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7 i * - m ^^ - ^^ : ' ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ S ^ xSl ^ -dCo . M Loots Bunc ' s impartiality is almost austere . l a this volume he t ouches the most difficult parts of his great subject , the revolutionary schism , Sfpro ^ mme of the coalesc ed klngs-the events of August and Sep . terober , the defence of France by its improvised army , and the trial of the Kinir No passages of history have been more frequently treated , or from more opposite points of view . Partisans have done their best , and compilers their worst , to darken and confuse them . Nothing was more natural . There were great interests , ideas , passions , to inflame the partisan ; astonishing incidents to tempt the compiler . There were materials for all classes of writers for the speculatist and the epigrammatist—for the dramatist and the dissertator—for narratives that glitter as they flow , like those of M . de Lamnrtine , and for the picturesque paradoxes of M . Michelet . M . Louis Blanc brings a new method , and some new matter to the task . His plan is to narrate upon a basis of criticism , —to construct , as it were , a channel , with solid banks of authority and reference , of comparison and proof , and to pour through this a coloured and scenic relation , bright with the dramatic phenomena of the revolution , alive with its spirit , warm with its tumultuous emotions . M . Louis Blanc ' s pen and his spirit have been tempered by exile . He is less passionate , he uses fewer apostrophes , he displays his individuality wore seldom than formerly . If he has still some sins of manner , they consist in the occurrence of abrupt interjectional phrases and tragic attitudes of style . It was not easy , however , to compose a vivid narrative , and to observe the severity of justice—least of all was it easy to an historian who is at the same time a politician . No French politician can be personally indifferent to the decisions of his contemporaries , on the questions here investigated . As the events and characters of the great revolution are appreciated in our own times , so do opinions vary on the policy then initiated in France , but which it is left to the second half of the nineteenth century to develope . It is , therefore , M . Louis Blanc ' s highest claim to praise that he separates himself from the revolution , and judges it without considering the interests on either side . Had he written of Greece he could not have written more freely . He treats Robespierre as justly as he could have treated Cleon , and is no more exasperated against Peltier than the wildest Classic might be against Aristophanes . The Mountain and the Gironde , the Terrorists , and they who provoked the terror—the Party of the Monarchy , and of the Revolution , are considered from an independent point of view . This being an historian ' s rarest quality , deserves to be praised with particular emphasis . M . Louis Blanc ' s work has , however , other characteristics almost equally remarkable . It is based , to a considerable extent , upon new materials , and corrects , in very essential points , M . Lamartine ' s generalisations and M . Michelet ' s paradoxical summaries . A large presentation and lucid analysis of documentary evidence , an exact quotation of authorities , a judicial comparison of testimony , and an inquiry into the character of the witnesses cited , give to the book a completeness as well as an authenticity possessed by no previous history of the French Revolution . M . Louis Blanc is indebted to his exile for the discovery , in the British Museum , of two valuable collections , with a classified catalogue of publications and manuscripts relating to the French Revolution . . The materials exist in the most varied forms—pamphlets , orations , reports of trials , satires , songs , statistics , proclamations , and placards . These refer to every conceivable topic—to the Parliaments , to the States-general , to public works , to education , to the clubs , to the civic festivals , to the prisons , and to the different personages of the political drama . Sixty-four volumes of " Facetiae " remain as memorials of that convulsive vivacity which , during the deepest agony of the crisis , lit up , with lurid rays , the society of Paris . Even more curious is the collection of journals , under all possible appellations—Friends , Defenders , Scourges , Voices , Trumpets , exhibiting the fierceness , the ambition , the eccentricity of the Revolution . The event 3 of the tenth of August , which resulted in the suspension of the King ' s authority , and the installation of Danton , as minister , have been characterised by successive and conflicting writers . Into the popular versions of the story innumerable errors have crept , and these , for the most part , are traceable to Peltier ' s pamphlet issued in London in 1792 , as " The late Preture of Paris ; or , a Faithful Narrative of the devolution of the Tenth of August . " M . Louis Blanc says : " refute Pether—whose recital was the most complete that appealed—is to refute those who , coming after him , have been little more than hia copyists . " From this he proceeds to dispose of Peltier ' s servile statements , proving that the Swiss guard was ordered by the King ' s officers to attack the people in the rear , and to strike tenor b y slaughter , and that the policy of the Court was to hold out against the nation , at all hazards , until ts foreign friends arrived and presented to Paris the alternative of submission or destruction . The programme of the Coalition , announced in the manifesto of Coblentz , is epitomised by M . Louis Blanc . It stated : " That the Allies would maroh to put an end to anarchy in France , to save tho throne , to defend the altar , and to restore to the King his liberty and power . " That until the arrival of the combined armies , the national guard and tho authorities should be hold responsible for all disorders . " That they should be invited to return to their anoient fidelity . " That thoae citizens who dared to defend themselves should be punished on the spot , as rebels , and their houses demolished or burned . " That if the oity of Paris did not sot the King completely at liberty and yield him the respect whioh was his due , the coalesced princes would hold responsible , personally , and at the peril of their lives— -to be judged by martial law , without hope of pardon—all the members of the National Assembly , of tho Department , of the District , of the Municipality , of the National Guard . " That if the palace were broken into or outraged , the coalesced princes would enforce a signal revenge , by giving up Paris to a military massaoro , and to total subvention . " It was this , the most nefarious project ever conceived , that was the proximate cause of the Reign of Terror . Nothing could exceed the horror and astonishment of tho people of Paris , when they learned that tho King and Queen trusted for deliverance to the consummation of this anti-national plot . No man know at what hour St . Bartholomew might be re-enacted . Then
the revolutionists committed their folly and their crime , and antici ] Royalist Terror by the Republican . M . Louis Blanc deals judicial harshly—with the Terrorists of September . But he does not forget system of massacre began under the Court—that with the Court i initiation of ferocity , with the people a policy of revenge : " On the 27 th of August Paris was in mourning . That day was the i the dead . Sargent was its orator , Chenier its poet , and Gcmfrec onci musician . Nothing more sombre or more terrible was ever behelc 1 . 1 phagus of the victims of the tenth of August drawn through the st : train of oxen , in the ancient style—the long procession of orphans am in white robes with , black girdles—the horseman who waved solemnly t upon a flag , a legend of massacres , the names of citizens immolated at Nismes , at Montauban , at Avignon , at Chapelle , and on the Champs simultaneously invoked and incited to this funeral of martyrs , —the sw by the image of the law—the perfumes that rose about the biers—the tl shouts of the workmen , and the lamentations of the women ; all this e : populace to frenzy . Even tlie place chosen for this manifestation cc to its terrors . Here , in the garden of the Tuileries , the blanches broken by bullets , the flower beds had been' obliterated by tramplinj flowers had been swept from their stems . " The combined armies advanced . Treason cleared their path , surrendered , and every leader of the Coalition—the Duke o : wick excepted—relied upon a victorious march to Paris . Paris ki to expect from those champions of society . " Already , compass in hand , the Royalists measured the dista Verdun to the capital ; already their wives prepared white handkerchi they remind us of 1815 !)—to welcome the profanation of Paris . Tha spii-ators of the Throne and the altar were registered , organised , dr sections , there could be no doubt ; for the trial of Collor d'Angre thrown a sinister light upon these machinations . And against suspecte how shall I describe it ?—demonstrated perfidy—what protection w The . public tribunals connived with , the accused ; the High Court i condemn . " M .-Louis Blanc cites examples ' of tergiversation on the part of th < courts of justice . He then depicts the state of the capital , with a ^ hourly expected to pour into its streets , and to fill them with ra slaughter . The enemy they awaited , however , was not one tl attacking the nation , the government , the monarchy , and all Fr His forces had been invited by the King , and the Parisians saw , w own city , a class of men exulting over the prospect of the slaughter does not justify , does it not explain , the madness of the ensuing da gates were closed , the citizens were under arms , the patriots were to the frontier : "An immense black flag was displayed above the Hotel de Ville ; of the bells , the roll of drums , the quickening succession oi artillery rt clamours of the women , the volunteers departing to die , plunged Pi melancholy delirium . " Well ! " they cried , as they went , trembling " Since we must perish , since liberty has no mei'cy to expect , since pc whelms justice , since the end of the world is come , let not one enen behind us to trample on our families , and to triumph in this dread dis Keeping close to his authorities , M . Louis Blanc now enters on t of the September massacres . His critics have already said that he 1 the narration . Royalist writers had long rendered their versions by describing impossible acts ; but the vulgar e ditions of the his run a lengthened course , and much criticism is yet needed to efface " Such an agitation could not prevail in Paris without reaching tl Early in the morning the jailer of the Abbaye had removed his wife an < ¦—a fact which proves that he participated in the general alarm , which \ va natural—but by no means , as the Royalist historians pretend , that the had its accredited director and its concerted plan . In the same fact c explanations of another mis-represented circumstance . It is affirmed , o that the prisoner ' s dinner-hour bad been delayed ; and , on the other , knives were taken from them . But to prove , from this circumstanc tematic barbarity with which so many writers have completed th romance , it must be shown that the same thing happened in . the othi Now , nothing of the kind took place . But that which demonstrates phatically that the turnkeys only learned what was passing , at in fragments of public rumour reached them , is the fact that at La Force , Joinville , did not know until two o ' clock of the great dangers in whic was enveloped , while at the Chdtelet ( and this is more remarkable jailer was only informed of the massacres at four o ' clock , —that is to they had commenced . No , it did not exist—that cold , systematic , in meditation , which would multiply a hundred-fold the horrors of horrible already ! No , the positive absence of all deliberation , the fand fury of the common impulse , the alternations of rage and pity , tli contradictory passions—all this excludes the idea of a guiding sohe suggestive of the work of chance and frenzy . " But M . Louis Blanc , though he extenuates , does not defend tember executions . He knows that it has been the misfortune of be allied , sometimes , with the memory of violent crimes . Sin < history of the world , despotisms have been general , nnd free sta < tional , the majority of fashionable writers , in all ages , have d exaggerating rhetoric on such events as the French Revolution . ( with the massacres and proscriptions which have emanated fron governments , they become , of course , significant ; but M . Louis I not attempt to conceal that tho Parisians became maniacs , and i plan of wholesale assassination , which the royalist party had not mitted , though it avowed the design . He relieves tho narrative of executions ol that melodramatic atrocity , which forms the subject ( little books , and so many largo pictures . Thus , even the aspei courts of justice have been grossly caricatured . The president is r < sitting , in a grey coat , before a desk covered with papers , pipes , nn around him stand ten men , some in aprons , with bare arms , otln drowsily on benches . At the door are two republicans , in bloot Blurts—near them a homy jailor with his hand upon tho bolt . Si royalist—anonymous—picture . M . Louis Blanc , upon authenticate ! affirms a totally different statement , and shews that the trials were soberly , and that numbers of the accused were acquitted amid ac (
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- w ' THE LEADER . [ No . 297 , Saturi
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 1, 1855, page 1156, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2117/page/16/
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