[165] The same day--it was that of the Marseilles insurrection--Dufaure
telegraphed to the same procureur-general: "Read the name Republique
Francaise at the head of all the despatches I send you."
[166] I have in my possession about twenty proclamations of prefects or
magistrates. They are all on this point identically the same.
[167] "A great speech of the President of the Council has been applauded
by the Extreme left." The speech of the 21st March against Paris.
Dufaure to the procureur-general at Aix, 23rd March.
[168] He confessed his trickery in a speech pronounced at Bordeaux in
1875: "I was enabled with the remains of the defeated army to unite a
military force of 150,000 men, but if this force was sufficient to tear
Paris from the Commune, it could not have kept down the large towns of
France, keenly bent on the maintenance of the Republic, and coming to
ask me with distrust and irritation if it were the monarchy that we
combated for."
[169] I should say "resuscitated," if it were not doing these eunuchs
too much honour to compare them to Robespierre, who by their side
appears a hero. But how prevent one's thoughts from wandering to the
pontiff declaring inopportune the Republican outburst of June-July 1791;
inopportune the cries of Paris famished by engrossers; inopportune the
people asking for a single article in their favour in the Constitution
of 1798; inopportune the commissaries, without whom France would have
been dismembered; inopportune the great movement against the Church;
inopportune the Socialists and Jacques Roux, whom he did to death;
inopportune the popular societies closed by him, and after the
disappearance of which Paris expired; inopportune Clootz, yearning to
rally round France all the revolutionary forces of the world;
inopportune Hebert, who, nevertheless, had helped him to stifle the
Socialists; inopportune, in fine, all that was not cut out after his own
amiable pattern up to the day when he was himself declared inopportune
by the great bourgeoisie, who found it as easy as opportune to swallow
him at a mouthful as soon as he had purged, bled, muzzled for them the
revolutionary lion.
[170] Appendix XIII.
[171] The workmen's quarter in Lyons.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE IMPOTENCE OF THE SECOND COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY--
EVACUATION OF THE FORT OF VANVES AND OF THE VILLAGE OF
ISSY--THE MANIFESTO OF THE MINORITY--THE EXPLOSION IN
THE AVENUE RAPP--FALL OF THE VENDOME COLUMN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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