Recollections of Republican France, from 1790 to 1801 (Volume 1) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Affair of the Champ de Mars?Bailly?Anacharsis Clootz?Apotheosis of Voltaire?Dramatic spectacle? General corruption and demoralization?Its causes? ?My education?Auricular confession?Black antl white pebbles?Les Gamins de Paris make their first appearance?Barra and Viala?Popularity?Barnave?His attachment to the Queen?Fickleness of the French. The excitement produced by the flight of the Royal Family, and the subsequent decree of the Assembly, that declared their inviolability, far from subsiding, became every day more and more alarming; not only to the Court party, ' but to the Constitutionalists - the clubs and the majority of the people loudly demanded a Republican form of government, and the punishment of the perjured monarch. Several Englishmen at this period frequented our house; among them was Thomas Paine, who drew up an address to the French people, under a fietitious name. In this insidious production, he insisted that the King had, de facto, abdicated, and that the short absence of the monarch had produced an interregnum far more desirable for tin: future welfare of tin: country than his perfidious misrule. I recollect this address was read at my father's, who then received Horne Tooke, Macintosh, Williams, and other English gentlemen, with Anacharsis Clootz, a most extraordinary foreigner, with long bushy hair, and who appeared tu me, by the violence of his franctic gestures, to be out of his mind, lie was the first person I saw who wore a red Phrygian cap?the emblem of liberty?which was afterwards generally adopted. These Englishmen were in constant correspondence with the London society for Constitutional Reform; and Fox, Francis, Whitbrcad, Courtnay, Grey, Sheridan, were members of this association, that had presented a congratulatory address ...