In February 1795 he was again arrested, and the Tribun du peuple was solemnly burnt in the Theatre des Bergeres by the jeunesse doree, the young men whose mission it was to bludgeon Jacobinism out of the streets and cafes.
He was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, and, after a period of mental struggle which he has described in Souvenirs de ma jeunesse, he was ordained priest in 1832.
Sprengtporten was haunted by the fixed idea that the jeunesse doree of the court was in league with his old enemies to traduce and supplant him, and not all the forbearance of the king could open his eyes.
In connexion with his study of the Holy Roman Empire, and the cause of its decline, he wrote a number of articles which were published in the Revue des Deux Mondes; and he wrote Trois empereurs d'Allemagne (1888), La Jeunesse du grand Frederic (1891) and Frederic II.
He was nearly sixty when, in 1883, he published those Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse which, after the Life of Jesus, are the work by which he is chiefly known.