Adolpue Bernard Granier, commonly called A. Granier de Cassagnao, a French journalist, born in the department of Gers about 1806. He was educated at the college of Toulouse, and began his career at Paris in 1832, by writing literary criticisms for the Journal des De-tats and the Revue de Paris. The asperity of his articles displeased Bertin, editor of the De-bats, and Granier joined the Presse, then just founded by Girardin. In this journal he defended Victor Hugo and the romantic school, and wrote severe criticisms upon Racine. A collection of these articles was published in 1852 under the title of Portraits litteraires. In 1837 he published Histoire des classes ouvrieres et des classes bourgeoises, and in 1840 Histoire des classes nobles et des classes anoblies. He also wrote pamphlets in defence of slavery, by which he recommended himself to the planters of Martinique and Guadeloupe; and in 1840 he made a visit to the West Indies, of which an account was given in his Voyage aux Antilles (2 vols., 1842-'4). While there he married Mlle. Beauvallon, a Creole. On his return to Paris he became editor of the Globe. His conduct of this journal involved him in various controversies and duels.

In 1845 his brother-in-law Beauvallon, who was employed upon the same paper, killed Dujarrier, the manager of the Presse, in a duel, and was prosecuted for having used unfair means. He was acquitted, but was afterward convicted of having procured his acquittal with false witnesses. Granier de Cas-sagnac testified on these trials in behalf of his brother-in-law, and his character was compromised by their result. The Globe having been discontinued in 1845, he founded an ultra-conservative journal called L'Epoque, which existed for two years. He was then sent by Guizot to found a journal at Rome for the promotion of French interests. On the breaking out of the revolution of 1848 he returned to France, but did not go to Paris till 1850. He was a declared opponent of the republic and a devoted adherent of Louis Napoleon. He became in 1850 the principal editor of the Pouvoir, then a regular contributor to the Constitutionnel, and in 1857 founded the Reveil. This survived but a year, and he then assumed the direction of the Pays. The next paper which he edited was L'Echo, which in 1863 was merged in the Nation. In 1866 he resumed the direction of the Pays. He was four times elected to the chamber of deputies, as a government candidate, 1852-'69. In the chamber he was a violent partisan of the government.

In 1868 he voted with six of his colleagues against a law which was favorable to the press, and replied to arguments advanced by Picard and Ollivier in relation to it with a challenge to fight. Both he and his son, Paul de Cassagnac, became notorious for the great number of controversies, duels, and broils in which they were engaged. After the French reverses in the war of 1870-'71 he resided partly at Wilhelms-hohe and partly at Brussels. After the restoration of peace he returned to Paris and wrote occasionally for the Pays. In 1873 he published Histoire des origines de la langue francaise, in which he contended, as he had done in the Presse in 1836 and in his Antiquite des patois : anteriorite de la langue francaise sur le latin (1859), that the French was spoken in Gaul before Latin was introduced. He has also published Histoire des causes de la revolution francaise (1850; 2ded., 3 vols., 1856); Histoire du directoire (3 vols., 1851-'6); Histoire de la chute du roi Louis Philippe, de la repu-blique de 1848 et du retablissement de l'empire (2 vols., 1857); Histoire des Girondins et des massacres de septembre (2 vols., 1860); and L' Empereur et la democratic moderne (1861).