Candide Candide. Born François-Marie Arouet, Voltaire (1694–1778), by the time of the Lisbon earthquake, was already a well-established author, known for his satirical wit. He had been made a member of the Académie Française in 1746. He was a deist, a strong proponent of religious freedom, and a critic of tyrannical governments. "Candide" became part of his large, diverse body of philosophical, political and artistic works expressing these views. More specifically, it was a model for the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novels called the "contes philosophiques". This genre, of which Voltaire was one of the founders, included previous works of his
French ship Héros (1778) French ship Héros (1778) Héros was a 74-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, known mostly for being the flagship of Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez during the Anglo-French War. She was built in 1778 at Toulon on a design by Joseph-Marie-Blaise Coulomb. In 1781 she became part of Suffren's force, consisting of the 16-gun frigate "Fortune", five ships of the line, eight troopships and a thousand soldiers, all entrusted with carrying the French war effort into the Indian Ocean. The other warships were one other 74 gun ship (the "Annibal") and three 64-gun ships (the