1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bastide, Jules

BASTIDE, JULES (1800–1879), French publicist, was born at Paris on the 22nd of November 1800. He studied law for a time, and afterwards engaged in business as a timber merchant. In 1821 he became a member of the French Carbonari, and took a prominent part in the Revolution of 1830. After the “July Days” he received an artillery command in the national guard. For his share in the émeute in Paris (5th of June 1832) on the occasion of the funeral of General Maximilien Lamarque, Bastide was sentenced to death but escaped to London. On his return to Paris in 1834 he was acquitted, and occupied himself with journalism, contributing to the National, a republican journal of which he became editor in 1836. In 1847 he founded the Revue nationale with the collaboration of P.J. Buchez (q.v.), with whose ideas he had become infected. After the Revolution of February 1848 Bastide’s intimate knowledge of foreign affairs gained for him a secretarial post in the provisional government, and, after the creation of the executive commission, he was made minister of foreign affairs. At the close of 1848 he threw up his portfolio, and, after the coup d’état of December 1851, retired into private life. He died on the 2nd of March 1879. His writings comprise De l’éducation publique en France (1847); Histoire de l’assemblée législative (1847); La République française et l’Italie en 1848 (1858); Histoire des guerres religieuses en France (1859).