The Last Libertines

This “rich . . . highly enjoyable portrait of an extraordinary moment in French history” introduces us to 7 dazzling aristocrats who rose and fell during the French Revolution (Guardian).

Benedetta Craveri reveals the history of the Libertine generation “whose youth coincided with the French monarchy’s final moment of grace—a moment when . . . a style of life based on privilege and the spirit of caste might acknowledge the widespread demand for change, and . . . reconcile itself with Enlightenment ideals of justice, tolerance, and citizenship.”

Here we meet 7 characters who Craveri singles out not only for their “romantic character” but also for “the keenness with which they experienced this crisis . . . of the ancien régime, of which they themselves were the emblem.”

• Duc de Lauzun
• Vicomte de Ségur
• Duc de Brissac
• Comte de Narbonne
• Chevalier de Boufflers
• Comte de Ségur
• Comte de Vaudreuil

These men were at once “irreducible individualists” and true “sons of the Enlightenment”—all of them ambitious to play their part in bringing around the great changes that were in the air. But when the French Revolution came, they found themselves condemned to poverty, exile, and in some cases execution.

Telling the parallel lives of these dazzling but little-remembered historical figures, Craveri brings the past to life, powerfully dramatizing a turbulent time that was at once the last act of a now-vanished world and the first act of our own.