How did a contemporary crime story influence The Red and the Black?

The Red and the Black, the major work by the French author Stendhal, was directly inspired by a newspaper account of a contemporary crime of passion.1

While the novel serves as a complex psychological study and a critique of the social order during the Bourbon Restoration, this real-life criminal case provided the foundational narrative framework for the protagonist, Julien Sorel. In the novel, Sorel’s trajectory—marked by his ambitious rise through the church and military, his calculated seductions, and his eventual downfall—culminates in his execution for the attempted murder of Madame de Rênal, a plot point rooted in the dramatic events of the contemporary crime story that influenced Stendhal.12