French radical journalist and man of letters, born at Mirabeau, department of Vienne, in 1830. He early entered journalism as a profession, and was connected with La Reforme, La Presse and La Liberté, successively; was secretary to G. Flourens. He became the editor and owner of La Liberté, whose statements concerning the causes of the Franco-Mexican War of 1863–67 led to a duel in Belgium between Barot and the banker Jecker. The former was seriously wounded, and both the principals were imprisoned and fined. Statements made in Le Fédéraliste, during the time of the Commune, caused Barot’s flight to England. After his return to Paris in 1874 he became prominent through the political press, and associated himself with É. Girardin, of whom he wrote a Life. Among his numerous writings are Letters Upon the Philosophy of History; History of the Ideas of the Nineteenth Century; History of Contemporaneous Literature in England; a series of novels, and a translation of Carlyle’s French Revolution.
