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Brilliant Quotes. When Sieyes asked the general, Moreau, who could lead a coup; “There is your man [Bonaparte]…he will make your coup far better than I can”.
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When Sieyes asked the general, Moreau, who could lead a coup; “There is your man [Bonaparte]…he will make your coup far better than I can”.
“In seeking to relink the chain of time…we have wiped from our memory…all the evils that have afflicted the fatherland during our absence”. - Louis XVIII in preamble to 1814 Charter
Napoleon explaining the defeat of the Directory • “You yourselves destroyed it on 18th Fructidor, on 22nd Floreal [when the army purged the councils]…Nobody has any respect for it now”.
Poster in Paris After Brumaire Coup • “France wants something great and long lasting. Instability has been her downfall, and she now invokes steadiness. She has no desire for monarchy…but she does want unity in the action of the power executing laws…She wants her representatives to be peaceable conservatives, not unruly innovators. Finally, she wants to enjoy the benefits accruing from ten years of sacrifices”.
Napoleon describing the Directory’s weakness “The Directory…was overpowered by its own weakness: to exist, it needed a state of war as other governments need a state of peace” Written in exile at St Helena…!
The Enrages, extremist revolutionaries, referred to Girondins ans “the enemy of the Revolution” • 1793 July-December = “the anarchic terror” – no communication between “emergency bodies” of the Convention. • 4-5th of September 1793 Convention attacked by sans-culottes, Convention responded with radical measures, proclaiming that “Terror is the order of the Day”.
D.G Wright “What was new after September 1793 was that the terror was organised and became for the first time a deliberate policy of government”. • Terror estimates 17,000 official executions (16% in Paris, 52% in the Vendee). 28% were peasants, 31% urban workers. Figure including prison deaths = 50,000 to 60,000 (15% clergy and nobility).
During the Terror, the Notre Dame became “The Temple of Reason”. • Robespierre – “believed he knew what was best for the people of France…and this justified the means” – Waller.
Robespierre architect of the “The Great Terror”, centred on Paris. Passed law that stated “enemies of the people…[who had sought to] mislead public opinion…and corrupt the public conscience”. • Trials = death or liberty, no rights for defendants. • Summer of 1794 1,000 per month killed.
Napoleon refers to his defence of the Convention on 5th October 1795 when 25,000 Parisians attacked it, as defence with “a few shells”!
Talleyrand = “shit in stockings”, Foreign Minister to Napoleon in 1807, changed sides. • Legitimate monarchy would re-enter Paris behind those red uniforms which had just renewed their colour in Frenchmen’s blood!” - Chateaubriand
Grenville describing Napoleon as “a tiger let loose to devour mankind” • “Heads fell like slates from roofs” – Terror and Guillotine July-August 1794, 1,300 dead.
“That man has learnt nothing and has returned just as despotic, just as thirsty for conquest, in fact just as mad as ever…the whole of Europe will come down on him and he will be finished inside four months” – Fouché, Naoloeon’s former police chief.
“treason is a question of dates” – Talleyrand (i.e. General Ney shot, General Bourmont who defected to Napoleon and then back was rewarded).
“I wanted…to win the French by great things, to lead them to reality through dreams; that is what they love” – Foreign Minister Chateaubriand • “not very brilliant, but safe” description of Villèle from Yvert.
With regard to the compensation to emigres, “I don’t know what all this will lead to, but as the nobles and priests are laughing, it is sure that we will weep”. “vacous, bird slaughtering Charles X” “Had become a frivolous and pious old man” Charles described by Brogan.
British General in 1831 “a month’s campaigning would send a third of them (French army) into hospital…it would require two years to fit them for war”. • Perier “He was ignorant and brutal…these qualities saved France”.
The police agent Dutard, in a report to the minister Garat (30 April 1793), describing an episode in the Palais Egalité (Royal), adds: "Why did a dozen Jacobins strike terror into two or three hundred aristocrats? It is that the former have a rallying-point and that the latter have none".
They (The Jacobins) instituted the Terror as a means of destroying those they perceived as enemies within: "Terror", said Robespierre, "is only justice that is prompt, severe and inflexible".
On 25 December 1793 Robespierre stated: The goal of the constitutional government is to conserve the Republic; the aim of the revolutionary government is to found it... The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death... These notions would be enough to explain the origin and the nature of laws that we call revolutionary ... If the revolutionary government must be more active in its march and more free in his movements than an ordinary government, is it for that less fair and legitimate? No; it is supported by the most holy of all laws: the Salvation of the People.
Napoleon Quotes • “A statesman’s heart must be in his head” • “Great men are meteors destined to scorch the earth” • “The best way to keep one’s word is never to give it”. • “A people cannot be led only by showing it the future; a leader is a peddler of hope”. • “There are two levers to move men; fear and interest”. • “constitutions should be short and obscure”.
Louis Philippe • ‘Louis Philippe would have been one of the most illustrious leaders in History if he would have loved glory and had a feeling of what is great, to the same degree as what is useful’ Victor Hugo. • ‘Their (Parisians’) appetite for change had been sharpened by the Economic crisis’. Wilmot
Louis’ decision to attack Britain by marrying a Spanish Princess to his son, a Princess that a member of the British Royals was preparing to marry showed agression towards Britain, but did not please the majority of Parisians, infact the opposite. The French felt that Louis ‘… had put the interest of his Family before National Honour’ (Tombs).
Robespierre – “Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe and inflexible; it is therefore an essence of virtue…Break the enemies of liberty with terror, and you will be the justified founders of the Republic”.
Sans-Culotte • “A sans-culotte? He’s a man who goes everywhere on foot, who has none of the millions you’re all after, no mansions, no servants and who lives simply…In the evening he’s at his section to support sound resolutions. A sans-culotte always keeps his sword sharp. At the first roll of the drum off he goes to the Vendee or the armee du Nord”.
Russian Debacle General Caulincourt: “Never was a retreat worse planned, or carried out with less discipline; never did convoys march so badly…To lack foresight we owed a great part of our disaster”
Referring to reluctance to sign armistice in May 1813: “My domination will not survive the day I cease to be strong and therefore feared”. “He was sunk in gloom – with reasons…for the second time in a year the world was presented with a spectacle of destruction”.
Envoy of Napoleon: “The Emperor did not see, or rather would not see, his true position. He deceived himself about his own strength”. “faithful to his word…there is no personal sacrifice, even in life itself, which he is not ready to make for the good of France” – Napoleon on his abdication.
