J. J. ROUSSEAU DE SÉNANCOUR CHARLES NODIER BENJAMIN CONSTANT MADAME DE STAËL WINCKELMANN THE EMIGRANT LITERATURE The passage of the eighteenth into the nineteenth century was accompanied in France by social and political disturbances of hitherto unknown force and magnitude. The new seed sown by the great ideas and events of the Revolution at first made little or no growth in literature. It was unable to shoot up, for, with but brief interval between, two destroying tyrannies, the dictatorships of the Convention and of the Empire, passed over France, annihilating all personal freedom as they went. The first terrorism cowed, exiled, or guillotined all whose political colouring did not accurately match the then prevailing shade of popular opinion. Aristocracy, royal family, priests and Girondists alike succumbed to it, and men fled to the quiet of Switzerland or the lonely prairies of North America to escape the fate which had destroyed their nearest and threatened themselves. The second terrorism persecuted, imprisoned, shot, or exiled all who would not submit to being silenced (a silence which might only be broken by cheers for the Emperor). Legitimists and Republicans, Constitutionalists and Liberals, philosophers and poets were crushed under the all-levelling roller, unless they preferred, scattered in every direction, to seek a refuge beyond the boundaries of the empire. No easy matter in those days, for the empire followed swiftly upon their heels, rapidly growing, swallowing Germany and Italy in great gulps, until no place seemed secure from its armies, which overtook fugitives even in Moscow.