UN RIVOLUZIONARIO DURANTE L'ANTICO REGIME: JACQUES-VINCENT DELACROIX (1766-1789).

The research aims to provide a first introductory look to the life and thought of Jacques-Vincent Delacroix (1743-1831), Avocat au Parlement in Paris during the Ancien Régime, a well-known professor of Public law at the Lycée from 1789 to 1793, Judge in Versailles since 1795 and author of a real bestsellers of the Revolutionary Era, the “Constitutions des principaux États de l’Europe et des États-Unis”. Lawyer and man of letters who lived between the reign of Louis XV and the French Revolution of 1830, Delacroix has been both a prolific writer and an eye-witness of the political and cultural changes who finally lead to the creation of the Modern France. So, the life of Delacroix became a case of study due to the fact that it helps to understand better the many ups-and-downs and the late successes of an entire generation, who asserted itself only at the end of the Ancien Régime and slowly became the trait d’union between the revolutionaries of 1789 and the men who arose again in defense of freedom in 1830. This study, who wants also be a first contribution to a future fulfillment of a more specific political biography of Delacroix, takes shape as an interdisciplinary approach to his life – where the first part is a description of the put on trial of Delacroix in front of the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1795 and a report of both the contemporary and the historical debate that surrounded the event, the second one is a complete and revisited biographic profile, and the third one is a reconstruction of his carrier during the Ancien Régime – that finally lead to explain how Delacroix came closer to the revolutionary line-up and what are the origins of his following faithful, but always critical, acceptation of the ideals of 1789.