François-René de Chateaubriand

François René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) was a French novelist, essayist, memoirist, translator, playwright, critic and biographer was born in Saint-Malo to a Breton family of aristocratic blood, growing up as the youngest of ten children.Directionless as a young man, he thought of a naval career; later of priesthood, only to end up in the army, from which he resigned his commission after two years. After witnessing the fall of the Bastille in 1789, he sailed to America in 1791. A year later he returned to France where he served army, again, to defend the monarchy. Wounded and abandoned in the battlefield, against all odds he survived. In 1793 he moved to London to begin a literary career.