Marie-Henri Beyle (French: [bɛl]; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by

his pen name Stendhal (UK: /ˈstɒ̃dɑːl/, US: /stɛnˈdɑːl, stænˈ-/;[1][2][3] French:
[stɛ̃dal, stɑ̃dal]),[a] was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The
Charterhouse of Parma, 1839), he is highly regarded for the acute analysis of his
characters' psychology and considered one of the early and foremost practitioners
of realism.

Born in Grenoble, Isère, he was an unhappy child, disliking his "unimaginative"

father and mourning his mother, whom he passionately loved, and who died when he
was seven. He spent "the happiest years of his life" at the Beyle country house in
Claix near Grenoble.[citation needed] His closest friend was his younger sister,
Pauline, with whom he maintained a steady correspondence throughout the first
decade of the 19th century.
A plaque on a house in Vilnius where Stendhal stayed in December 1812 during
Napoleon's retreat from Russia.

The military and theatrical worlds of the First French Empire were a revelation to
Beyle. He was named an auditor with the Conseil d'État on 3 August 1810, and
thereafter took part in the French administration and in the Napoleonic wars in
Italy. He travelled extensively in Germany and was part of Napoleon's army in the
1812 invasion of Russia.[5]

Stendhal witnessed the burning of Moscow from just outside the city. He was
appointed Commissioner of War Supplies and sent to Smolensk to prepare provisions
for the returning army. He crossed the Berezina River by finding a usable ford
rather than the overwhelmed pontoon bridge, which probably saved his life and those
of his companions. He arrived in Paris in 1813, largely unaware of the general
fiasco that the retreat had become.[6] Stendhal became known, during the Russian
campaign, for keeping his wits about him, and maintaining his "sang-froid and
clear-headedness." He also maintained his daily routine, shaving each day during
the retreat from Moscow.[7]

After the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau, he left for Italy, where he settled in
Milan. He formed a particular attachment to Italy, where he spent much of the
remainder of his career, serving as French consul at Trieste and Civitavecchia. His
novel The Charterhouse of Parma, written in 52 days, is set in Italy, which he
considered a more sincere and passionate country than Restoration France. An aside
in that novel, referring to a character who contemplates suicide after being
jilted, speaks about his attitude towards his home country: "To make this course of
action clear to my French readers, I must explain that in Italy, a country very far
away from us, people are still driven to despair by love."

Stendhal identified with the nascent liberalism and his sojourn in Italy convinced
him that Romanticism was essentially the literary counterpart of liberalism in
politics.[8] When Stendhal was appointed to a consular post in Trieste in 1830,
Metternich refused his exequatur on account of Stendhal's liberalism and anti-
clericalism.[9]

Stendhal was a dandy and wit about town in Paris, as well as an obsessive
womaniser. His genuine empathy towards women is evident in his books; Simone de
Beauvoir spoke highly of him in The Second Sex. One of his early works is On Love,
a rational analysis of romantic passion that was based on his unrequited love for
Mathilde, Countess Dembowska, whom he met while living at Milan. This fusion of,
and tension between, clear-headed analysis and romantic feeling is typical of
Stendhal's great novels; he could be considered a Romantic realist.

Stendhal suffered miserable physical disabilities in his final years as he

continued to produce some of his most famous work. As he noted in his journal, he
was taking iodide of potassium and quicksilver to treat his syphilis, resulting in
swollen armpits, difficulty swallowing, pains in his shrunken testicles,
sleeplessness, giddiness, roaring in the ears, racing pulse and "tremors so bad he
could scarcely hold a fork or a pen". Modern medicine has shown that his health
problems were more attributable to his treatment than to his syphilis.

Stendhal died on 23 March 1842, a few hours after collapsing with a seizure on the
streets of Paris. He is interred in the Cimetière de Montmartre.