When Voltaire was born at Châtenay, on 20 February 1694, what did the hillside look like to which, in 1807, the author of Le Génie du christianisme was to retire?

Here I have written Les Martyrs, Les Abencerages, L’Itinéraire, and Moïse; what shall I do now in these autumn evenings? This 4 October 1811, my birthday and the anniversary of my entry into Jerusalem, tempts me to embark on the story of my life. The man who today gives the mastery of the world to France only to trample her underfoot, the man whose genius I admire and whose despotism I abhor, envelops me in his tyranny as in another solitude; but though he dominates the present, the past defies him, and I retain my liberty in all that has preceded his glory.

Most of my feelings have remained in the depths of my soul, or have been revealed in my works only as applied to imaginary beings. Now that I hanker after my chimeras without pursuing them, I want to revive the inclinations of my best years: these Memoirs will be a mortuary temple erected by the light of my memories.

My father’s birth and the trials he endured in his first situation endowed him with one of the most sombre characters there have ever been. This character influenced my ideas by terrifying my childhood, saddening my youth, and determining the nature of my upbringing.

I was born a gentleman. In my opinion, I have profited by this accident of the cradle, keeping that steadfast love of liberty which is the special characteristic of an aristocracy whose last hour has struck. The aristocracy has three successive ages: the age of superiority, the age of privilege, the age of vanity; once it has left the first behind, it degenerates in the second and expires in the last.

Anybody may discover the facts about my family, if the fancy takes him, in Moréri’s dictionary, in the various histories of Brittany by D’Argentré, Dom Lobineau, and Dom Morice, in the Histoire généalogique de plusieurs maisons illustres de Bretagne by Père Du Paz, in Toussaint Saint-Luc, Le Borgne, and finally in the Histoire des grands officiers de la Couronne by Père Anselme.

The proofs of my lineage were established by Chérin for the admission of my sister Lucile as a canoness to the Chapter of L’Argentière, whence she was to pass to that of Remiremont; they were produced for my presentation to Louis XVI, reproduced once again for my affiliation to the Order of Malta, and reproduced for the last time when my brother was presented to the same unfortunate Louis XVI.

My name was first written as Brien, then as Briant and Briand, as the result of the invasion of French orthography. Guillaume le Breton gives it as Castrum-Briani. There is not a single name in France that does not present similar variations. What is the correct spelling of Du Guesclin?

About the beginning of the eleventh century, the Briens gave their name to an important château in Brittany, and this château became the seat of the barony of Chateaubriand. The Chateaubriand arms were originally some pine-cones with the motto: Je sème l’or. Geoffroy, Baron de Chateaubriand, travelled to the Holy Land with St Louis, was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Massorah, but returned to France, where his wife Sibylle died of joy and surprise on seeing him again. As a reward for his services, St Louis granted him and his heirs, in exchange for their old coat of arms, a shield of gules powdered with golden fleur-de-lis: Cui et ejus haeredibus, states a cartulary in Bérée Priory, sanctus Ludovicus tum Francorum rex, propter ejus probitatem in armis, flores liliis auri, loco pomorum pini auri, contulit.

The Chateaubriands divided from the very beginning into three branches: the first, known as the Barons de Chateaubriand, the stock of the other two, begun in the year 1000 in the person of Thiern, son of Brien, grandson of Alain III, Count of Brittany; the second, called the Seigneurs des Roches Baritaut or the Seigneurs du Lion d’Angers; and the third, going under the name of the Sires de Beaufort.

After my presentation to Louis XVI, my brother thought of increasing my inheritance as the younger son of the family by providing me with some of those ecclesiastical allowances known as simples bénéfices. There was only one practical way of achieving this object, seeing that I was a layman and a soldier, and that was to incorporate me in the Order of Malta. My brother sent my proofs to Malta, and shortly afterwards presented a petition in my name to the Chapter of the Grand Priory of Aquitaine, in session at Poitiers, asking it to appoint commissioners who could adjudicate upon the question as a matter of urgency. M. Pontois was at that time archivist, genealogist, and Vice-Chancellor of the Order of Malta at the Priory.

The President of the Chapter was Louis-Joseph des Escotais, Bailiff and Grand Prior of Aquitaine, and he was assisted by the Bailiff of Freslon, the Chevalier de la Laurencie, the Chevalier de Murat, the Chevalier de Lanjamet, the Chevalier de la Bourdonnaye-Montluc, and the Chevalier du Bouëtiez. The petition was granted on 9, 10, and 11 September 1789. It was said, in the terms of the Mémorial, that I deserved on more than one ground the favour I was soliciting, and that considerations of the greatest weight made me worthy of the honour to which I aspired.

And all this took place after the fall of the Bastille, on the eve of the scenes of 6 October 1789 and the transfer of the royal family to Paris! And, at the sitting of 7 August of the same year 1789, the National Assembly had abolished titles! How, too, could the Chevaliers who examined my proofs find that I deserved on more than one ground the favour I was soliciting, etc, when I was nothing more than a wretched little second lieutenant in the infantry, completely unknown, with no reputation, no influence, and no fortune?

I would never finish if I recounted everything of which I have chosen to give only a brief summary. I hold these trifles of little account, but even so I find that today people go rather too far in the opposite direction; it has become fashionable to boast that one is of peasant stock, that one has the honour of being the son of a man of the soil. Are these boasts as disinterested as they are philosophical? Are they not a means of siding with the stronger party? The marquesses, counts, and barons of our times, possessing neither land nor privileges, three-quarters of them dying of hunger, running one another down, refusing to recognize one another, challenging one another’s titles; these nobles, whose own names are denied them or are granted only with reservations, are they capable of inspiring any fear whatever? I must beg my readers’ indulgence for having been obliged to descend to these puerile recitations, in order to explain my father’s ruling passion, a passion which formed the crux of the drama of my youth. For my part, I neither boast nor complain of the old or the new social order. If, in the first, I was the Chevalier or the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, in the second I am François de Chateaubriand; I prefer my name to my title.

My father would have been quite capable of calling God the Gentleman up there, after the fashion of the great medieval landowners, and describing Nicodemus (the Nicodemus of the Gospels) as a holy gentleman. Now, passing by way of my begetter, let us go from Christophe, sovereign Lord of La Guerrande, directly descended from the Barons of Chateaubriand, down to myself, François, vassal-less, penniless Lord of the Vallée-aux-Loups.

Going back up the line of the Chateaubriands, we find that two of the three branches of the family died out, while the third, that of the Sires of Beaufort, extended by a minor branch (the Chateaubriands of La Guerrande), grew steadily poorer, as an inevitable result of the law of the land: the elder son appropriated two thirds of the estate; the younger sons divided among all the rest of them a mere third of the patrimonial inheritance. The decomposition of the latter’s paltry inheritance went all the more quickly in that they married; and as the same division in the proportion two to one applied to their children, these younger sons of younger sons were soon reduced to dividing up a pigeon, a rabbit, a duck-pond, and a hunting dog, although they still remained noble knights and powerful lords of a dove-cote, a toad-hole, and a rabbit-warren. In the old aristocratic families one can discover a considerable number of younger sons; one can follow their traces for two or three generations; then they disappear, having gradually descended to the plough or been absorbed by the working classes, without anybody knowing what has become of them.

The head of the family, in both name and arms, at the beginning of the eighteenth century was Alexis de Chateaubriand, Lord of La Guerrande, and the son of Michel, which Michel had a brother called Amaury.

At the same time as this head of the family in name and arms, there lived his cousin François, the son of Amaury, Michel’s younger brother. François, born on 19 February 1683, possessed the little estates of Les Touches and La Villeneuve. He had married, on 27 August 1713, Pétronille-Claude Lamour, Dame of Lanjégu, by whom he had four sons: François-Henri, René (my father), Pierre, Lord of Le Plessis, and Joseph, Lord of Le Parc. My grandfather, François, died on 28 March 1729; my grandmother, whom I knew in my childhood, still had beautiful eyes which smiled in the shadow of her years. At the time of her husband’s death she was living in the manor of La Villeneuve, in the neighbourhood of Dinan. My grandmother’s entire fortune did not bring in more than 5,000 francs a year, of which her eldest son took two thirds, 3,333 francs: there remained an annual income of 1,666 francs for the three younger sons, from which sum the eldest once more deducted the major portion.

As a crowning misfortune, my grandmother’s plans were thwarted by her sons’ temperaments.