Louis XV. was dead, and two children, with the light-heartedness of
youth and inexperience, stepped upon the throne which was to be a
scaffold--Louis XVI., only twenty, and Marie Antoinette, his wife,
nineteen. He, amiable, kind, full of generous intentions; she,
beautiful, simple, child-like, and lovely. Instead of a debauched old
king with depraved surroundings, here were a prince and princess out of
a fairy tale. The air was filled with indefinite promise of a new era
for mankind to be inaugurated by this amiable young king, whose
kindness of heart shone forth in his first speech, "We will have no
more loans, no credit, no fresh burdens on the people;" then, leaving
his ministers to devise ways of paying the enormous salaries of
officials out of an empty treasury, and to arrange the financial
details of his benevolent scheme of government, he proceeded with his
gay and brilliant young wife to Rheims, there to be crowned with a
magnificence undreamed of by Louis XIV.
In the midst of these rejoicings over the new reign, and of speculative
dreams of universal freedom, there was wafted across the Atlantic news
of a handful of patriots arrayed against the tyranny of the British
Crown. Here were the theories of the new philosophy translated into
the reality of actual experience. "No taxation without
representation," "No privileged class," "No government without the
consent of the governed." Was this not an embodiment of their dreams?
Nor did it detract from the interest in the conflict that
England--England, the hated rival of France--was defied by an indignant
people of her own race. There was not a young noble in the land who
would not have rushed, if he could, to the defence of the outraged
colonies.
The king, half doubting, and vaguely fearing, was swept into the
current, and the armies and the courage of the Americans were
splendidly reinforced by generous, enthusiastic France.
Why should the simple-hearted Louis see what no one else seemed to see:
that victory or failure was alike full of peril for France? If the
colonies were conquered, France would feel the hostility of England; if
they were freed and self-governing, the principle of monarchy had a
staggering blow.
In the mean time, as the American Revolution moved on toward success,
there was talk in the cabin as well as the chateau of the "rights of
man." In shops and barns, as well as in clubs and drawing-rooms, there
was a glimmering of the coming day.
"What is true upon one continent is true upon another," say they. "If
it is cowardly to submit to tyranny in America, what is it in France?"
"If Englishmen may revolt against oppression, why may not Frenchmen?"
"No government without the consent of the governed?--When has our
consent been asked, the consent of twenty-five million people? Are we
sheep, that we have let a few thousands govern us for a thousand years,
without our consent?"
Poverty and hunger gave force and urgency to these questions. The
people began to clamor more boldly for the good time which had been
promised by the kind-hearted king. The murmur swelled to an ominous
roar. Thousands were at his very palace gates, telling him in no
unmistakable terms that they were tired of smooth words and fair
promises. What they wanted was a new constitution and--bread.
Poor Louis! the one could be made with pen and paper; but by what
miracle could he produce the other? How gladly would he have given
them anything. But what could he do? There was not enough money to
pay the salaries of his officials, nor for his gay young queen's fêtes
and balls! The old way would have been to impose new taxes. But how
could he tax a people crying at his gates for bread? He made more
promises which he could not keep; yielded, one after another,
concessions of authority and dignity; then vacillated, and tried to
return over the slippery path, only to be dragged on again by an
irresistible fate.
Louis' Minister of Finance, Turgot, was a trained economist and a man
of very great ability. When Louis assured the people, in the speech
after his coronation, that there were to be "no more loans, no fresh
burdens on the people," he did not know how Turgot was going to
accomplish this miracle. He was unaware that it was to be done by
cutting off the cherished privileges of the nobility, and that the
proposed reforms were all aimed at the privileged classes. When this
became apparent, indignation was great at Versailles. The court would
not hear of economy. Turgot was dismissed, and Necker, a Swiss banker
(father of Madame de Staël), called to fill his place.
Necker made another mistake. He took the people into his confidence,
let them know the sources of revenue, the nature of expenditures, and
measures of relief. This was very quieting to the public, but
exasperating to the privileged classes, who had never taken the people
into their confidence, and considered it an impertinence for them to
inquire how the moneys were spent. And so Louis, again yielding to the
pressure at Versailles, dismissed Necker; then, in the outburst of rage
which followed, tried to retrace his steps and recall him.
But events were moving too swiftly for that now. In the existing
temper of the people, small reforms and concessions were unavailing.
They were demanding that the States General be called.
The critical moment had come. If Louis of his own initiative had
summoned that body to confer over the situation, it would have been a
very different thing; but a call of the States-General at the _demand
of the people_ was a virtual surrender of the very principle of
absolutism. The work of Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIV. would be
undone; for it would involve an acknowledgment of the right of the
people to dictate to the king, and to participate in the government of
the nation. The whole revolutionary contention was vindicated in this
act.
The call was issued; and when Louis, in 1789, convoked the States
General, he made his last concession to the demands of his subjects.
That almost-forgotten body had not been seen since Richelieu effaced
all the auxiliary functions of government. Nobles, ecclesiastics, and
_Tiers État_ (or commons) found themselves face to face once more. The
courtly contemptuous nobles, the princely ecclesiastics were unchanged,
but there was a new expression in the pale faces of the commons. There
was a look of calm defiance as they met the disdainful gaze of the
aristocrats across the gulf of two centuries.
The two superior bodies absolutely refused to sit in the same room with
the commons. They might under the same roof, but in the same
room--never.
There was an historic precedent for this refusal. The three estates
had always acted as three separate bodies. So the demand in itself was
an encroachment upon the ancient dignity of the two superior bodies,
which they resented. But they might better have yielded. The _Tiers
État_ with dignity and firmness insisted that they should meet and vote
together as one body, or they would constitute themselves a separate
body, and act independently of the other two. This was the Rubicon.
On one side compromise, and possible co-operation of the three
legislative bodies; on the other, revolution, in charge of the people.
Aristocratic France was offered its last chance, and committed its last
act of arrogance and folly. The ultimatum was refused by the nobles
and clergy. And the _Tiers État_ declared itself the National
Assembly, in which was vested all the legislative authority of the
kingdom. The people had taken possession of the Government of France!
The predetermined destruction of the monarchy seems evident, when at
the most critical point, and at the moment calling for the most careful
retrenchment and reform, fate had placed Louis XV., acting like a
madman in the excesses of his profligacy; and, at the next stage, while
the last opportunity still existed by main force to drag the nation
back, and hold it from going over the brink, there stood the most
excellent, the kindest-hearted but weakest gentleman who ever wore the
name of king! When the distracted Louis gave the impotent order for
the National Assembly to disperse, and for the three bodies to assemble
and vote separately, according to ancient custom; and then when he gave
still further proof of childish incompetency by telling the _Tiers
État_ they were "not to meddle with the privileges of the higher
orders," kingship had become a mockery. It was a child telling the
tornado not to come in that direction.
When the king's herald read to the National Assembly this foolish
message, ending with the formula, "You hear, gentlemen, the orders of
the king," Mirabeau sprang to his feet, saying, "Go, tell your master
we are here by the will of the people, and will be only removed at the
point of the bayonet," the pitiful king then yielding to this defiance,
even begging the nobles and deputies of the clergy to join the National
Assembly--a revolutionary assembly, which was holding its meetings in
his own Palace of Versailles, and which was every day gravitating from
its original lofty purpose; its rallying cry for justice and reform of
abuses changing to "Down with the Aristocrats!" It was becoming
alarming, so Louis ordered the body to disperse; and when soldiers
stood at the door to prevent its assembling, it took possession of the
queen's tennis court, and there each member took a solemn oath not to
dissolve until the object they sought had been secured.
There were some among the clergy and the nobles who realized the
necessity for reforms, and who would gladly have joined a movement
inaugurated in a different spirit. Hence, partly from alarm, and
partly impelled by other reasons and purposes, more or less pure, there
was finally a secession from the two aristocratic bodies; the Duke of
Orleans, cousin of the king, leading the movement in one, and three
archbishops in the other. These, with their followers, appeared among
the _Tiers État_ as converts to the popular cause, the Marquis de
Lafayette, hero of the late American War, sitting next to Mirabeau, the
powerful and eloquent leader of the whole movement in its first days.
Concerning the genius of Mirabeau there is no difference of opinion.
All are agreed that intellectually he towered far above every one about
him. But whether he was the incarnation of good or of evil, the world
is still in doubt;-and also whether he could have guided the forces he
had invoked, if a premature death had not swept him off from the scene,
leaving Robespierre, a man concerning whom there is no disagreement of
opinion, to guide the storm.
Paris was becoming wild with excitement. Clubs and associations were
in every quarter, and detachments of a Parisian mob marched and sang at
night, firing the hearts of the rabble. But it was the Palais Royal,
the home of the Duke of Orleans, that friend of the people, which was
the heart of the whole movement. There, patriots and lovers of France,
their hearts aflame with noble aspiration for their country, met with
schemers without heart, more or less wicked, the Camille Desmoulins and
the Marats all fused into one body under the leadership of the Duke of
Orleans, cousin of the king, who, rising superior to aristocratic
traditions, believed in _Equality_, and was the man of the
people--_Philippe Egalité_! His young son Louis Philippe perhaps
listened with wonder to the sounds of strange revelry and the wild
shouts which greeted the eloquence of Camille Desmoulins and of Marat.
At last a rumor reached the Palais Royal, and from there ran through
the streets like an electric current, that the king's soldiers were
marching upon the Assembly to disperse it. Mad with wine and
excitement, a common impulse seized the entire populace, to destroy the
Bastille, that old stronghold of despotism, that symbol of royal
tyranny. This prison-fortress, with its eight great round towers, and
moat eighty-three feet wide, had stood since 1371, and represented more
tragic human experiences than any structure in France. In an hour the
doors were burst open, and before the sun went down the heads of the
governor and his officials were being carried on pikes through the
streets of Paris. The horrible drama had opened. The tiger in the
slums had tasted blood, and would want it again.
Thus far it was only an insurgent mob, committing violence, and the
National Assembly at once created a body of militia, under the
direction of Lafayette, for the protection of Paris.
When the news of the fall of the Bastille reached Versailles, the king,
still failing to realize the gravity of the situation, exclaimed, "Then
it is a revolt!" "Sire," said the Duke de Liancourt, "it is a
Revolution!"
The king found himself deserted. His terrified nobles almost in a body
were fleeing from the kingdom. Bewildered, not knowing what to do, or
what not to do, and desiring to assure the people that he was their
friend, he appeared before the National Assembly and made the last
sacrifice--accepted the Tricolor; adopted the livery of the
revolutionary party! The act was received with immense enthusiasm, and
the outlook became more reassuring.
Then the garrison at the palace was reenforced by a regiment from the
country, and a dinner was given to welcome the new officers. The king
and queen were urged to enter the room for a few moments, simply as an
act of courtesy. Marie Antoinette most reluctantly consented to pass
through the banqueting-hall. The officers, when they saw the beautiful
daughter of Maria Theresa, sprang to their feet, and, flushed with
wine, and in a transport of enthusiasm, committed a fatal act.
Throwing their tricolors under the table, they drank to the toast,
"_The king forever_!"
When this was reported in Paris the storm burst anew. A thousand
terrible women, led by one still more terrible than the rest, started
for Versailles. This crowd of base and degraded beings, re-enforced on
the way by all that is worst, arrived at the palace, and the howling
mob encamped outside in the rain all night. Entrance at last was found
by someone, and they were inside and at the queen's door; she barely
escaping by a hidden passageway leading to the king's room.
"The king to Paris!" was the cry; and in the morning the wretched Louis
appeared upon the balcony and indicated his willingness to go to Paris
as they desired. And then the queen, hoping to touch their hearts,
also appeared upon the balcony, holding in her arms the dauphin, with
the tricolor on his breast. And with this horrible escort they did go
back to Paris, leaving Versailles forever, and were virtually prisoners
at the Tuileries.
The position of Lafayette at this time is a singular one: an agent of
the National Assembly, protecting the king from the Jacobins, and
saying to Robespierre and Marat, "If you kill the king to-day, I will
place the dauphin on the throne to-morrow."
But the currents of a cataract nearing the fall are difficult to guide.
Three parties were forming in the National Assembly: the _Girondists_,
the party of genius and eloquence and of moderation; the _Jacobins_,
the party of the extremists and radicals; and a third party, undecided,
waiting to see what was safest and best.
All that was noble and true and fine in the French Revolution was in
the party of the Girondists. Dreamers, idealists, their dream was of a
republic like the one in America, and their ideal an impossible
perfection of condition in which human reason was supreme. The
excesses of the Revolution they did not approve, but were willing to
sacrifice the king and even the royal family, if necessary. They did
not realize the forces with which they were airily playing, nor that
the time was at hand when the Girondists would vainly strive to
restrain the horrible excesses; that, after they had sacrificed the
royal family, the Jacobins would sacrifice them; the slayers would be
slain!
Lafayette, neither a Girondist nor a Jacobin, was a loyal Frenchman and
patriot, with the American ideal in his heart, vainly trying to mediate
between a feeble king and a people who had lost their reason. The time
was near when he would give up the hopeless task and flee to escape
being himself engulfed.
A wretchedly planned attempt at the escape of the royal family
aggravated the situation. They were recognized at Varennes, brought
back with great indignity, and placed under closer surveillance than
before. On the 10th of August, 1792, the mob attacked the Tuileries.
The royal family fled to the National Assembly for protection, while
their Swiss guards vainly defended the palace with their lives.
This was the end of the monarchy. Louis, the brave queen and her
children, and Princess Elizabeth, sister of the king, were removed from
the Assembly to the prison in "The Temple," and the National Convention
formally declared France a republic.
The grim prison to which they were taken, with its central square tower
flanked by four round towers, had stood since the time of Philip
Augustus. It was built for the Knights Templar, and was chateau,
fortress, prison, all in one, and was the home of the grand master and
those others who were burned when Philip IV. ruthlessly destroyed the
order. The central tower, one hundred and fifty feet high, had four
stories. The king and the dauphin were imprisoned in the second story,
and the queen, her young daughter, and the Princess Elizabeth in the
story above.
The power swiftly passed from Girondists to Jacobins, and a
Revolutionary Tribunal was created in charge of the terrible
triumvirate--Robespierre, Marat, and Danton.
An awful travesty upon a court of justice was established in that
historic hall in the Palais de Justice. Its walls, which had looked
down upon generations of Merovingian, Carlovingian, and Capetian kings,
now beheld the condemnation of the most innocent and well-intentioned
of all the kings of France.
The king was arraigned at this court upon the charge of treason,
convicted, and condemned to die on the 21st of January, 1793. He was
allowed to embrace for the last time his adored wife and children. At
the scaffold he tried to speak a last word to his people. The drums
were ordered to drown his voice, and an attendant priest uttered the
words, "_Fils de Saint Louis, montez au ciel_!"--Son of Saint Louis,
ascend to heaven!--and all was over. The kindest-hearted, most
inoffensive gentleman in Europe had expiated the crimes of his
ancestors.
More and more furious swept the torrent, gathering to itself all that
was vile and outcast. Where were the pale-faced, determined patriots
who sat in the National Assembly? Some of them riding with dukes and
marquises to the guillotine. Was this the equality they expected when
they cried, "Down with the Aristocrats"?
Did they think they could guide the whirlwind after raising it? As
well whisper to the cyclone to level only the tall trees, or to the
conflagration to burn only the temples and palaces.
With restraining agencies removed, religion, government, king, all
swept away, that hideous brood born of vice, poverty, hatred, and
despair came out from dark hiding-places; and what had commenced as a
patriotic revolt had become a wild orgy of bloodthirsty demons, led by
three master-demons, Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, vying with each
other in ferocity.
Then we see that simple girl thinking by one supreme act of heroism and
sacrifice, like Joan of Arc, to save her country. Foolish child! Did
she think to slay the monster devouring Paris by cutting off one of his
heads? The death of Marat only added to the fury of the tempest, and
the falling of Charlotte Corday's head was not more noticed than the
falling of a leaf in the forest.
The slaughter of the people had been reduced to an admirable system.
The public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, went every day to the
"Committee of Public Safety" to procure the list of the proscribed, who
were immediately placed in the Conciergerie to await trial. This list
was then submitted to Robespierre, who with his pencil marked the names
of those who would be executed on the morrow.
The mockery of the trial of Charlotte Corday was not delayed. This
girl belonged to a family of the smaller nobility. In her secluded
life in the country, a mind of superior quality had fed upon the new
philosophy of the period. An enthusiasm for liberty, and a horror of
tyranny, had taken possession of her. In passionate sympathy with the
early purposes of the Revolution, Marat seemed to her a monster, the
incarnation of the spirit which would defeat the cause of Liberty. It
was believed that his list of the proscribed was not confined to Paris,
but that the names of thousands of victims all over France were already
designated. In that extraordinary scene at her trial, when questioned,
she impatiently said, "Yes, yes, I killed him. I killed one man to
save a hundred thousand!"
Nothing was lacking to make this, with one exception, the most dramatic
incident of the Revolution. Her eloquent address, to the French
people, found pinned to the waist of her dress after her execution, and
her splendid courage to the end, rounds out the picturesque story of
her useless martyrdom. A Girondist waiting in the Conciergerie, when
he heard of her crime and end, exclaimed: "It will kill us! But she
has taught us how to die!"
The end did not come so swiftly for the queen, who, after being removed
from the Temple, spent seventy-two days and nights in the dark cell in
that abode of horrors, the Conciergerie. Then came the trial, the
inquisitorial trial, lasting all through the night in the gloom of that
dimly lighted hall. And at half-past four in the morning she heard
without a tremor the terrible words, "Marie Antoinette, widow of Louis
Capet, the Tribunal condemns you to die." Not for a moment did this
intrepid woman quail; and a small detail brings before us vividly her
wonderful calmness. As she reached the stairs in her pitiful return to
her cell, she said simply to the lieutenant of the gendarmes, who was
at her side, "Monsieur, I can scarcely see (_Je vois à peine_); will
you lead me?"
In another half hour the drums were beating in every quarter in
preparation for the event; and at ten o'clock she started upon her last
ride. And how bravely she met her awful fate! We forget her follies,
her reckless extravagances, in admiration for her courage as she rides
to her death, with hands tied behind her, sitting in that hideous
tumbril, head erect, pale, proud, defiant, as if upon a throne (October
16, 1793).
The search-light of scrutiny has been turned upon this unfortunate
woman for more than a century, and all that has been discovered is that
she was pleasure-loving, indiscreet, and absolutely ignorant of the
gravity of her responsibility in the position she occupied.
In the days of her power and splendor she lived as the average woman of
her period would have done under the same circumstances--not better,
and not worse. But when the time came to try her soul and test her
mettle, she evinced a strength and dignity and composure surpassing
belief.
If there had been any evidence of the truth of the story of the diamond
necklace--a story which no doubt hastened the revolutionary crisis--it
would certainly have been used at her trial; but it was not. It will
be remembered that this necklace was one of the fatal legacies from the
reign of Louis XV., who had ordered for du Barry this gift which was to
cost a sum large enough for a king's ransom. The king died before it
was completed, and the story became current that Marie Antoinette, the
hated Austrian woman who was ruining France by her extravagance, was
negotiating for the purchase of this necklace while the people were
starving!
A network of villainy is woven about the whole incident, in which the
names of a cardinal and ladies high in rank are involved. The mystery
may never be uncovered, but every effort to connect the queen's name
with this historic scandal has failed.
Probably of all the cruelties inflicted upon this unhappy woman, none
caused her such anguish as the testimony of her son before the
Revolutionary Tribunal, that he had heard his mother say she "hated the
French people." Placed under the care of the brutal Simon after his
father's removal from the Temple, the child had become a physical and
mental wreck. The queen, in her last letter to her sister the Princess
Elizabeth, makes pitiful allusion to the incident, begging her to
remember what he must have suffered before he said this; also reminding
her how children may be taught to utter words they do not comprehend.
His lesson, no doubt, had been learned by cruel tortures; and, rendered
half imbecile, it was recited when the time came. None but his keeper
was ever permitted to see the boy. His condition, final illness, and
death are shrouded in mystery. In June, 1794, eight months after his
mother's execution, it was announced that he was dead. It would be
difficult to prove this event before a court of justice. There were no
witnesses whose testimony would have any weight. No one was permitted
to see the child who was put into that obscure grave; and many
circumstances give rise to a suspicion that the boy, who might have
been a source of political embarrassment in the rehabilitation of
France, was disposed of in another way--dropped into an obscurity which
would serve as well as death.
There was a surfeit of killing, and a waning Revolution. We are far
from saying that such a thing happened. But ambitious royalists might
have thought their money well expended in removing the son of the
murdered king from the scene. The claim of the American dauphin,
Eleazer Williams, may have been fanciful, or even false; but what safer
and more effectual plan could be devised than to drop the half-imbecile
heir to a throne into the heart of a tribe of Indians in an American
wilderness?
When Louis XVIII. occupied his brother's throne, in 1814, and erected
over the dishonored graves of his family that beautiful Chapelle
Expiatoire, he also gave orders for masses to be said for the repose of
the souls of his murdered kindred, whom he designated by name: Louis
XVI., king; Marie Antoinette, queen, and the Princess Elizabeth, his
sister. If it is true, as has been said, that the name of the dauphin
was not included in this list, it is a most suggestive omission.
Technically, this boy was king from the moment of his father's death
until his own, and on the lists of sovereigns is called Louis XVII.
Then why was there no mention of him as one of that martyred group?
Twenty-two of the Girondists who had helped to dethrone the king on
that 10th of August, and later consented to his death, were now facing
the same doom to which they had sent him only six months before, and by
a strange fatality were under the same roof with the queen. Only a few
feet, and two thin partitions, separated them; and in her cell she must
have heard their impassioned voices during that dramatic banquet, the
last night of their lives. And the next day this group of
extraordinary men--men singularly gifted and fascinating--were all
lying in one tomb, at the side of Louis XVI.
Philip Égalité, the Duke of Orleans, was to meet his Nemesis also.
Brought a prisoner to that grim resting-place, he occupied the
adjoining cell to that which had been the queen's, and, it is said, had
assigned to him the wretched cot she no longer needed. His desperate
game had failed. No elevation would come to him out of the chaos of
crime, and the reward for scheming and voting for the death of his
cousin, the king, would be a scaffold, not a throne. His name had been
upon the list of the proscribed for some time; but the end was
precipitated by an act of his young son, Louis Philippe, then Duke de
Chartres, and aide-de-camp to Dumouriez, who was defending the frontier
from an invasion of Austrian troops. After the execution of the queen,
Dumouriez refused longer to defend France from an invasion the purpose
of which was to make such horrors impossible. He laid down his
command, and, with his aide, Louis Philippe, joined the colony of
exiles in Belgium, while the Austrian troops were in full march upon
Paris from Verdun.
This was treason--whether justifiable or not this is not the place to
discuss.
Philip Égalité knew that he no longer had the confidence of the
leaders, and that they also knew that he was an aristocrat in disguise.
So when this defection of Dumouriez came, and was shared by his own
son, he tried to get out of the country. He was arrested at
Marseilles, brought to the Conciergerie, that half-way house to the
scaffold, and was soon following in the footsteps of his king and
queen, through the Rue St. Honore, passing his own Palais Royal on his
way to the Place de la Revolution.
The Revolution, beginning with a patriotic assembly, in a measure sane,
had made a rapid descent, first falling apart into Girondist and
Jacobin, moderate and extremist, the Girondist with a shudder
consenting to the execution of the king. Then, the power passing to a
so-called "Committee of Public Safety" and a Triumvirate, in order to
sweep away the obstructive Girondist; and then an untrammelled Terror,
in the hands of three, and, finally, one. Such had been its mad
course. But with the death of the king and queen, the madness had
reached its height, and a revulsion of feeling set in. There was a
surfeit of blood, and an awakening sense of horror, which turned upon
the instigators. Danton fell, and finally, when amid cries of "Death
to the tyrant!" Robespierre was dragged wounded and shivering to the
fate he had brought upon so many thousands, the drama which had opened
at the Bastille was fittingly closed.
The great battle for human liberty had been fought and won. Religious
freedom and political freedom were identical in principle. The right
of the human conscience, proclaimed by Luther in 1517, had in 1793 only
expanded into the large conception of all the inherent rights of the
_individual_.
It had taken centuries for English persistence to accomplish what
France, with such appalling violence, had done in as many years. It
had been a furious outburst of pent-up force; but the work had been
thorough. Not a germ of tyranny remained. The incrustations of a
thousand years were not alone broken, but pulverized; the privileged
classes were swept away, and their vast estates, two-thirds of the
territory of France, ready to be distributed among the rightful owners
of the soil, those who by toil and industry could win them. France was
as new as if she had no history. There was ample opportunity for her
people now. What would they do with it?
What would they build upon the ruins of their ancient despotism? What
would be the starting-point for such a task--every connecting link with
an historic past broken, and the armies of an indignant Europe pressing
in upon every side? Could they ever wipe out the stain which had made
them odious in the sight of Christendom? Would they ever be forgiven
for disgracing the name of Liberty?
It was the power and genius of a single man which was going to make the
world forget her disgrace, and cover France with a mantle more glorious
than she had ever worn.