Albert Sorel

Albert Sorel ( born August 13, 1842 in Honfleur, Calvados, † June 29, 1906 in Paris) was a French writer and historian.

He was hired in 1866 at the Foreign Ministry, accompanied in 1870 by the Government of Tours and Bordeaux, in 1872 professor of diplomatic history in Paris and in 1876 Secretary of the Presidium of the Senate and the Military School of Saint- Cyr (1898 ). He was a member of the Académie Française in 1894 and the Académie des sciences morales et politiques.

As a historian, he described the development of his country, which he saw as " la France généreuse ". Despite the politically exaggerated nationalization, which was also subject to Sorel, he called sober political mistakes in French foreign policy of the 19th century.

The last volumes of L'Europe et la Révolution française provided the scientific underpinning to the essential for France's former world position thesis that France had never been the aggressor, not even under Napoleon. By Sorel also the matter of course is immortalized with which it has occasionally suffered setbacks, Napoleon in France and was occupied in the course of Paris twice by the armies of the so often attacked States, as " Invasion", as the "attack of enemy hordes " and referred to as a terrible wrong.

It also reinforces the view that it was a lucky circumstance for unearned foreign countries when they came under French rule. Tolstoy has often made ​​fun of in his great novel War and Peace.

Works

Besides many articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes and other magazines, he wrote the novels La grande falaise (1872 ) and Le Docteur Egra (1873 ) and the historical works:

• Le traité de Paris du 20 nov. 1815 (1873);
• Histoire diplomatique de la guerre franco -allemande (1875, 2 vols );
• Laquestion d' Orient au XVIII. siècle (1878 );
• Essais d' histoire et de critique (1882 );
• L'Europe et la Révolution française ( 1885-87, 2 vols );
• Montesquieu (1887 )

And in communion with Funck -Brentano:

• Précis du droit des gens (2nd edition 1887).