Chénier became an honorary Romantic when his poems were published in 1819, on the eve of the new movement in poetry inaugurated by Lamartine and a quarter-century after his life was cut short by the guillotine. After a brief military career Chénier served three years as secretary to the French embassy in London, during which time the Revolution broke out; he welcomed it at first, but was shocked by the execution of Louis XVI and wrote against it in newspaper articles. Arrested during the Terror, he spent several months in prison awaiting death, though no charges had been filed; there he met and admired Aimée Franquetot de Coigny, the former Duchess of Fleury, the “young captive” of the following poem. She was able to escape prison through bribery, but Chénier was not so lucky: he was guillotined just two days before the fall of Robespierre and the end of the Terror.