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
It could hardly be expected, that the assumption of such a title should
remain undistinguished by some supreme act of folly. Accordingly, the
self-dubbed Anacharsis set on foot a procession, which was intended to
exhibit the representatives of delegates from all nations upon earth, to
assist at the Feast of the Federation of the 14th July, 1790, by which
the French nation proposed to celebrate the Revolution. In recruiting
his troops, the orator easily picked up a few vagabonds of different
countries in Paris; but as Chaldeans, Illinois, and Siberians, are not
so common, the delegates of those more distant tribes were chosen among
the rabble of the city, and subsidized at the rate of about twelve
francs each. We are sorry we cannot tell whether the personage, whose
dignity was much insisted upon as "a Miltonic Englishman," was genuine,
or of Parisian manufacture. If the last, he must have been worth seeing.
Anacharsis Clootz, having got his ragged regiment equipped in costume at
the expense of the refuse of some theatrical wardrobe, conducted them in
solemn procession to the bar of the National Assembly, presented them as
the representatives of all the nations on earth, awakened to a sense of
their debased situation by the choral voices of twenty-five millions of
freemen, and demanding that the sovereignty of the people should be
acknowledged, and their oppressors destroyed, through all the universe,
as well as in France.
So far this absurd scene was the extravagance of a mere madman, and if
the Assembly had sent Anacharsis to bedlam, and his train to the
Bicêtre, it would have ended as such a farce ought to have done. But
_the President, in the name of the Assembly_, M. de Menou, (the same, we
believe, who afterwards turned Turk when in Egypt,)[174] applauded the
zeal of the orator, and received the homage of his grotesque attendants
as if they had been what they pretended, the deputies of the four
quarters of the globe. To raise the jest to the highest, Alexander
Lameth proposed,--as the feelings of these august pilgrims must
necessarily be hurt to see, in the land of freedom, those kneeling
figures representing conquered nations, which surround the statue of
Louis XV.,--that, from respect to this body of charlatans, these figures
should be forthwith demolished. This was done accordingly, and the
destruction of these symbols was regarded as a testimony of the
assistance which France was ready to render such states as should
require her assistance, for following in the revolutionary course. The
scene, laughable in itself, became serious when its import was
considered, and went far to persuade the governments of the neighbouring
countries, that the purpose of France was to revolutionize Europe, and
spread the reign of liberty and equality over all the civilized nations
of the globe. Hopes so flattering as these, which should assign to the
commons not merely freedom from unjust restraints and disqualifications,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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