J. Fr. Michaud was a French historian and publicist. Michaud was born in either La Biolle or Albens in the Duchy of Savoy. He was schooled in Bourg-en-Bresse and then worked as a writer in Lyon, where the French Revolution instilled in him a deep distaste for revolutionary beliefs that would last his entire life. In 1791, he traveled to Paris and worked as an editor for various royalist periodicals, putting his life in danger. One of these was the Gazette Universelle, which he formed alongside Pascal Boyer and Antoine Marie Cerisier. His Bourbon sympathies landed him in prison briefly in 1800, and when he was released, he temporarily abandoned journalism in favor of writing and editing books. In 1806, he wrote the first work of its sort, Biographie moderne ou dictionnaire des hommes qui se sont fait un nom en Europe since 1789, with his brother Louis Gabriel Michaud and two collaborators. In 1811, he published the first volume of his Histoire des Croisades (History of the Crusades) and the first volume of his Biographie Universelle. In 1813, he was elected Academician, filling the vacancy caused by the death of Jean-Fran ois Cailhava de L'Estandoux. In 1814, he resumed editing La Quotidienne.
