Jean-Jacques Rousseau Timeline

For more than two years Rousseau lived at Môtiers in Neuchâtel, spending his time reading and writing and meeting visitors such as James Boswell in December 1764. As a pastime he took up bobbin lace making.

Image source: Môtiers

In July 1762, driven from France, Geneva, and Bern, Rousseau wrote to Frederick the Great describing how he had been expelled from these territories and seeking his protection.

Image source: Frederick the Great

Around midnight of 6–7 September 1765, stones were thrown at the house Rousseau was staying in, shattering some glass windows.

Although within the Canton of Bern, from where he had been expelled two years previously, Rousseau was informally assured he could move into the island house without fear of arrest, and did so on 10 September 1765.

On 17 October 1765, the Senate of Bern ordered Rousseau to leave the island and all Bernese territory within fifteen days.

Image source: Canton of Bern

On 29 October 1765, Rousseau left the Île de St.-Pierre and moved to Strasbourg.

Image source: Strasbourg

On 9 December 1765, having secured a passport from the French government, Rousseau left Strasbourg for Paris, where he arrived a week later and lodged in a palace of his friend, the Prince of Conti.

Image source: Louis François, Prince of Conti

On 1 January 1766, Grimm included in his 'Correspondance littéraire' a letter said to have been written by Frederick the Great to Rousseau.

Image source: Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm

On 4 January 1766, Rousseau left Paris with David Hume, the merchant De Luze, and his pet dog Sultan. During the rough sea crossing, Rousseau impressed Hume by spending ten hours on deck while Hume remained confined to his bunk.

Image source: David Hume

On 13 January 1766, Rousseau, Hume, and their companions arrived in London.

Image source: London

On 22 March 1766, Rousseau and Thérèse set forth for Wootton, against Hume's advice.

Image source: Wootton, Staffordshire

On 3 April 1766, a daily newspaper published the letter constituting Horace Walpole's hoax on Rousseau—without naming Walpole as author—which compounded Rousseau's grief and contributed to the rupture with Hume.

Image source: Horace Walpole

In October 1766, Hume's version of the quarrel was translated into French and published in France; in November it was published in England.

On 22 May 1767, Rousseau and Thérèse embarked from Dover for Calais, reentering France even though an arrest warrant against him was still in place.

Image source: Dover

Subsequently, on 21 June 1767, Rousseau moved to a chateau of the Prince of Conti in Trie.

Image source: Trie-Château

On 29 January 1768, the theatre at Geneva was destroyed by burning, and Voltaire mendaciously accused Rousseau of being the culprit.

Image source: Voltaire

In June 1768, Rousseau left Trie, leaving Thérèse behind, and went first to Lyon and subsequently to Bourgoin.

Image source: Bourgoin-Jallieu

Rousseau invited Thérèse to Bourgoin and married her under his alias 'Renou' in a faux civil ceremony on 30 August 1768.

Image source: Thérèse Levasseur

In January 1769, Rousseau and Thérèse went to live in a farmhouse near Grenoble.

Image source: Grenoble

On 10 April 1770, Rousseau and Thérèse left for Lyon, where he befriended Horace Coignet, a fabric designer and amateur musician.

Image source: Lyon

On 24 October 1776, as Rousseau was walking on a narrow street in Paris, a nobleman's carriage came rushing by from the opposite direction.

In 1777, Rousseau received a royal visitor, when the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II came to meet him.

Image source: Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

In the spring of 1778, the Marquis Girardin invited Rousseau to live in a cottage in his château at Ermenonville.

Image source: Ermenonville Forest

Jean-Jacques Rousseau died on 2 July 1778 at Ermenonville.

On 4 July 1778, Rousseau was buried on the Île des Peupliers, a tiny wooded island in a lake at Ermenonville, which became a place of pilgrimage for his many admirers.

Rousseau's Confessions were finally published posthumously in 1782. They initiated the modern autobiography and exemplified the late 18th-century 'Age of Sensibility', with its focus on subjectivity and introspection.

In 1785, two years before America's constitutional convention, Noah Webster relied heavily on Rousseau's Social Contract while writing Sketches of American Policy, one of the earliest widely published arguments for a strong central government in America.

Image source: Noah Webster

As early as 1788, Madame de Staël published her Letters on the works and character of J.-J. Rousseau.

Image source: Germaine de Staël

The Marquis de Sade's Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue (1791) partially parodied and used as inspiration Rousseau's sociological and political concepts in the Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract.

Image source: Justine (de Sade novel)

The ceremony held at the site of the demolished Bastille in August 1793, organized by Jacques-Louis David, featured a cantata based on Rousseau's democratic pantheistic deism as expounded in the 'Profession de foi d'un vicaire savoyard' in book four of Émile.

Image source: French Revolution

On 11 October 1794, Rousseau's remains were moved to the Panthéon, where they were placed near those of Voltaire.

Image source: Panthéon