Career
Other info : Bibliography
After being an excellent student at the college in Béziers and presiding over the club for children of his own age during the early years of the Revolution, he was destined by his family for a career in the church. However, at 19, he preferred to become a second lieutenant in the naval artillery. His first campaign was not a happy one. Sent to Brest, then Lorient, on 21 April 1797 he embarked on the Hercule. This ship had scarcely left harbour when it was sighted and pursued by two British cruisers, and a few artillery salvos later the Hercule had lost more than half its rigging and Viennet was taken prisoner. He then spent 7 months as a prisoner in the prison hulks at Plymouth and consoled himself by writing poetry and acting in a theatre he set up in the prison, putting on his own plays alongside tragedies and vaudevilles of the time. Returning to France in a prisoner exchange, he returned to his original corps.
In 1812, he won the favour of being invited to Paris, writing many
epithets, tragedies, comedies and poems. Some of his epithets won prizes
at the Jeux Floraux. He was trying to have his tragedy Clovis mounted at the Théâtre-Français when he received orders to rejoin his regiment immediately on its march to Saxony. He left Paris and was a captain in the 1813 Saxony campaign, assisting at the battles of Lützen and Bautzen (at the latter he was decorated personally by Napoleon). In the disastrous battle of Leipzig, he was again taken prisoner and did not return to France until the Bourbon Restoration, becoming attached to the Bourbon monarchy.
Viennet became aide-de-camp to général de Montélégier, himself aide-de-camp to the duc de Berry. Viennet did not return to the imperial armies during the Hundred Days and refused to vote in favour of the acte additionnel, thus forcing himself to procure a voyage to Cayenne. Only at the insistence of his father's friend Cambacérès was the order already signed by minister Denis Decrès revoked.
The Bourbons fled, but Viennet did not follow the duc de Berry to Ghent, for which the duke criticised Viennet despite his refusal to go back over to Napoleon's side. Left without a job, he returned to writing and became a journalist. He collaborated on the l'Aristarque, the Journal de Paris and the Constitutionnel until he was finally admitted to the corps royal d'état-major thanks to Gouvion Saint-Cyr. His many Épîtres date to this period.
On 17 July 1820, he put on his one-act opera Aspasie et Périclès at the Académie de musique but, though it ran for 16 performances it was not a success despite its masterful music thanks to an uninteresting libretto. That autumn, on 19 October, he finally found success with his tragedy Clovis, at the Théâtre-Français. He wrote other plays, mainly tragedies, which were not produced. Made chef d'escadron by seniority in 1823, he was demoted to the ranks in 1827 in the wake of the publication of his Épître aux chiffonniers in favour of the liberty of the press, a witty protest against hateful and absurd legislation. This only made him more popular and on 21 April 1828 he was elected député for the 2nd electoral arrondissement of Hérault (Béziers). He took his place among the French left of this time, supporting the parliamentary opposition which would lead to the July Revolution by his votes and sometimes by his speeches.
