The Great French Revolution 1789-1793 by Pëtr Kropotkin

Author:Pëtr Kropotkin [Kropotkin, Pëtr]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TheAnarchistLibrary.org
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

[150]^ “If there exist,” he said, “men who are working nou to establish the Republic upon the ruins of the Constitution, the arm of the law should punish them, as well as the active partisans of the two Chambers and the counter-revolutionists at Coblentz.”

[151]^ Madame Jullien to her son (Journal d'unc bourgeoise, p. I70). If the letters of Madame Jullien may be incorrect in some small details, they are still most valuable for this penod, because they tell exactly what revolutionary Pans was saying and thinking on such and such days.

[152]^ Lally-Tollendal, in a letter which he addressed to the King of Prussia in 1793, claiming the liberation of Lafayette, enumerated the services that the cunning general had rendered to the Court. After the King had been brought back to Pans from Varennes in June I791, the principal leaders in the Constituent Assembly met to decide whether the King should not be tried and the Republic established. Lafayette said to them: “If you kill the King, I warn you that the next day I and the National Guard will proclaim the Pnnce Royal.” “He belongs to us, we must forget everything,” said Madame Elisabeth (the sister of Louis XVI') in June I791, to Madame de Tonnerre, when speaking of Lafayette; and in the beginning of July 1792, Lafayette wrote to the King, who replied to him. In this letter, dated July 8, he proposed to organise the King's escape. He was to come on the 15th, with fifteen squadrons and eight pieces of horse artillery, to receive the King at Compiegne. Lally-Tollendal, a royalist in virtue of a sort of religion that was hereditary in his family, as he said himself, confirmed what follows, on his conscience: “His [Lafayette's] proclamations to the army, his famous letter to the Legislative body, his unexpected appearance at the bar after the terrible day of June 10; nothing of this was unknown to the, nothing was do without my participation.... The day after his arrival in Paris, I spent part of the night with him we were discussing whether war shockedd be declared against the Jacobins in Paris itself — war, in the full meaningg of the word.” Their plan was to unite “all the landowners who were dissatisfied, and all the oppressed who were numerous,” and to proclaim: No Jacobins, and no Coblentz: to lead the people to the Jacobin Club, “to arrest their leaders, seize their papers, and pull down their house.” M. de Lafayette strongly desired this; he had said to the King, “We must destroy thc Jacobins physically and morally. His timid friends were opposed to this. He swore to me that he would, at least, on returning to his army, immediately set to work to find means for the King's deliverance.” This letter of Lally-Tollendal's is given in full by Buchez and Roux, vol. xvii. p. 227 et seq. And yet in spite of all, “the commissioners sent to Lafayette after August 10 by the leaders of the Assembly had instructions to offer him the first place in the new order of things.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.