César Vichard de Saint-Réal

Who was César Vichard de Saint-Réal?

César Vichard de Saint-Réal was a French polyglot.

He was born in Chambéry, Savoy, but educated in Lyon by the Jesuits. He used to work in the royal library with Antoine Varillas. This French historiographer influenced the way Saint-Réal wrote history. He used to be reader and friend of Hortense Mancini, duchesse de Mazarin, who took him with her to England.

Saint-Réal was a polygraph writer. His works belong to different genres but he had always interest for history.

After some minor works written in order to win the protection of Louis XIV, he wrote De l'usage de l'histoire in 1671. In this essay, he speaks about the good way of writing history and explains that understanding of facts is more important than facts themselves. In 1672, he published Dom Carlos, subtitled "nouvelle historique". It's a short novel or a long short story which relates the love story between Dom Carlos, the son of Philip II of Spain, and his wife Elisabeth of Valois. Saint-Réal mixes politics and love, but love appears much more important. This novel was a hit with high society. Nowadays French critics see it as an important text in the construction of the French psychological novel.