"Robespierre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... worlds! O accomplished Cromwell Grandison! you have to answer for more than any mortal man who has played a part in history: two republics and one monarchy does the world owe to you; and especially grateful should your country be to you. Did you not, in '90, make clear the path for honest Robespierre, and in '30, prepare ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... after fate of these gay Frenchmen. The story is not a bright one. The times that tried men's souls were at hand, and many of them fell victims. The comte de Rochambeau, made a marshal by Louis XVI., narrowly escaped death under Robespierre. In 1803 Napoleon gave him a pension and the grand cross of the Legion of Honor: he died in 1807. Lauzun perished on the scaffold, sentenced by the Tribunal in January, 1794. The night before his death ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... treaties with England, and engaged in maintaining the cause of order, and the other is only a band of conspirators, who have established their power through the institution of a system of terror, much after the fashion of Monsieur Robespierre and his associates, whose conduct was so offensive to all Britons seven-and-sixty years ago. But Montgomery is much farther from England than Paris, and the French had no cotton to tempt the British statesmen ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... thought only of Liberty; O'Connell not unnaturally considered the "Liberator." His refusal to allow a drop of blood to be shed caused Young Ireland to secede. Only when death removed his influence could the pent-up feelings of the country break out under Smith O'Brien. If Mitchel was an Irish Robespierre, O'Brien was their Lafayette. His advance from the level of dead aristocracy had been rapid. From defending Whigs in Parliament he passed to opposition and "contempt of the House." He resigned from the Bench from which O'Connell ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... royalty, would have its Whigs and its Tories, but that it was forever rid of Republicans and Imperialists. At the accession of Charles X. the word Republican, become a synonym of Jacobin, awoke only memories of the guillotine and the "Terror." A moderate republic seemed but a chimera; only that of Robespierre and Marat was thought of. The eagle was no longer mentioned; and as to the eaglet, he was a prisoner at Vienna. What chance of reigning had the Duke of Reichstadt, that child of thirteen, condemned by all the Powers of Europe? By what means could he mount the throne? Who would ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Conti. Her first visit to England was in 1763, when she was taken by Topham Beauclerk to see Dr. Johnson. She revisited this country at the time of the emigration, but returning to France, was imprisoned by the Revolutionists. The fall of Robespierre (July, 1794) restored her to liberty. Am6lie de Bouflers, less fortunate than her mother-in-law, perished by the guillotine, June ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... excepting, however, the three lead-mines of the Eton grammar, 'Propria quae maribus,' &c. of which it is not extravagant to say, that the author, though possibly a good sort of a man in his way, has undoubtedly caused more human suffering than Nero, Robespierre, or any other enemy of the human race). Our opposition is to the general principle, which lies at the root of such treatises as the three we have been considering: it will be observed that, making a proper allowance for the smallness ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... of the older inhabitants, curious to learn what doctrine this interloper had to proclaim, thrust their way that evening into the City Hall, which was crowded, as the papers said, "to suffocation." Not prepossessing, this modern Robespierre; younger than he looked, for life had put its mark on him; once, in the days of severe work in the mines, his body had been hard, and now had grown stout. In the eyes of a complacent, arm-chair historian he must have appeared one of the, strange and terrifying creatures ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... while this spirit was abroad, a spirit as destructive as ever animated the Councils of Sylla or Marius in Old Rome, or prompted the decrees of Robespierre or Marat in France, that the genius and courage of one man redeemed the lost reputation of the law, and upheld against all odds the sacred claims of personal liberty. This man was John Philpot Curran, the most dauntless ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... have shaken it with their clamour, what men have made it sacred with their truths—how recount this? After Mirabeau,—Vergniaud, Camille Desmoulins, Saint-Just, that stern young man, Danton, that tremendous tribune, Robespierre, that incarnation of the great and terrible year! From it were heard those ferocious interruptions. "Aha!" cries an orator of the Convention, "do you propose to cut short my speech?" "Yes," answers a voice, "and your neck to-morrow." And those superb apostrophes. "Minister ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... been any doubt, but posterity took but little heed of them, for they were amply condoned by the single virtue. That virtue was, indeed, of a transcendent character, for it was nothing less than the delivery of the French nation from the Dahomey-like rule of that Robespierre who deluged France in blood, and who, albeit in Fouche's words he was "terribly sincere," at the same time "never in his life cared for any one but himself and never forgave an offence." Moreover, the act of delivery was associated with an episode eminently calculated to appeal to human sentiment ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... politicians. The governments of Alexander and Charlemagne were infinitely preferable to those of the petty civil tyrants who preceded and followed them; and there is no one so blinded by prejudice as to say that the reign of Napoleon was no better than that of Robespierre, Danton, and the other "lawyers" who preceded him, or of the Bourbons, for whom he ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... narrowly escaped the honor of a Democratic martyr in Connecticut, denounced slave-holding, in common with other forms of oppression. Barlow, fresh from communion with Gregoire, Brissot, and Robespierre, devoted to negro slavery some of the most vigorous and truthful lines of his great poem. Eaton, returning from his romantic achievements in Tunis for the deliverance of white slaves, improved the occasion to read a lecture to his countrymen on the inconsistency and guilt ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and noticed that the room had very little furniture; there was only the table at which the Prefect sat and two or three plain chairs. Just such a chamber as Robespierre might have occupied during his Republique. There were two gendarmes standing behind Rigault's chair waiting for orders, and a man (of whom I did not take particular notice) leaning against the mantelpiece at the other ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... I noticed a look of victory still in his glittering eye. "Innocent! Yes, as innocent as Nero or Robespierre; but you shall not come here to pollute the air by your presence. Begone! before I forget myself, and send for the police to lock you up. Ah, I long for vengeance on the man who ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... favorable to the principle of the bill, but was opposed to pressing it at present. The Assembly was thrown into violent agitation by a speech from M. Dufraisse, one of the most able and earnest of the Montagnards, who delivered a speech which would not have been misplaced in the mouth of Robespierre or Danton. "The pale head, compressed lips, and intense expression of the young lawyer of the Mountain," says an eyewitness, "reminded the auditors, not without a shudder, of such a thoroughbred Jacobin as St. Just." He declared that the laws of proscription were ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... also that of a truly venerable woman, Mrs. Hodgson, mother of Kirkman and Stewart Hodgson, the well-known partners in Barings' house. Her age was not precisely known, but when a schoolgirl in Paris she had seen Robespierre executed, and distinctly recollected the appearance of his bandaged face. Her granddaughters, Mr. Stewart Hodgson's children, are quite young women, and if they live to the age which, with such ancestry, they are entitled to anticipate, they will carry down into the middle ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... said she, 'a great risk. I don't like saying so to the doctor, but I should not like having my daughter, if I was him, so cheek-by-jowl with a girl as was brought up in the country where Robespierre and Bonyparte was born.' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... creature of his environment, no better and no worse than his associates, but only more capable than they, and absolutely convinced that pitiless autocracy was the sole means of creating a nation out of chaotic fragments, this "Robespierre of South America" carried on his despotic sway, regardless of the fury of opponents and the ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... guaranteed as a consequence of the right of man to individual liberty, the freedom of the press was completely destroyed, for liberty of the press could not be permitted when it compromised public liberty. (Robespierre jeune, "Parliamentary History of the French Revolution." Buchez et Roux, p. 135.) This means that the right of man to liberty ceases to be a right as soon as it comes into conflict with the political life, whereas, according to ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... formless mob of human beings, wearing red caps and seemingly insane, who all blindly follow ruffians who are also rhetoricians; some of whom die repentant and others unrepentant towards the end of the fourth act. The leaders of this boiling mass of all men melted into one are called Mirabeau, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and so on. And it is conceded that their united frenzy may have been forced on them by the evils ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... carry out this order was a man such as those whom Louis XI. had employed fifty years earlier to destroy the feudal system, and Robespierre one hundred and fifty years later to destroy the aristocracy. Every woodman needs an axe, every reaper a sickle, and Richelieu found the instrument he required in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Talleyrand danced a double hornpipe with Pauline Bonaparte and Madame de Stael; Marshal Soult went down a couple of sets with Madame Recamier; and Robespierre's widow—an excellent, gentle creature, quite unlike her husband—stood up with the Austrian ambassador. Besides, the famous artists Baron Gros, David and Nicholas Poussin, and Canova, who was in town making a statue of the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the cruel corners of the mouth? For the corners ARE cruel. Some day, I will show you them. Cut off the long hair, shave the grizzled moustache—and what then will remain?" She drew a profile hastily. "Just that," and she showed it me. 'Twas a face like Robespierre's, grown harder and older and lined with observation. I recognised that it was in fact the essence ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... men of the previous generation. He was a gentle and beautiful old man, with very courtly manners and snow-white hair, which he wore in a queue. He gave away the whole of a large fortune to the poor. Also an old Mr. Crozier, who had been in France through all the French Revolution, and had known Robespierre, Marat, Fouquier Tinville, &c. I wish that I had betimes noted down all the anecdotes I ever heard from them. There were also two old ladies, own nieces of Benjamin Franklin, who for many years continually took ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... in none more lucidly and dispassionately than that by William White. Traditions have come to us concerning the clairvoyance of the Greek exponent of the Pythagorean teachings, Apollonius of Tyana, and the case of Cavotte, who predicted his own death and that of Robespierre and others by the guillotine, is on record. The illumination of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Poughkeepsie seer, and that of Thomas Lake Harris of Fountain Grove, are modern examples of abnormal faculty of a nature which places ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... necessities of the world call for a Man, that individual is found. Thus at the French Revolution (which the reader will be pleased to have introduced so early), when it was requisite to administer a corrective dose to the nation, Robespierre was found; a most foul and nauseous dose indeed, and swallowed eagerly by the patient, greatly to the latter's ultimate advantage: thus, when it became necessary to kick John Bull out of America, Mr. Washington stepped forward, and performed ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... how many a vivid portrait does he paint, and each one vivid chiefly from its faithfulness to personality and to history. And then his full-length, more elaborated likenesses, of the king, of the queen, of the Duke of Orleans, of Lafayette, of Camille Desmoulins, of Danton, of Robespierre: it seems now that only on his throbbing page do these personages live and move and have their true being. The giant Mirabeau, 'twas thought at first he had drawn too gigantic. But intimate documents, historical and biographical, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... He ordered the reconstruction of the fortress which had been destroyed during the Revolution; but when the townsfolk heard the news, they protested so vehemently that the work was stopped and an order was issued for Buonaparte's arrest. From this difficulty the friendship of the younger Robespierre and of Salicetti, the Commissioners of the Convention, availed to rescue him; but the incident proves that his services at Toulon were not so brilliant as to have raised him above the general level of meritorious officers, who were applauded while they ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... borne by one hundred and eighty merchant vessels. To insure the safety of this valuable convoy, the Brest Fleet was sent to meet it at a designated point; five ships going first, and twenty-five following a few days later. Robespierre's orders to the admiral, Villaret-Joyeuse, were to avoid battle, if possible, but at all hazards to secure the merchant fleet, or his head would answer ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... been reading about France and the Reign of Terror," Benny Frank went on, not heeding his brother. "It was in about 1794. Robespierre was at the head of it. And there was a dreadful prison into which they threw everybody they suspected, and only brought them out for execution. It must have been terrible! And the poor old man must have been quite young then. I should think he ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... must pay eighteen pence for dinner, even though he had not eaten it. Also there lay somewhat heavily on his mind the fact that at ten the next morning he must read to his tutor an essay on "Danton and Robespierre," an essay as yet unwritten. That would mean a very early rising and an uncomfortable chilly session in the college library, a dismal place in the forenoon. Never mind, first came a jolly evening with the Scorpions. The meetings ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... deeds that were perpetrated there. All these horrors gradually wove themselves in the young girl's imagination around the sinister and repulsive figure of Jean Paul Marat. She knew nothing of his associates, Danton and Robespierre. It was in Marat alone that she saw the monster who sent innocent thousands to their graves, and who reveled like some arch-fiend in murder ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... dominance of those wild-beast passions which civilization seeks to subdue in man, that we may well be spared the telling. As with the fall of the Bastille began the long dominion of the populace, so with the fall of Robespierre it ended, and civil order returned to unhappy France. We have told the story of the one; we shall conclude with that of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... men, and Maury, by far the most powerful debater of France since Mirabeau—figured among the chief ornaments of the salons of De Stael. Roland, and the showy and witty Theresa Cabarrus, and even the flutter of La Fayette, the most tinsel of heroes, and the sullen sententiousness of Robespierre, then known only as a provincial deputy, furnished a background which increased ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... we rely on! We follow Saint-Just and Robespierre; but we'll do better than they; they were timid, and you see what came of it; an emperor! the elder branch! the younger branch! The Montagnards didn't lop the social ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... Republican cause, and follow with the most lively interest the successes of the French arms. So determined were they, in fact, to excuse everything, disgracing the struggle of freedom, by admitting the tyrant's plea, necessity, that I could hardly persuade them that Robespierre ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... ennemis contre vous, leurs cris, leur rage impuissante, et leurs petits succes, ne doivent pas vous effrayer; ce ne sont que des egratignures sur les epaules d'Hercule." —ROBESPIERRE. ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... to appeal to, nothing on which to rally. It is an awful thing to see such judgments passing before our very eyes. So fearful a humiliation may do something yet for the French people, but I dread even worse news. It nearly came the other day to a repetition of the old Danton and Robespierre days. ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... well-known and patent to all the world. He was the ame damnee of the Provisional Government—the man whose extreme opinions, intemperate circulars, and vehement patronage of persons professing the political creed of Robespierre—indisposed all moderate men to rally around the new system. It was in covering Ledru Rollin with the shield of his popularity that Lamartine lost his own, and that he ceased to be the political idol of a people ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... symptoms of your former complaint. There never was such a succession of cross-incidents as seem to have accompanied every part of poor Merey's mission, and I fear his loss is a serious one to us all. What do you think of Robespierre's death? I look upon it as a very favourable event, not from any opinion that I ever entertained of his personal talents, but because those who succeed him are evidently under the necessity of lowering ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... for her, and withdrew from the neighborhood of the Tuileries,—but only to repair to their clubs and listen to the raving speeches which Marat, Santerre, and other officers, hurled like poisoned arrows at the queen-only to go into the National Assembly and hear Mirabeau and Robespierre, Danton, Chenier, Petion, and all the rest, the assembled representatives of the nation, launch their thundering philippics against a royalty appointed by the grace of God, and causing the people to believe that it was a royalty appointed by the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... What a thing this discovery of mine would be for political conspirators,—to reverse the whispering-gallery of Dionysius, and, instead of the tyrant hearing the secrets of the people, the people hearing the secrets of the tyrant! Then I thought of Robespierre, and Marat, and Charlotte Corday, and Marie Antoinette,—then of Delaroche's and Mueller's pictures of the unfortunate Queen,—then of pictures in general,—then of landscape-scenery,—till I almost fell into a doze, when I was startled by a faint sound along the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... soon became pretty warm, Lowe turned it into a regular revolutionary tribunal, over which, as the great day of triumph approached, he presided day and night without resting, and by his furious zeal earned from me the nickname of 'Robespierre.' ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the men of the Revolution. The respective influence of violent and feeble characters 2. Psychology of the Commissaries or Representatives "on Mission'' 3. Danton and Robespierre 4. Fouquier-Tinville, Marat, Billaud-Varenne, &c. 5. The destiny of those Members of the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... with a slinking gait and a sidelong glance which was charged with malice. Evans Pott was his name, and even the great Boss of Vermissa felt towards him something of the repulsion and fear which the huge Danton may have felt for the puny but dangerous Robespierre. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... his "Invasion of the Crimea." In the "Edinburgh" I think he never wrote, cordially disliking its then editor. A fine notice in "Blackwood" of Madame de Lafayette's life was from his pen. Surveying the Revolutionary Terror, he points out that Robespierre's opponents were in numbers overwhelmingly strong, but lacked cohesion and leaders; while the Mountain, dominated by a single will, was legally armed with power to kill, and went on killing. The Church ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... aristocracy resisted reform in 1783, that they were unable to resist revolution in 1789. It was because they clung too long to odious exemptions and distinctions, that they were at last unable to serve their lands, their mansions, their heads. They would not endure Turgot: and they had to endure Robespierre. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... National Guard. The National Guard, too much exasperated and alarmed to obey La Fayette's order to fire over the people's heads, at one volley shot down a hundred of the rioters. The Jacobin leaders fled in alarm. Robespierre, who had been one of the chief organizers of the tumult, being also one of the basest of cowards, was the most terrified of all, and fled for shelter to his admirer, of congenial spirit, Madame Roland, whose protection he afterward repaid by sending her to the scaffold. ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... But what would be the use of sympathizing down in Cambridgeshire? John Grey had, so to speak, no politics. He had decided views as to the treatment which the Roman Senate received from Augustus, and had even discussed with Alice the conduct of the Girondists at the time of Robespierre's triumph; but for Manchester and its cares he had no apparent solicitude, and had declared to Alice that he would not accept a seat in the British House of Commons if it were offered to him free of expense. What ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... Diogenes Teufelsdroch is readily annotated by history. There are garments that have earned an immortality of fame. Such an one is the sky-blue coat which Robespierre wore at the height of his power when he celebrated the festival of the Supreme Being, and in the depths of his degradation when a few days later he was carried to his death. Such an one is the gala coat of flowered Manchester velvet which Franklin wore ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to the House of Representatives, and from House of Representatives to the Senate Chamber, and from the Senate Chamber to the Presidential chair. Why should anyone want to kill him? He was not a despot who had been treading on the rights of the people. There was nothing of the Nero or the Robespierre in him. He had wronged no man. He was free and happy himself, and wanted all the world free and happy. Why should anyone want to kill him? He had a family to shepherd and educate, a noble wife and a group of little children leaning on his arm ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... Louis XVI. and his queen were executed, in 1793, they were obscurely buried on this spot. A friend, M. Descloseaux, at once cared for their remains, else they would have been lost amid other victims of the bloody revolution. It is a singular fact, that Danton, Herbert, and Robespierre were also buried in this same place, together with ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... during the White Terror, of which this incident is an example, though passed over by history, are not forgotten by the survivors of that cruel period. The leaders in the second terror could not plead the ignorance of Robespierre's followers in excuse of their excesses, for they were nobles, magistrates, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... have a secret of your own—pardon me, I am only saying what every one says. Well, this is the secret of the woman Paulette Dubois. My cousin, Robespierre Dauphin, a notary in Quebec, is the agent of the lawyer, the father of the child. He pities the poor woman. But he is bound in professional honour to the lawyer fellow, not to betray. When visiting Robespierre once I found ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... followed by thousands. So detested was the wretch, that in a few minutes his remains were hewn and torn to pieces. It does not become men to lift the veil which lies over the whole doom of a ruthless murderer; but there is something in the last mortal yell of a tyrant, whether it be a Robespierre or a Nackee Khan, which sounds as if mingled with a dreadful ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... pictures and saw the Salle du Tribunat and the Consul's apartments at the Tuileries: on the dressing-table there were the busts of Fox and Nelson. At our return home we saw the good Francois Delessert and another man, who was the man who took Robespierre prisoner, and who has since made a clock which is wound up by the action of the air on mercury, like that which Mr. Edgeworth invented for the King of Spain. He told us many things that made us stare, and many that made us shiver, and many more that made us wish ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... history of the Revolution has been written anew, or rather for the first time. The gigantic figure of Danton stands forth to-day in its true light, as the saviour of France from the fate of Poland, and as a founder of the democratic idea. He succumbed less because he was a rival of Robespierre than because he ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... and upright, that he takes the heart by storm. There is nothing of the copy-book about his virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine, natural civility; he will sail near the wind; he is no district visitor - no Wesley or Robespierre; his conscience is void of all refinement whether for good or evil; but the whole man rings true like a good sovereign. Readers who have approached the VICOMTE, not across country, but by the legitimate, five-volumed avenue of the MOUSQUETAIRES ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... years the surges of the Revolutionary deluge had succeeded one another with ever-increasing rapidity, and at last threatened to swallow the entire inhabitants of the city. "The generation which saw the monarchical regime will always regret it," Robespierre was crying, "therefore every individual who was more than fifteen years old in 1789 should have his throat cut." "Away with the nobles!" was shouting another vicious leader, "and if there are any good ones so much the worse for them. Let the guillotine work ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... me: "I am sure that he was one of the Terrorists. I sometimes fancy that I remember seeing him in 1793. Besides, he has all the ways and ideas of M——, who terrorised Lannion and kept the guillotine in constant play there during the time that Robespierre had the upper hand." Fifteen or twenty years ago, I read the following paragraph ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... were impregnated with the metaphysical ideas of rights which had come to them from the rising revolutionary school in France. Burke no more adopted the doctrines of Jefferson in 1776 than he adopted the doctrines of Robespierre in 1793. He says nothing about men being born free and equal, and on the other hand he never denies the position of the court and the country at large, that the home legislature, being sovereign, had the right to tax the colonies. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... stage, the Reign of Terror, began with Robespierre, a village lawyer; in whose mingled cruelty and craft originated the bloody mockeries of that "Revolutionary Tribunal," which, under the semblance of trial, sent all the accused to the guillotine, and in all the formalities of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... of the Republic call me tyrant! Were I such they would grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, I should grant them immunity for their crimes, and they would be grateful. Were I such, the kings we have vanquished, far from denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support; there would be a covenant between them and me. Tyranny must have tools. But the enemies of tyranny,—whither does their path tend? To the tomb, and to immortality! What tyrant is my protector? ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... his brilliant exposition of the paradox of Rousseau and Robespierre (he was giving a course on the French Revolution), the strange and yet inevitable fact that the softest, most sentimental, rose-scented religion ever invented, should have produced, through its most thoroughly infatuated disciple, the ghastliest reign ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... left poor Tallien. I wanted you to enquire likewise whether, as a member declared in the convention, Robespierre really maintained a number of mistresses.—Should it prove so, I suspect that they rather flattered his vanity than ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... revolutionising idiot that there might be a thousand copies of the same work, and that some hundreds of these copies might be OUT of the national library! Of course, Mercier laughed at the project, and made the projector ashamed of it.[98] Robespierre, rather fiend than man, now ruled the destinies of France. On the 7th of July, 1794, Mercier happened to be passing along the streets when he saw sixty-seven human beings about to undergo the butchery of the GUILLOTINE. Every avenue was crowded by spectators—who were hurrying towards the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... friends, and sent her son to the College of Mount St. Mary's, which had been founded near Emmittsburg, by the Rev. John Du Bois, a French priest, who, escaping the horrors of the Revolution in his own country, and the sanguinary tribunals of his old schoolmate, Robespierre, had crossed the Atlantic to ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... general tendency, for even in what appeared to be the most rationalistic epoch—that of the Revolution—the "Cult of Reason" was founded, to be succeeded by the "Religion of the Supreme Being" introduced by Robespierre. And what numbers of new sects and religions can be ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... matter of giving annoyance, a formula should be drawn up and accepted, after the manner of Robespierre: the liberty of annoying another begins where his liberty ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... immense contempt for all that lies beyond the writer's own canons of taste. In hac est pura oratio, a phrase of the prologue to The Self-Tormentor, is the implied burden of them all. He is a sort of Literary Robespierre; one seems to catch the premonitory echo of well-known phrases, "degenerate condition of literary spirit, backsliding on this hand and on that, I, Terence, alone left incorruptible." Three times there is a reference to Plautus, and always with a tone of chilly superiority which ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... their own private opinion, unconfirmed as yet by any experimental verification, must have a serene confidence in their own wisdom on the one hand, and a recklessness of people's sufferings on the other, which Robespierre and St. Just, hitherto the typical instances of those united ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... Directory and the Consulship could not turn it, until Napoleon united all France under him and all England against him. As late as 1793, such men as James Watt, Jr., and the poet Wordsworth were in Paris, on intimate terms with Robespierre and his Committee. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... one set of doctrines and one kind of discipline accepted by all Protestants. Voltaire was a revolutionist in one sense, Diderot in another, and Rousseau in a third, just as in the practical order, Lafayette, Danton, Robespierre, represented three different aspirations and as many methods. Rousseau was the most directly revolutionary of all the speculative precursors, and he was the first to apply his mind boldly to those of the social conditions which the revolution is concerned ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... had taken place; and Paul Jones occupied the position, unusual for him, of a passive spectator of great events. Acquainted with men of all parties, with Bertrand Barere, Carnot, Robespierre, and Danton, as well as with the more conservative men with whom his own past had led him to sympathize,—Lafayette, Mirabeau, and Malesherbes,—Jones's last days were not lacking in picturesque opportunity for observation. He felt great sympathy for the king, with whom he ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... in the French Constitution struck and perplexed Maltravers. This people so pervaded by the republican sentiment; this people, who had sacrificed so much for Freedom; this people, who, in the name of Freedom, had perpetrated so much crime with Robespierre, and achieved so much glory with Napoleon,—this people were, as a people, contented to be utterly excluded from all power and voice in the State! Out of thirty-three millions of subjects, less than two hundred thousand electors! Where was ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for the Manche. The writers in the journal are Louis Jourdan, formerly a St. Simonian; Pierre Bernard, who was secretary to Armand Carrel; Hippolite Lamarche, an ex-cavalry captain; Auguste Jullien (son of Jullien de Paris, one of the commissaries of Robespierre); and others whom it is ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... After the execution of Robespierre, and the abolition of the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1794, came the choice of the Directory: and then, after Buonaparte's brilliant success in Italy, and the famous expeditions to Syria and Egypt two years later, came his ...
— Illustrated History of Furniture - From the Earliest to the Present Time • Frederick Litchfield
... comrades of Maximin imagined that the truculent Goth was yet to wear the blood-stained purple, little as the clients of Robespierre dreamed of the vortex toward which he was being insensibly hurried by the stream of years, did the men, whose names are thrown out from their obscurity by the glare of his misdeeds, conceive that their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... a new prisoner whispered to me that the great Robespierre, at whose nod any head in Paris might drop into the dreadful basket, had been blown upon within the walls of the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... The believer is not free to answer the question, "true" or "not true," according to the dictates of his own conscience: integrity on this point would work his instant downfall. The pathological limitations of his vision turn the man of convictions into a fanatic—Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon—these types stand in opposition to the strong, emancipated spirit. But the grandiose attitudes of these sick intellects, these intellectual epileptics, are of influence upon the great masses—fanatics are picturesque, and mankind ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... literature, and especially of Stevenson. But if Stevenson had walked into the room and explained his personal doubts about personal immortality, she would have regretted that he should be wrong upon the point; but would otherwise have been utterly unaffected. She was not at all like Robespierre, except in a taste for neatness in dress; and yet it is only in Mr. Belloc's book on Robespierre that I have ever found any words that describe the unique quality that cut her off from the current culture and saved her from it. "God had given him in his mind a stone tabernacle ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... of July 14, 1789, the fall of the Bastile.) On this date, 110 years ago, the captors of the Bastile marched into this noted hall. Three days later Louis XVI came here in procession from Versailles, followed by a dense mob." Here Robespierre attempted suicide to avoid arrest, when five battalions under Barras forced entrance to assault the Commune party, of which Robespierre was head. Here, in 1848, Louis Blanc proclaimed the institution of the Republic ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... visit, which refreshed our spirits a little, we called on Madame D'Aublay, sister-in-law to Brissot, who was executed in the time of Robespierre. She is a Roman Catholic, and thinks the groundwork of true religion to be in their church, but that their customs and the mass are nothing worth. We left her some tracts, and amongst them one of Judge Hale's, which struck her so forcibly on reading it, that ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... ordinary humanity. It seemed wonderful, that even the seething and boiling of the revolutionary cauldron should have sent up from the bottom, and long supported on the surface, a thing so miserably void of claims to public distinction; but Robespierre had to impose on the minds of the vulgar, and he knew how to beguile them, by accommodating his flattery to their passions and scale of understanding, and by acts of cunning and hypocrisy, which weigh more with the multitude than the words of eloquence, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... state—if they could, England would have been revolutionised in 1832. They may make a Jacquerie, but they cannot make a revolution. They may rear up a Jack Cade, a Wat Tyler, or a Jacques Bonhomme, but they will never produce a Robespierre or a Cromwell. It is the coincidence of general evils that make all the people feel sore, with corrupted manners, and licentious or selfish writers who make their leaders think wrong, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... returned to Paris, and on the 3rd of September 1794 published the first number of his Journal de la liberte de la presse, the title of which was altered on the 5th of October to Le Tribun du peuple. The execution of Robespierre on the 28th of July had ended the Terror, and Babeuf—now self-styled "Gracchus" Babeuf—defended the men of Thermidor and attacked the fallen terrorists with his usual violence. But he also attacked, from the point of view of his own socialistic theories, the economic ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... through the disguises of jacobinical hypocrisy; but now, it seems, we are at once to remit our zeal and our suspicion; that Jacobinism, which alarmed us under the stumbling and drunken tyranny of Robespierre; that Jacobinism, which insulted and roused us under the short-sighted ambition of the five Directors; that Jacobinism, to which we have sworn enmity through every shifting of every bloody scene, through all ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Robespierre and Danton both had commended Bibot for his zeal and Bibot was proud of the fact that he on his own initiative had sent at least fifty ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... late 19th and early 20th centuries. Lenin, who came to Paris around 1906, might well have profited by Taine's analysis. Hitler is also likely to have profited by his insights. Lenin was like so many other socialists of his day a great admirer of Robespierre and his party and would undoubtedly have tried to find out how Robespierre got into power and why he lost his hold on France the way he did. Part of Taine's art was to place himself into the place of the different people and parties who took part in the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... violent and turbulent disposition, he was put under arrest; and it was even proposed that he should be tried and executed (a necessary consequence of a trial at that period). His situation at this time was extremely unpromising; Robespierre and his accomplices, Daunton, St Juste, Barrere, &c. were all either put to death or forced to conceal themselves. Bonaparte now perceived, that for the accomplishment of his views, it was necessary that he should forsake his haughty and domineering tone, and flatter those ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... you mean. There is a kind of pity for the people now in vogue which is most effeminate. It is a sugared sort of Robespierre talk about "The poor but virtuous People." To address such stuff to the people is not to give them anything, but to take away what they have. Suppose you could give them oceans of tea and mountains of sugar, and abundance of any luxury ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... Pol at Arras looks, I should say, precisely as it did in Robespierre's time. The furniture certainly belongs to that epoch, sanitary arrangements have made little advance, and the bare staircases and floors do not appear as if they had been well swept, much less scoured, since the fall of the Bastille. It is a rambling, I should say rat-haunted, old ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... philosophers and beaux esprits who evolved theories and turned them over as an intellectual diversion, but by men of action, ready to test these theories and force them to their logical conclusions. Mirabeau, Vergniaud, and Robespierre had succeeded Voltaire, Diderot, and d'Alembert. Impelled towards one end, by vanity, ambition, love of glory, or genuine conviction, these men and their colleagues turned the salon, which had so long been the school of public opinion, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... he that in the spirit of prophecy compared the French revolution to Saturn, since it was about to devour successively all its children, and finally to establish despotism with its attendant calamities. The rivalship of the Mountain in the Convention, the unsuccessful attack on Robespierre, the trial and condemnation of Louis XVI., the defection of Dumourier and its consequences, had doubtless roused the mind of the fervent but unsuccessful orator to the highest efforts which the decline ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the Reign of Terror in all its horror, but fortunately escape to the chateau of an uncle in La Vendee. A quarrel with a cousin ensues, and fighting occurs at the same time with the Republicans. As a scout the elder does gallant service till captured and taken to Paris, where he confronts Robespierre and falls into his cousin's hands. Again, however, he escapes, and after many exciting experiences finally ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... day was Sir Lumley Skeffington, who used to paint his face, so that he looked like a French toy; he dressed a la Robespierre, and practised other follies, although the consummate old fop was a man of literary attainments, and a great admirer and patron of the drama. Skeffington was remarkable for his politeness and courtly manners; in fact, he was invited everywhere, and was ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... ville; and it is stated that a great portion of this upper town is supported upon catacombs or caves from which the white stone of the belfry and town-hall was quarried. It is a curious feeling to be shown the house in which Robespierre was born, which, for the benefit of the curious it may be stated, is to be found in the Rue des Rapporteurs, close to the theatre. Arras was a famous Jacobin centre, and from the balcony of this theatre, Lebon, one of the Jacobins, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... Mortimer-Ternaux, II. 376 (session of the Directory of the Pas-du-Calais, July 4, 1792). The petition, signed by 127 inhabitants of Arras, is presented to the Directory by Robespierre the younger and Geoffroy. The administrators are treated as impostors, conspirators, etc., while the president, listening to these refinements, says to his colleagues: "Gentlemen, let us sit down; we can attend to insults sitting as ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... l'Horloge. Next, to the right, come the two round towers of the Conciergerie, known respectively as the Tour de Csar and the Tour de Montgomery. The one beyond them, with battlements, is the Tour d'Argent. It was in the Conciergerie that Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and many other victims of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... human heart was naturally innocent, and bent only upon virtue; when the debasing influence of these corrupters of men was removed, it would universally resume its natural direction. Hence the maxim of Robespierre—"Le peuple est toujours bon, le magistrat toujours corruptible." Hence the readiness with which the constitution-mongers at Paris set themselves to prepare skeletons of government for all nations, and their universal identity with that originally cast during the fervour of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... not be an accomplice in inaugurating a reign of terror. The connection which under any form of Home Rule would bind together the parts of the present United Kingdom would be, it may be suggested, a guarantee against the supremacy of an Irish Robespierre or Danton. Granted: but if so, Home Rule would restrain an Irish revolution. The strongest, in other words the most reckless leaders, would be prevented from coming to the front. Ireland would not follow her own course, ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... in the Eastern States most of the Anti-Federalists belonged to the lowest class of society; and, not content with urging their pernicious public policy, the more turbulent of the party showed a strong inclination to adopt French principles in religion and morals, as well as in government. Robespierre had announced pompously, "L'Atheisme est aristocratique." New England Federalists thought it democratic on this side of the ocean. If they must choose between the Tri-Color and the Cross of St. George, they preferred the Cross. There was no guillotine in Great Britain,—no ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... not then rest upon the issue as they now do. I own I do not like the comparison. When I contemplate the horrid and systematic massacres of the 2nd and 3rd of September, when I observe that a Marat and a Robespierre, the notorious prompters of those bloody scenes, sit triumphantly in the convention, and take a conspicuous part in its measures—that an attempt to bring the assassins to justice has been obliged to be abandoned—when I see an unfortunate ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... onwards has always been directed against literature, art, and science, and has openly proclaimed its aim to exalt the manual workers over the intelligentsia? "Writers must be proscribed as the most dangerous enemies of the people," said Robespierre; his colleague Dumas said all clever men should be guillotined. "The system of persecution against men of talents was organized.... They cried out in the sections of Paris, 'Beware of that man for he has written ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... reason I ask your co-operation. Why should not a committee of the Royal Academy gather together in order to find some chaste and interesting national costume, in which the distinguished men of the nineteenth century might descend to posterity without the drawbacks which I have pointed out? Robespierre had such a costume designed, and other great sumptuary legislators have had the same idea in their minds; and I would not push the suggestion so far as to imply that we should be compelled to wear this costume in ordinary life. It might ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... from Ajaccio to Bastia, there is one chorus of imprecations against you." The writer goes on to say, "Your countrymen, to whom you are an object of horror, will enlighten France as to your character. The wealth, the pensions, the fruits of your treasons, will be taken from you.... O Lameth! O Robespierre! O Petion! O Volney! O Mirabeau! O Barnave! O Bailly! O La Fayette! this is the man who dares to seat himself by your side!"—Scott's "Life of Napoleon Buonaparte," ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... younger brother of Mme. Rouget, the doctor's wife; grocer at Paris, on rue Saint-Honore, not far from Robespierre's quarters. Descoings had married for love the widow of Bixiou, his predecessor. She was twelve years his senior but well preserved and "plump as a thrush after harvest." Accused of foreclosing, he was sent to the scaffold, in company with Andre Chenier, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... principal front is a flight of steps, and an arcade and portico with ionic columns, between the arches facing the entrance is a fine bronze statue of Louis XIV. The Grande Salle or Salle du Trone is a most splendid apartment, and has been the scene of many most important events, being the room where Robespierre held his council and in which he attempted to destroy himself, and from which Louis XVI addressed the people with the cap of liberty upon his head. Most extensive additions and alterations have recently been ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... Robespierre's. Foerster the historian gave it me. That repousse gold-work on the handle ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Anti-Corn-Law agitation continued. Sir Robert Peel, as head of the Ministry, sought in every possible way to silence Cobden and bring him into contempt, even to denouncing him as "a dangerous agitator who would, if he could, do for London what Robespierre did for Paris." But time went on as time does, and Cobden had been before the country as the upholder of unpopular causes for more than ten years. There was famine in Ireland. By the roadside famishing mothers held to their ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... deity, and received adoration from the audience. The services of religion were abandoned; the churches were closed; the sabbath was abolished; and the calendar altered. On all the public cemeteries the inscription was placed, "Death is an eternal sleep." Robespierre himself saw the necessity for the public recognition of the being of a God; and after the fall of the Girondists, obtained an edict for that purpose shortly before his death, in 1794; which event marks the return of society from atheism and ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... turning over several leaves of his notebook, he rattled out the following names: "Alcibiades, kind of statesman; Beau Brummel, fop; Cagliostro, conjurer; Robespierre, politician; Charles Stuart, Pretender; Warwick, King-maker; Borgia, A., Pope; Ditto, C., toxicologist; Wallenstein, mercenary; Bacon, Roger, man of science; Ditto, F., dishonest official; Tell, W., patriot; Jones, Paul, pirate; Lucullus, glutton; Simon Stylites, eccentric; Casanova, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... She is yours, body and soul. One can tell it with every sentence she speaks. And she is for the cause," he concluded with a graver note in his tone. "She has found the fire somewhere. There were women like her who held Robespierre's hand." ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "Quatre-Vingt-Treize" itself, and, in particular, of the Convention—that remarkable assembly which seems to have made up its mind to prove for all time that, in democracies, the scum comes to the top?—that assembly in which Fabre d'Eglantine stood for poetry, Marat for humanitarianism, Robespierre for justice, Hebert and Chaumette for decency, Sieyes and Chabot for different forms of religion, the composers of the Republican Calendar[120] for common sense? where the only suggestion of a great man was Danton, and the only substitutes for an honest one were the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Being the son of royalist parents and one of the constitutional party, Rouget de Lisle refused to take the oath to the constitution abolishing the crown, and was therefore cashiered, denounced, and imprisoned, not escaping until after the fall of Robespierre. It is told that as he fled through a pass of the Alps he heard his own song. "'What is the name of that hymn?' he asked his guide. 'The Marseillaise,' was the peasant's reply. It was then that he learned the name of his own work. He was pursued by the enthusiasm which he had scattered ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... What other king is possible? You are surely not of those who weave dreams about Orleans? He has a sort of party, a following largely recruited by the popular hatred of the Queen and the known fact that she hates him. There are some who have thought of making him regent, some even more; Robespierre is ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... such an insinuation are innumerable. In the first place, the evidence of dates; in the second place, the admission of all the different parties in France; of the friends of Brissot charging on Robespierre the war with this country, and of the friends of Robespierre charging it on Brissot; but both acquitting England; the testimonies of the French Government during the whole interval, since the declaration of Pilnitz, and the ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... consequence; men, and women at their best and worst were working out the awful ends of Fate. In the large mansion yonder, the wisest, greatest, simplest of mankind—by times Diogenes and Cromwell, Lafayette and Robespierre was, in jest and joke, mirth and sadness, working out his own and a people's sublime destiny. It was to this curiously unequal personage that Mrs. Sprague, after fruitless pleading with her husband's friends, came finally to secure action on behalf of her son. There was little of the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... kind, and quite as effective as Mr. Randall's, might be made against Jefferson. His letters contain predictions of disaster in case of the success of his opponents, and the Federalists spoke as harshly of him as he of them. They charged him with being a disciple of Robespierre, said that he was in favor of anarchy, and would erect a guillotine in every market-place. He called them monarchists, and said they sighed after King, Lords, and Commons. Neither charge will be believed. The heads of the Federalists were safe after the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... sent to them; do they love much the Commissioners, who from time to time, come among them with the orders of the Assembly. Do the people in the Bocage wish it?—do they wish it in the Marais, Charette?—do they wish it in Anjou and Brittany? Danton, Robespierre, and Tallien wish it—the mob of Paris wishes it—but the people of France does not ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... assume the same type; for, while in Germany it was a general disbelief in the authenticity of the Scriptures, in France it was the rejection of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul. Even Robespierre testified before the French National Convention of 1794, that "the idea of a supreme Being and of the immortality of the soul, was a continual call to justice, and that no nation could succeed without the recognition of these truths." A revolution in Christendom, which has ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... rushed out of the temple with an olive-branch in his hand,'" Madigan began again, all the ardor gone from his voice. "'This was Hasdrubal, the commander-in-chief, and the Robespierre of the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... his degree; and presently we find him with the youthful Southey,—a kindred spirit, who had been fired to wild enthusiasm by the French Revolution,—founding his famous Pantisocracy for the regeneration of human society. "The Fall of Robespierre," a poem composed by the two enthusiasts, is full of the new revolutionary spirit. The Pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susquehanna, was to be an ideal community, in which the citizens combined farming ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... arms of FitzGerald. In 1816 Mr. Purcell went to France, and for a time settled with his family at St. Germains. FitzGerald in later life would often speak of the royal hunting parties which he remembered seeing in the forest. They afterwards removed to Paris, occupying the house in which Robespierre had once lived, and here FitzGerald had for his drillmaster one of Napoleon's Old Guard. Even at this early period the vivacious humour which afterwards characterized him appears to have shewn itself, for his father writing to some friends ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... composing his attack upon it. The year 1790 was precisely the time when the hopes of the best men in France shone most brightly, and seemed most reasonable. There had been disorders, and Paris still had ferocity in her mien. But Robespierre was an obscure figure on the back benches of the Assembly. Nobody had ever heard of Danton. The name of Republic had never been so much as whispered. The king still believed that constitutional monarchy would leave him ...
— Burke • John Morley
... hypothesis of God to prove my good-will towards a multitude of sects, whose opinions I do not share, but whose malice I fear:— theists; I know one who, in the cause of God, would be ready to draw sword, and, like Robespierre, use the guillotine until the last atheist should be destroyed, not dreaming that that atheist would be himself;— mystics, whose party, largely made up of students and women marching under the banner of MM. Lamennais, Quinet, Leroux, and others, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... had disenthralled themselves. Fearful as the latter may have been, it did not equal the atrocities previously committed on the Haytians by the French. And the massacre was restricted to the white French inhabitants, whom Dessalines, the Robespierre of the island, suspected of an attempt to bring back slavery, with the aid of a French force yet hovering in ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... constitution flourish in the very foyer of gourmands, in the fatherland of Very, of Vefour, and of Careme? This latter would certainly have thrown himself, like Vatel, on his sword, as a Brutus of cookery and as the last gastronome. Indeed, had Robespierre only introduced Spartan cookery, the guillotine would have been quite superfluous, for then the last aristocrats would have died of terror, or emigrated as soon as possible. Poor Robespierre! you would introduce stern republicanism to Paris—to a city in which one hundred and fifty ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... taken our places to Chalons and were obliged to pass on. You, I believe, staid some time there, but, alas! how different now! The Army of rescue was encamped for some time in its neighbourhood, and the many respectable families who lived in or near it rendered it a sad prey to the hand of Robespierre. Its Churches and Convents are in a deplorable state, even as those of this still more unfortunate Town. The best Houses are shut up, and its finest Buildings are occupied by the Military. We left on the morning of the 11th, travelled ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Legislative Assembly formed the actual basis of subsequent plans for education, were among the first additions to its membership. Other prominent members who came in later were Sieyes, Petion, Gregoire, Robespierre, and the Duke de la Rochefoucauld. Mirabeau issued the early publications of the society as supplements to his journal; at a later time Brissot's journal, the "Patriote francaise," became ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... raw material. It is not for them to will their own improvement. They are not capable of it; according to Saint Just, it is only the legislator who is. Men are merely to be what he wills that they should be. According to Robespierre, who copies Rousseau literally, the legislator is to begin by assigning the aim of the institutions of the nation. After this, the Government has only to direct all its physical and moral forces towards this end. All this time the nation itself is to remain perfectly passive; and ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... workroom, encountered Miss Ella Sweeney, of Klein & Company, Des Moines, Iowa, stepping out of the elevator. A very skittish Miss Sweeney, rustling, preening, conscious of her dangling black earrings and her Robespierre collar and her beauty-patch. Emma McChesney met this apparition with outstretched, ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... by every person who has hitherto written about him; and the writer who makes this remark, himself describes the affair incorrectly and vaguely. Others have attributed Bonaparte's misfortune to a military discussion on war, and his connection with Robespierre the younger. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... it. The next century, if I'm not mistaken, will see a pretty big flare up of a revolution; and the soul will come out on top. Robespierre and Martin Luther won't be in it, Jewdwine, with the poets of ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... good fortune of the humble student whom the storm passes over. In the hour of danger, too, some friend who keeps a quiet eye upon its safety may interpose at the critical moment. The treasures of the French libraries were certainly in terrible danger when Robespierre had before him the draft of a decree, that "the books of the public libraries of Paris and the departments should no longer be permitted to offend the eyes of the republic by shameful marks of servitude." The word would have gone forth, and a good deal beyond the ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... French town in the dep. of Pas-de-Calais, long celebrated for its tapestry; the birthplace of Damiens and Robespierre. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which their commanding officer, after an unavailing attempt to look serious—I should rather write fierce joined, and there he was, the bloody Davoust—Duke of Auerstad Prince of Eckmuhl—the Hamburgh Robespierre—the terrible Davoust—dancing all around the room, in a regular guffaw, like to split his sides. The heated stove had made his sword, which rested on it, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... same day the new Parliament, the Convention, began its deliberations. In its first sitting it abolished royalty, and proclaimed the republic. And already Robespierre, who played so terrible a part in our revolution, was beginning to take a prominent ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... attacking the Hotel de Ville; and, as every person at that period took some model for imitation, one copied Saint-Just, another Danton, another Marat; as for him, he tried to be like Blanqui, who imitated Robespierre. His black gloves, and his hair brushed back, gave him a rigid ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the "plain people" are the chief concern of government was the bed rock of all his political thinking. The mature, historic Lincoln is first of all a leader of the plain people—of the mass—as truly as was Cleon, or Robespierre, or Andrew Jackson. His gentleness does not remove him from that stern category. The latent fanaticism that is in every man, or almost every man, was grounded in Lincoln, on his faith—so whimsically expressed—that God must have loved the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... dying gladiator to his friend; "would I could bequeath it to thee!" And our caustic Diogenes withholds the lash. As the history proceeds, Danton is elevated to the place of hero. He is put in strong contrast with Robespierre. The one is raised into simple admiration, the other sunk into mere contempt; both are spared the just execration which their crimes have merited. The one good quality of Danton is, that, like Mirabeau, he had an eye—did not see through logic spectacles—had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... creed; but d'Artagnan has mellowed into a man so witty, rough, kind, and upright, that he takes the heart by storm. There is nothing of the copy-book about his virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine, natural civility; he will sail near the wind; he is no district visitor—no Wesley or Robespierre; his conscience is void of all refinement whether for good or evil; but the whole man rings true like a good sovereign. Readers who have approached the "Vicomte," not across country, but by the legitimate, five-volumed avenue of the "Mousquetaires" and "Vingt Ans Apres," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of sand fiercely blown against the window panes, the President and the Senate chanted the immortal Yankee Doodle, whilst the House delivered itself of the Marseillaise, in a style which even the wildest Jacobins in Robespierre's ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... but of immortality, originates and preserves religions. In the midst of the delirium of destruction, Robespierre induced the Convention to declare the existence of the Supreme Being and "the consolatory principle of the immortality of the soul," the Incorruptible being dismayed at the idea of having himself one day ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... Goethe, Oken, Bates, Wallace, Lecoq, Von Baer, Robert Chambers, Matthew, and Herbert Spencer. Depend upon it, no one man ever yet of himself discovered anything. As well say that Luther made the German Reformation, that Lionardo made the Italian Renaissance, or that Robespierre made the French Revolution, as say that Charles Darwin, and Charles Darwin alone, made the evolutionary movement, even in the restricted field of life only. A thousand predecessors worked up towards ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... or uninfluenced by her genius. Yet no falsehood or trickery debased, no meanness sullied her. "She was the angel of the cause she espoused, the soul of honor, and the conscience of all who embraced it." When Robespierre overthrew the Girondists, Roland, with others of his party, saved his life by a flight to Rouen. His wife was soon sentenced to death by the infamous Fouquier Tinville. She rode to the guillotine clad in white, her glossy black hair hanging down to her girdle, and ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... and Virginia," was written at Paris, amidst the horrors of Robespierre's tyranny. During that gloomy epocha it was difficult to find occupations which might cheat the days of calamity of their weary length. Society had vanished; and amidst the minute vexations of Jacobinical despotism, which, while it murdered in mass, persecuted in detail, the resources of ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre |
