John Goldworth Alger

“ When Redhead Yorke with some difficulty recalled himself to his remembrance, Paine thus unbosomed himself:—
‘Who would have thought that we should meet [again after the lapse of ten years] at Paris?... They (the French) have shed blood enough for liberty, and now they have it in perfection! This is not a country for an honest man to live in. They do not understand anything at all of the principles of free government, and the best way (for foreigners) is to leave them to themselves. You see they have conquered all Europe only to make it more miserable than it was before.... ”

“ It passes no judgment on the Revolution, albeit an Englishman can happily do so with as perfect impartiality as if it had taken place in a distant planet, whereas every Frenchman is more or less biassed. The Revolution is the touchstone of French politicians, not so much that their view of the Revolution governs their opinion on questions of the day, as that the latter governs their opinion of the Revolution. More deliberate falsehood, too, has been written on the Revolution than on any other historical event. ”

“ Does any advantage result from its being taught to shopkeepers’ sons, at a day-school, for fear foreigners should not pawn or buy, for want of understanding them?
Are not the great part of the female sex, and of the uninformed part of ours, exposed, by this practice, to the moral and political corruptions of another country? Is not the business of French Emissaries facilitated by the half-understanding of low and ignorant Englishmen?
Ought a girl to be able to read any book that her father cannot? ”

“ What a contrast between the High Sheriff of Salop paying the honours to the judges of assize and the cap-headed man at the bar of the National Assembly!
In this same year 1790, Pigott sent or presented an address to the Assembly on Sieyes's press bill. He spoke in it of his loving France as warmly as if he had been a native, and of his having hastened over with a multitude of other foreigners to enjoy the rights of man in all their fulness. ”

“ It was a scramble among all classes to give them the best reception. It was the height of fashion to dine and amuse them and give them balls; the women especially were enamoured of the English and had a rage for their fashions. In short France seemed to eclipse itself before a few thousands of these proud and unprofitable foreigners, towards whom the attentions of hospitality were carried to a ridiculous excess. ”

“ The fall of Napoleon was as much a cause of rejoicing to Englishmen, in France or at home, as the fall of the Bastille had been. If, indeed, we can fuse into one picture these hundreds of our countrymen, we are reminded of a biography or novel in which the hero sets out under the happiest auspices, encounters all sorts of vicissitudes and dangers, and finally emerges into tranquillity and comfort. ”

“ Liberty or no liberty, religion or no religion, morality or no morality, was all immaterial to him. Liberty and equality remain, and now nobody opens his mouth or strikes another.’ I may here remark that the comparison of Bonaparte to Cromwell, obvious as it now appears to us, was not made by any English observer, though it did not escape German visitors. Jacobi also went to see St. Martin, the disciple of Boehme and Swedenborg, who had known William Law in England in 1787, and regarded the French Revolution as a precursor of the Day of Judgment. ”

“ Napoleon seemed very curious on the subject of the Duke of Wellington. He said it was a great mistake in the English Government to send him Ambassador to Paris. ‘On n’aime pas voir un homme par qui on a été battu.’ He had never sent as Ambassador to Vienna a man who had entered Vienna as an officer of the French invading army. (Count Lebzeltern, the Austrian Ambassador at Rome, denied the truth of this assertion.) As I had seen a good deal of the Duke of Wellington in Spain, Napoleon asked me what were likely to be his occupations. ”

“ If of some who underwent imprisonment or death we can hardly avoid thinking that they deserved their fate, there are others whom we must sincerely pity, men to whom the Revolution was a religion overriding all claims of country and kindred.
French historians have not taken, and could not be expected to take, much notice of aliens, even of those more or less actors in the Revolution. In their eyes they are but imperceptible specks in the great eddy. Their attention is absorbed by their own countrymen ”

“ Jomini, a Swiss, after serving Napoleon in high rank, offered his sword to Russia, though Napoleon was compelled to acquit him of having treacherously revealed his military secrets. And Talleyrand, while accepting Napoleon’s pay, intrigued with his foes, doubtless salving his conscience, if indeed he had a conscience, with the notion that he was thus promoting the interests of France. Few men were so scrupulous as the Duc de Richelieu, a future French statesman, in stipulating that Russia should not send him to fight against his countrymen. ”

“ The foreigners, like the natives, who fairly survived the Revolution, had very various fortunes. Some were thoroughly disillusioned, became vehement reactionaries, or abjured politics and were transformed into sober or enterprising men of business. Others crossed or recrossed the Atlantic, and lived to a green and honoured old age, or gave way to degrading vices. Some, remaining in France, hailed the rising star of Napoleon, and lived long enough to be disenchanted, but perhaps not long enough to see the restoration of the Bourbons. ”

“ The smoke and blazing of the flames were terrifying to all, so that the nuns had much to do to support their courage and compose the minds of their sick. The Assembly of the States then gave orders for the church-doors of the convents to be shut, and this, indeed, the religious found very agreeable. But then came the mobs, consisting of the worst sort of people, who surrounded the convent. The nuns, not knowing what to do, sent out to them in a kind manner to know if they wished for any refreshment and it should be given to them. ”

“ Hence it is not surprising to find that at Verdun there were indignant creditors. We do not hear of complaints in any other town, but at Bitche and other fortresses the captives were lodged and victualled by the French Government, and though clothes must have worn out, the shopkeepers were probably chary of giving credit, while the captives on parole in Paris, Orleans, and other towns were men of means and doubtless of a high sense of honour. The eight or eleven hundred prisoners at Verdun, on the other hand, were of all sorts and conditions. Some could not, others would not, pay. ”

“ The garden, too, was always taken up by the soldiers and rabble. About this time the Convention frequently ordered the prisoners of war to be sent from one town to another, to show them to the people; when these companies passed through Compiègne, they were always lodged in our place of confinement, and nothing distressed us more than on such occasions to meet with brave Englishmen in want of the most common necessaries of life; and at the same time treated with the most inhuman scorn and contempt by the French Jacobins, who were quite elated to have an Englishman in their power. ”

“ Ferdinand III. of Tuscany was driven to Vienna, though subsequently assigned a duchy in Germany. Even the Papacy, which had long been unscathed by war or revolution, was overwhelmed by the current. Forced away from Rome, one Pope died in the French fortress of Valence, while another became a prisoner at Savona.
In France not merely the princes, but almost the entire nobility, were fugitives. England, Germany, Switzerland, and Russia were inundated with aristocrats, who at first, counting on a speedy and triumphant return, formed little colonies, in one of which Fanny Burney found a husband ”

“ Thus, my Lord, the greatest revolution that we know anything of has been effected with, comparatively speaking—if the magnitude of the event is considered—the loss of very few lives. From this moment we may consider France as a free country, the King a very limited monarch, and the nobility as reduced to a level with the rest of the nation."
The Duke little foresaw that the fall of the Bastille would indirectly lead to his speedy recall. On the hasty flight of the Comte d'Artois, Dorset wrote to congratulate him on his escape. ”

“ John Scott, however, in the diligence between Dieppe and Paris, heard an officer with Napoleon’s portrait on his snuff-box say, in reply to English expressions of satisfaction at the peace, ‘All very well, this tranquillity of Europe is a fine thing, but will it not keep me always a captain?’ Another officer, though originally forced away from the study of [291] medicine into the army, spoke with enthusiasm of Napoleon, and the mass of the people, while admitting Napoleon’s faults, were in Scott’s judgment in his favour. ‘Ah but he was a great man!’ was the common phrase. ”

“ There was a future poet laureate, enraptured with the Revolution, but eventually to become an ultra-Conservative. There were versifiers who chanted the triumphs of the Revolution, philosophers who early discerned the clouds on its horizon, materialists who were stupefied at the results of their theories, inventors who counted on prompt appreciation of their merits, clubbists whose congratulations to the Convention did not avert imprisonment. ”

“ In the autumn of 1809, however, Napoleon required her to come to Paris to exculpate herself from a charge of intrigues with England. All that she had really done had been to refuse to receive Clarke when French Minister at Florence, and to apply to the English Government for an annuity to compensate the one lost by the death of her brother-in-law, Cardinal York, the titular Henry IX. She had accordingly been granted £1000 a year. She easily cleared herself, and Napoleon seems to have been a little ashamed of disturbing so inoffensive a woman. ”

“ English connoisseurs give us their opinion of the panorama, but not of the actual scene which it represents. To vary the metaphor, or rather to state a fact, they work up the materials collected by French authors; they do not go in search of materials for themselves. Not a single English book on the Revolution tells us who represented our own country in Cloots's deputation of the human race, explains who was the hero of the Jacobin Club in December 1791, gives an accurate account of Paine's experiences, or states the number, much less the names, of the British victims to the guillotine. ”

“ Francis Jackson, moreover, writing to Abbot, described Paris life as an uninterrupted picture of vulgarity and profligacy, and the Times of the 23rd September says:—
‘Paris, under the Regent of Orleans, was not so profligate and corrupt as it appears to our best travellers at present. Gambling, debauchery, intemperance, and the insatiable desire after public spectacles, with all the vices in the train of indolence and licentiousness, form the monotonous indiscriminable character of the Citizens.’ ”

“ We see servility and manliness, human nature at its best and at its worst, now touching the clouds, now grovelling in the mire. For individuals as for nations the Revolution was an ordeal drawing out the brightest and the darkest sides of human character. ”

“ Napoleon inquired for the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Whitworth, Erskine, and Holland, and spoke especially of Fox. Informed that Fox felt much flattered at his reception in 1802, Napoleon said, ‘He had reason to be so. He was [299] everywhere received like a divinity because he was known to be in favour of peace.’ ‘Tell Lord Grenville,’ added Napoleon, ‘to come and see me. I wager that you in England thought me a devil, but now that you have seen me and France also you must be somewhat disabused.’ He justified the detentions of 1803. ”

“ It is true that the cap of liberty had been a symbol employed from the outset of the Revolution, but it was Pigott who made it an article of dress. He had probably quitted Paris by the summer, when it was revived, and this time undoubtedly worn outdoors, sometimes placed on the back of the head, like that of a Zouave of the present day, sometimes placed on the top of the head with the end slightly lapping over in front. Of Pigott nothing more is heard till his death at Toulouse, July 7, 1794, three weeks before Robespierre's fall. ”

“ Again when a friend was lolling in a chair with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out, a French lady remarked to Mrs. Holcroft, ‘Look at that Englishman, he is anything but squeamish.’ Yet Holcroft saw Frenchmen in similar attitudes, not to speak of their spitting on the floor or pulling out white handkerchiefs bedaubed with snuff. The French were scandalised at the appearance at the Tuileries of an officer in Highland costume; but Holcroft observed women in male attire in the streets and also at the theatres, where they thus evaded the regulation excluding women from the pit. ”

“ Edgeworth accepted the mission, and in a letter to a friend in England, dated 21st December 1792, explained that this was his reason for remaining in France. "I prepare myself," he added, "for death, for I am convinced that popular rage will not allow me to survive one hour after that tragic end." He fully expected, indeed, to be torn to pieces by the mob, and he made his will before leaving his mother and sister (the former ignorant of his danger) for the Temple. Rigidly searched at the gate, lest he should carry poison for the King, Edgeworth, bursting into tears, fell at Louis's feet. ”

“ Sturt, Forbes, Pinkerton, Lawrence, and Blayney necessarily give individual experiences rather than a general history of the detentions. Not one of these writers, moreover, ventured on keeping a journal, which would have been obviously unsafe, and some of them, publishing their recollections while comrades were still in captivity, naturally omitted details which might have lessened the pity felt in England by revealing the failings of a small minority, or which might have goaded the jailers to increased rigour. ”

“ After that event there was a general cry in favour of the prisoners, and many were daily set at liberty; by which means my habitation became so thinned of its inhabitants that they transferred us to another prison; but they forgot me in the scramble, and I remained there alone for some time, having the whole house to range in, and thirty men, who used to mount guard night and day, to watch my person. At length they found they had left me by myself, and that it was not absolutely necessary to harass such a number of men to guard a single harmless prisoner. ”

“ It is true that when Napoleon seized the reins such illusions could scarcely have remained, but even then there were numerous foreigners eager to serve him for the sake of lucre or adventure, not to speak of Irish refugees and Poles, whom he lured by the expectation of achieving their independence. Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, little foreseeing his marriage with our Princess Charlotte or his elevation to the crown of Belgium, was anxious to become one of his aides-de-camp. Some men fought by turns for and against him. ”

“ We merely learn that "the consternation that has prevailed in Paris for the last two days is beyond all power of description. Few people have gone out of their doors, and all public amusements for the first time have been stopped." When Lord Lansdowne in 1819 argued that the Peterloo meeting was peaceable, it being attended by women and children, Liverpool replied that he saw many women busily employed in the attack on the Bastille. ”

“ Patrick Lattin, so brilliant in conversation, according to Lady Morgan, as to reduce Curran and Sheil to silence, had served in the Franco-Irish brigade till 1791, and was in the carriage when Theobald Dillon was murdered by his troops at Lille in 1792. He had settled near Lyons, but occasionally visited Paris, where he died about 1849. But it is not always easy to distinguish him from another Lattin. John Fitzgerald, also a Franco-Irish officer, had emigrated at the Revolution but returned in 1802, and his dinners from 1823 to 1836 drew the best British and French company. ”

“ The Paris municipality in the following January presented him with a civic wreath and sword. The president bade him tell his countrymen that he had found on the banks of the Seine a brave, susceptible, and generous people, formerly frivolous, but now enjoying liberty, especially as it gave them opportunities of rewarding virtue. Nesham must have reflected that if he had received the first civic wreath ever awarded in France, he would scarcely in any other country have had to defend an innocent man against a bloodthirsty mob. ”

“ Yet Phillips’s Practical Guide during a Journey from London to Paris, the first book of its kind, had said:—
‘We shall only express our wish that the great man who has done so much for France and mankind may moderate his ambition and make the illustrious Washington his political model.’
Englishmen anxious to see republican forms and manners were satirically recommended by the Times, December 1, 1802, to lose no time in visiting Paris, or the whole ancient system of the court, with all its formalities and regulations, would arrive before them. ”

“ Do you not see I am a bit of a pirate like yourselves?" But although the measure was justified by one at least of Bonaparte's victims, Lord Yarmouth, it was certainly impolitic as well as lawless. I have not, indeed, discovered in the newspapers of the time such an outburst of indignation as might have been expected, but according to the Duke of Buckingham, Napoleon, who till then had had admirers in England, became thoroughly execrated. Some of the captives were studying at universities, others copying at the Louvre, then full of foreign spoils, others in search of health in Southern France. ”

“ The through fare from London was now £5. The visitors had the interesting spectacle of the restoration of the Bourbons, while the very few who made a more lengthened stay witnessed also the Hundred Days’ reign of Napoleon, and his second and final fall. Never surely in Europe in modern times were more startling vicissitudes crowded into so brief a period. Even Spain with its pronunciamientos was not destined to present such a kaleidoscope. For a parallel we must go forward to the Central American republics or backward to the time when the pretorians made and unmade Roman emperors. ”

“ There should at least be permission to sell out and withdraw to England. But the respite was very short, and there came a series of tribulations. The nuns in Paris might have given us interesting accounts of their own experiences; but domiciliary visits rendered it unsafe to keep diaries, and only one convent out of three subsequently drew up a record of its sufferings. We know from the minutes of Jacobin commissaries that, unlike some of their French sisters, the English nuns unanimously declined to re-enter the world, and they felt the full force of the revolutionary hurricane. ”

“ I know of no republic in the world except America, which is the only country for such men as you and I. It is my intention to get away from this place as soon as possible, and I hope to be off in autumn. You are a young man, and may see better times, but I have done with Europe and its slavish politics.’
Paine, it may be feared, experienced another disillusion on recrossing the Atlantic. ”

“ Through the whole dismal journey of five days they contributed all in their power to soften and alleviate the hardships they saw us exposed to; but it was not in their ability to prevent the populace treating us with the most insulting language through whatever towns and villages we passed, and when we arrived at any place to spend the night we were guarded by the soldiers who kept the prison in which we happened to be lodged, amongst whom we sometimes met with a variety of hardships and scenes of brutality, insomuch that we always dreaded the approach of night. ”

“ You really should keep these people at home. As for your swindlers, of whom there has been a nest here for some time, they are not near so troublesome, for there are swindlers in all countries and the police here is very good.’ [150]
There is evidently a little exaggeration here, but we have already seen that Lord Whitworth shut his doors against some of his countrymen whose inordinate admiration of Napoleon was not conducive to the maintenance of peace, since it must have given the impression that there was a strong French party in England, so that Napoleon might dictate his own terms. ”