The Life of Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet entered the world in Paris on a chill November day in 1694, the youngest child of a minor treasury official. Nicknamed “Zozo” in his childhood, he grew up under the last years of Louis XIV’s grand reign — an era of strict piety and royal absolutism that the precocious boy would soon learn to question. Educated by Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, young Arouet excelled in Latin and rhetoric but bristled at dogma. By his teens he was wielding a sharp wit in poetic satires that circulated through Parisian salons, delighting the literati and alarming his elders. His father, a lawyer, tried steering him into law, but the irrepressible youth spent his days secretly penning verses instead. He knew even then that his destiny was to be a writer, to spark minds with the fire of his words.

That fire first landed him in trouble at age 23. Arouet’s barbed tongue had already earned him notoriety among aristocrats — and in 1717 one satirical verse went too far. In mocking lines, the audacious poet slyly accused the Regent of France of incest with his own daughter. It was a scandalous jab at the powerful Duke of Orléans, and swift royal retribution followed. The young poet was seized and thrown into the Bastille prison without trial, confined to a windowless cell with ten-foot-thick stone walls. There, in the damp gloom, François-Marie passed eleven months. Denied pen and paper, he composed hundreds of lines of poetry in his head to keep despair at bay. Those thick fortress walls meant to break his spirit only steeled his resolve.

When at last he stepped free in April 1718, blinking in the spring sun, the Paris he returned to was changed — and so was he. The Regent, paradoxically admiring the wit of the very prisoner he had jailed, saw to it that Arouet’s first play, Œdipe, was staged by the Comédie-Française just seven months after his release. On opening night, Voltaire (as he now styled himself) sat anonymously in the audience, heart pounding. The curtain rose on verses he had written in a cell, and by evening’s end the theater erupted in applause. Œdipe was an instant triumph — Paris society marveled that a banned troublemaker could produce such a polished tragedy. Virtually overnight, the former prisoner became a literary star. Even the Regent sent him a congratulatory medal, amused perhaps that the irreverent wit he’d punished was now the toast of France.

It was during this period that François-Marie Arouet fully assumed the nom de plume “Voltaire.” Fresh from the Bastille, he shed his old name like a skin. The new name’s origin was mysterious — perhaps an anagram of “Arouet le jeune” or a play on volontaire, “the determined one” — but one thing was clear: Voltaire was reborn, daring and volatile. “Arouet” had been humbled and silenced; Voltaire would speak with a voice that could not be ignored. With a famous play packing the theaters and his verses on every noble’s lips, the young rebel now moved freely in high society. Parisian aristocrats invited the witty firebrand to their salons, where he enthralled them with clever epigrams and irreverent stories. Outwardly he basked in his rising fame. Inwardly he never forgot the Bastille’s shadow, or the lesson that a sharp pen could threaten the powerful. Voltaire’s lifelong tightrope walk had begun: he would enjoy the patronage of kings and nobles even as he satirized and stung them, always careful to evade the next trap.

Success did not keep Voltaire out of danger for long. In 1726, at a glittering aristocratic gathering, Voltaire’s quick tongue sparked a fateful quarrel. The young poet — by now famed and slightly feared for his satire — was insulted by a nobleman, Guy de Rohan-Chabot, who sneered at the upstart’s adopted name. Voltaire shot back with fearless pride that “his name would one day be esteemed throughout Europe, whereas Rohan’s would be disgraced.” Such boldness from a commoner enraged the aristocrat. Days later, as Voltaire stepped into the street, thugs in Rohan’s pay set upon him. They beat Voltaire viciously while Rohan looked on — a humiliation the proud writer would neither forgive nor forget. Bruised in body and honor, Voltaire demanded satisfaction by duel. But Rohan’s powerful family instead struck once more: a lettre de cachet was issued, and Voltaire was arrested and flung into the Bastille a second time — again without trial.

Faced with indefinite imprisonment or worse, Voltaire made a daring choice. Rather than languish in a cell, he petitioned the crown for exile. The government, perhaps relieved to be rid of this troublesome wit, agreed. Within days Voltaire found himself escorted to Calais and put on a ship across the Channel. As the coast of France receded, the thirty-two-year-old banished poet must have felt a mix of bitterness and excitement. He was heading into unknown lands, stripped of status in his own country but determined to turn exile into opportunity.

England in the 1720s proved a revelation. Voltaire arrived in London speaking only rudimentary English, yet he was immediately captivated by the relative freedom he found. Here was a land where the press could criticize the government with impunity, where scientists debated openly in coffee-houses, and where a constitutional monarch’s power was checked by Parliament — a startling contrast to French absolutism. He plunged into British high society, meeting Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Though he found Shakespeare’s wild drama barbaric compared to French classicism, he sensed an energetic genius in the English stage that France lacked.

More lastingly, Voltaire fell under the spell of England’s great minds. He may even have witnessed Newton’s state funeral in 1727, standing in awe as Britain buried the genius of gravity. He certainly absorbed Newton’s physics and Locke’s philosophy and attended Quaker meetings out of curiosity for their plain religious practice. These experiences deepened Voltaire’s worldview. In England’s climate of comparative tolerance, the seed was planted for his later crusades against tyranny and dogma.

He stayed over two years, long enough to master the language and steep himself in its culture. But an exile’s heart yearns for home. In 1729 he slipped back across the Channel once it was safe to return. Paris welcomed him quietly. He was wiser now — open confrontation with authority would only invite ruin. Instead he rebuilt his fortune. Ingeniously, he joined a syndicate that exploited a loophole in the national lottery and won a massive sum, making him wealthy for life. With financial independence secured, he wrote a hit play, Zaïre, and then a daring book: Letters Concerning the English Nation.

Published in London in 1733, the Letters celebrated English freedom, science, and tolerance — all implicit criticisms of France. When a French edition appeared the next year, the authorities erupted. The Parliament of Paris condemned the book, ordered it burned, and issued a warrant for Voltaire’s arrest. Warned in time, he fled Paris under cover of darkness. This time, though, he did not flee abroad. He sought refuge at the Château de Cirey — home of a brilliant noblewoman who would change his life.

In the autumn of 1734, Voltaire arrived at the Château de Cirey as a man on the run. His Lettres philosophiques had been declared an outrage against Church and Crown, making him the most notorious intellectual in France. Cirey offered safety. Its mistress, Émilie du Châtelet, was a mathematician and physicist fluent in several languages, and a married marquise with an independent mind. Voltaire had met Émilie the year before, and a powerful mutual attraction bloomed. Now she welcomed the outlawed poet to her husband’s remote château on the border of Champagne and Lorraine. There, far from prying eyes, Voltaire and Émilie began one of the great intellectual love stories of the Enlightenment.

Cirey became Voltaire’s sanctuary for the next sixteen years. He invested much of his wealth in renovating the château for her comfort. In time they created a veritable private academy: a library of over twenty thousand books, laboratories for experiments, and salons for philosophy. By day, they studied and argued over Newton, Leibniz, and Descartes. By night, they tested theories with their own hands, once nearly setting fire to the kitchen in pursuit of the nature of heat. Voltaire helped spread Newton’s ideas in France and even popularized the anecdote of the falling apple.

At Cirey, he wrote tirelessly — plays, epics, essays — often publishing anonymously to evade censorship. His tragedies Alzire and Mérope thrilled Paris; his epic La Henriade celebrated tolerance and sold across Europe. He corresponded with princes and scholars, none more notably than the Crown Prince of Prussia, Frederick, who idolized him from afar. Yet Voltaire’s happiest audience was Émilie herself, his equal in intellect. She undertook a French translation of Newton’s Principia Mathematica, a monumental task completed with his encouragement. To him, Émilie was a marvel — a woman who translated Virgil and simplified Newton with equal grace. Together they forged an Enlightenment partnership unmatched in history.

But paradise waned. In 1749, Émilie, then 42, died unexpectedly after childbirth. Voltaire, who had stood by her through labor, was devastated. “You cannot prevent my grieving all my life,” he confessed. He left the empty château and wandered Europe in sorrow, seeking purpose again. That purpose soon appeared in the form of a philosopher-king.

In 1750, Voltaire accepted the invitation of Frederick II of Prussia — the same crown prince who had once idolized him — to join his court at Potsdam. Frederick welcomed him with royal honors, a pension, and the title of chamberlain. For a time, it seemed an ideal union: the world’s greatest writer and its most enlightened monarch. They dined together nightly, debating poetry, war, and philosophy. Frederick played the flute while Voltaire read verses; both delighted in the idea that intellect might guide power.

Yet paradise at court proved fragile. Voltaire’s wit could not be tamed by gold braid. A financial scandal — his ill-fated speculation in Saxon bonds — cast doubt on his integrity. Worse, he ridiculed Frederick’s favorite scientist, Maupertuis, in a biting pamphlet titled Doctor Akakia. The king ordered it burned. Voltaire, humiliated, resigned and attempted to leave Prussia.

Frederick retaliated with pettiness worthy of a comedy: he had Voltaire detained in Frankfurt until the poet returned a volume of the king’s private verses. For weeks, Europe’s greatest mind was effectively held under house arrest by the monarch who had once hailed him as a friend. When finally released, Voltaire departed in fury. The friendship was over. They would reconcile later by correspondence, but the dream of a philosopher-king was dead. Voltaire had learned once again that rulers loved wit only when it served their purpose.

At sixty, weary of courts and censorship, Voltaire sought peace. In 1758 he bought a large estate near Geneva, on the French border, and settled there for the rest of his life. The village of Ferney soon took his name. He built a château, planted gardens, and established a private theater where his plays could be performed beyond the reach of censors. Visitors flocked from across Europe — philosophers, nobles, even adventurers like Casanova — to pay homage to the patriarch of reason.

At Ferney, Voltaire wrote his masterpiece, Candide. Published anonymously in 1759, it is a swift, savage satire of human folly. Horrified by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and by the atrocities of the Seven Years’ War, Voltaire rejected the smug optimism that “all is for the best.” Through the misadventures of the innocent Candide and his tutor Pangloss, he showed a world drenched in suffering and absurdity. The final moral — Il faut cultiver notre jardin, “we must cultivate our garden” — was both literal and philosophical. Turn away from idle speculation, Voltaire urged, and improve the small corner of life we can control.

The novella was banned, pirated, and devoured everywhere. Its laughter concealed steel. Readers sensed that the old rebel had distilled a lifetime of irony into those pages. At Ferney, he embodied his own maxim, cultivating gardens and minds alike. He built workshops, taught farmers better methods, and founded a clock-making industry that brought prosperity to the village. He was no longer just a writer; he was a reformer in miniature, proving reason could improve daily life.

In his seventies, Voltaire turned from satire to crusade. He became Europe’s most famous defender of the wronged. When the Protestant merchant Jean Calas was tortured and executed on false charges of murdering his son, Voltaire investigated relentlessly. He exposed the bigotry behind the verdict and in 1763 published A Treatise on Tolerance, a blazing plea for religious freedom. Two years later, the case was overturned and the Calas family vindicated. It was an unprecedented triumph of reason over fanaticism.

Emboldened, Voltaire championed other victims — the Sirvens, the Chevalier de La Barre — anyone crushed by superstition or abuse of power. From his study at Ferney, he wrote thousands of letters, marshaled facts, and shamed the mighty. His motto — écrasez l’infâme! — “crush the infamous thing,” meaning ignorance and fanaticism — echoed through Europe.

He lived his creed. On his estate he built a chapel inscribed “Deo erexit Voltaire,” asserting that belief in God need not mean submission to the Church. He corresponded with Catherine the Great of Russia, advised reformers across the continent, and gave shelter to exiles. Peasants called him Papa Voltaire. To travelers he seemed a white-haired sage, thin as parchment, eyes alive with mischief. His laughter could still slice through hypocrisy like a sword.

By the 1770s, the French government’s hostility had cooled; the tide of Enlightenment was irresistible. When Tancrède was performed in Paris to acclaim, even his foes applauded. The age had caught up with him. He had become not just a writer but a moral institution — a symbol of conscience itself.

In 1778, after twenty-eight years away, Voltaire returned to Paris. He was 83, frail but radiant with energy. The city that had once burned his books now welcomed him like a conquering hero. Crowds thronged the streets to glimpse him; his carriage could barely pass.

At the premiere of his final play, Irène, the audience rose to its feet, interrupting the performance to hail him with thunderous applause. Actors crowned him with a laurel wreath. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Long live Voltaire!” they shouted, over and over, as he bowed in humble joy. The man who had spent his youth in prison for his words now stood exalted by the people.

During those last months, his apartments overflowed with visitors. Philosophers, nobles, even Benjamin Franklin came to pay homage. When Franklin asked him to bless his grandson, Voltaire placed his frail hand on the boy’s head and whispered, “God and Liberty — the only blessings fit for man.” Paris could not get enough of him; every salon clamored for his presence. “I am suffocated by roses,” he joked. Yet his health was fading fast.

In late May, confined to bed, he joked with his doctor and refused to make peace with priests. When urged to renounce Satan, he murmured, “This is no time to make new enemies.” On May 30, 1778, Voltaire died quietly in his sleep. The Church refused him burial in consecrated ground, so friends smuggled his body by night to an abbey in Champagne. There he was laid to rest in secret — the restless spirit finally at peace.

But death could not silence him. Thirteen years later, in 1791, the Revolution carried his remains back to Paris in triumph. A million citizens lined the streets as his coffin passed, draped in laurels and banners proclaiming, “He gave the human mind a great impetus; he prepared us to become free.” The cortege entered the Panthéon to the music of drums and choirs. The man once imprisoned for his pen was now enshrined among France’s immortals.

Voltaire’s life was a long rebellion — against tyranny, superstition, and silence. He began as a prisoner and ended as a prophet. He believed reason could illuminate the darkest corners of the human heart, and he spent eighty years proving it. “To name Voltaire,” wrote Victor Hugo a century later, “is to characterize the entire eighteenth century.”

He had wielded his pen like a sword and his laughter like a torch, burning away falsehoods while lighting the path to freedom. And even now, across the centuries, the echo of his command endures: écrasez l’infâme ! — crush the infamous thing.