Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume V.Scott, Walter
History
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume V.
Scott, Walter
France -- History -- 1789-1815; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
Carnot and Fouché, formidable names, and revolutionists from their youth
upward, were the ostensible leaders of this active party, and most of
the surviving revolutionists rallied under their standards. These
agitators had preserved some influence over the lees of the people, and
were sure to find the means of augmenting it in the moment of popular
commotion. The rabble of a great town is democratical and revolutionary
by nature; for their vanity is captivated with such phrases as the
sovereignty of the people, their sense of poverty and licentious fury
tempted by occasion for uproar, and they regard the restraints of laws
and good order as their constant and natural enemies. It is upon this
envenomed and corrupted mass of evil passions that the experimental
philosophers of the Revolution have always exercised their chemical
skill. Of late, however, the intercourse between the philosophers of the
Revolution and this class of apt and docile scholars had been
considerably interrupted. Buonaparte, as we have hinted, restrained with
a strong hand the teachers of the Revolutionary school; while, by the
eclat of his victories, his largesses, and his expensive undertakings,
in which many workmen were employed, he debauched from them great part
of their popular disciples, who may be said, with the inconsequence and
mutability belonging to their habits, principles, and temper, to have
turned imperialists, without losing their natural aptitude to become
Jacobins again on the next tempting opportunity.
[Sidenote: BUONAPARTISTS--THE ARMY.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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