Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume I.Scott, Walter
History
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume I.
Scott, Walter
France -- History -- 1789-1815; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
[81] A singular instance of this overstrained and dangerous enthusiasm
is given by Madame Roland. [Memoirs, part i., p. 144.] It being the
purpose to rouse the fears and spirit of the people, and direct their
animosity against the court party, Grangeneuve agreed that he himself
should be murdered, by persons chosen for the purpose, in such a manner
that the suspicion of the crime should attach itself to the aristocrats.
He went to the place appointed, but Chabot, who was to have shared his
fate, neither appeared himself, nor had made the necessary preparations
for the assassination of his friend, for which Madame Roland, that
high-spirited republican, dilates upon his poltroonery. Yet, what was
this patriotic devotion, save a plan to support a false accusation
against the innocent, by an act of murder and suicide, which, if the
scheme succeeded, was to lead to massacre and proscription? The same
false, exaggerated, and distorted views of the public good centering, as
it seemed to them, in the establishment of a pure republic, led Barnave
and others to palliate the massacres of September. Most of them might
have said of the Liberty which they had worshipped, that at their death
they found it an empty name.--S.
[82] So called, because the first sittings of the Club were held in the
ancient convent of the Jacobins.
[83] July 11. "The formal command to quit the kingdom was accompanied by
a note from the King, in which he prayed him to depart in a private
manner, for fear of exciting disturbances. Necker received this
intimation just as he was dressing for dinner: he dined quietly, without
divulging it to any one, and set out in the evening with Madame Necker
for Brussels."--MIGNET, tom. i., p. 47.
[84] The Marshal was born in 1718, and died, at the age of eighty-six,
in 1804.
[85] Cockneys.
[86] "M. Foulon, an old man of seventy, member of the former
Administration, was seized near his own seat, and with his hands tied
behind his back, a crown of thistles on his head, and his mouth stuffed
with hay, conducted to Paris, where he was murdered with circumstances
of unheard-of cruelty. His son-in-law, Berthier, compelled to kiss his
father's head, which was thrust into his carriage on a pike, shortly
after shared his fate; and the heart of the latter was torn out of his
palpitating body."--LACRETELLE, tom. vii., p. 117.
[87] M. de Flesselles. It was alleged that a letter had been found on
the Governor of the Bastile, which implicated him in treachery to the
public cause.--See MIGNET, tom. i., p. 62.
[88] For an account of Lord George Gordon's riots in 1780, see _Annual
Register_, vol. xxiii., p. 254; and WRAXALL'S _Own Time_, vol. i., p.
319.
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