its appearance. This republican newspaper will play a great part in the advent of the Glorious Three by its ceaseless attacks against the mode of Charles X.

Remained only with the orders of the National after the nomination of Thiers and Mignet to ministerial wallets, it makes of it the principal body of the Parisian place political in which will collaborate, at various times, Nisard and Holy-Beuve. Itself inspires the respect, and passes for pure.

Soon dissatisfied by measurements of the government, and particularly by the policy of resistance of Casimir Perier, it passes in the opposition. Undoubtedly it enters there also a certain sourness: in 1830, Thiers was named Conseiller State while one offered only a Préfecture to him, that he refused. Its social situation is also ambiguous: he lives with a woman married without being able to regularize his situation since the Restauration abolished the divorce in 1816 and that, in spite of several proposals presented by deputies of left, the Monarchie of July did not restore it.

The days of June 1832 and the repression which follows definitively make it pass in the republican camp. the National becomes the principal body of the opposition, shouting with the treason of the “program of the Town hall”. It constitutes the presentable and suitable frontage Republican party, well far from the Platform of the departments , with the virulent style, always near to the invective. Exerting a great empire on its party, only perhaps it had been able to discipline it. Like notes it the duchess of With a grid, “it ennoblit the republican opinion by releasing it from its systematic attacks to the property, noble and the priests”

Its opinions attract many troubles to him, of which a imprisonment with Holy-Pelagie, several passages in front of the courts and two duels with writers of rival newspapers. It has consequently to support several lawsuits of press, of which one in 1834, before the Court of the Pars: it defends itself and shows a great boldness.

The last business is its quarrel with the founder of the Press , launched on January 1st 1836 by Emile of Girardin. This last manages to multiply the number of the subscribers by reducing the price of its subscriptions of half thanks to the use of advertizing inserts. The injury caused with the financial interests of its fellow-members causes a polemic between the Press and the National , the second showing the first of unfair competition. Girardin then threatens Carrel to reveal the irregularity of its private life, following what Carrel causes Girardin in duel. The argument could, without the obstinacy of Carrel, to arrange itself by amicable agreement. At the time of the duel which takes place the July 22nd 1836, Girardin is wounded in the thigh and Carrel with the groin. Transported in a friend, he succumbs to his wound two days later. Its funerals give place to a great quiet demonstration where carlists like Chateaubriand and Berryer côtoient the figures of the opposition like Laffitte, Béranger, Cormenin, Arago, Garnier-Pages, Alexandre Dumas…

Carrel was less democratic than republican. Its constitutional model was that of the the United States even if he criticized some of the aspects of this country, like slavery or the materialism. Its reference was before all the founding fathers of the American republic, and especially of Washington which had known to withdraw public life after two mandates.

Carrel deserved, by the honesty of its character, the regard of its same adversaries. Littré said that whose Chateaubriand was the friend and the admiror, that it was the “André Chénier of the policy”.

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