Voltaire Born

1694

In Paris, a notary's son named Francois-Marie Arouet was baptized at the church of Saint-Andre-des-Arts. Clever, ambitious, and endlessly quarrelsome, he would adopt the pen name Voltaire, go to the Bastille twice, and become the presiding wit and propagandist of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. His pen would prove sharper than most swords, and his influence would help topple the old regime.