Alexandre Dumas

“ Riders, dressed in different uniforms, crossed each other in all directions, probably carrying orders, while the townsfolk, armed with pikes, sabres, and pistols, were rushing toward the Haguenau gate, crying: "Patriots, to arms! the enemy is upon us!"
From moment to moment came the dull roar of the cannon, signalling better than the human voice could have done that the city was in danger, and its inhabitants had need to defend it.
"Come to the ramparts, Charles!" said Eugene, darting out into the street; "and if we can't fight ourselves, we can at least watch the battle." ”

“ I am not an aristocrat like those messieurs of the Army of the Rhine."
"You hear, citizen-general," said Falou, tapping impatiently with his foot and laying his hand on the hilt of his sabre; "he calls us aristocrats."
"He was wrong, and so were you when you called him monsieur," replied the commander-in-chief. "We are all citizens of the same country, children of the same family, sons of the same mother. We are fighting for the Republic; and the moment when kings recognize it is not the time for good men like you to deny it. To what division do you belong?" ”

“ As far as the eye could reach along the Quai de l'École, the Quai de la Mégisserie, and the Quai des Morfondus, muskets gleamed in the sun, thick as spears of wheat in a wheat field.
"How many men do you think there are before you, citizen Cartaux," asked Bonaparte.
"I could not say exactly," replied Cartaux. "In open country I could guess within a thousand men, but here in the streets and quays I cannot make even an approximate guess."
"General, if you want to know the exact number," said Garat, "ask the citizen who has just prevented those men from firing upon you. He can tell you." ”

“ I appeal to your heart, citizen Saint-Just!"
Saint-Just placed his hand, which was as white and well cared for as that of a woman, upon the boy's shoulder.
"You are still a child," he replied, "and I will only say this: There is a sentiment even more holy than love of one's countrymen; it is love of one's country. Before being citizens of the same town we are children of the same country. A day will come when reason will have advanced sufficiently to value humanity more than patriotism, when all men will be brothers, all nations as sisters, when tyrants will be the only enemies. ”

“ The law is not a woman; it is a brazen statue, holding a sword in one hand and a pair of scales in the other; nothing can be weighed in these balances save the accusation on the one side, and the truth on the other. Nothing can turn the blade of that terrible sword from the path that is traced for it. Along this path it has met the heads of a king, a queen, and a prince, and those three heads have fallen as would that of any beggar caught in an act of murder or incendiarism. To-morrow I shall go to Plobsheim; the guillotine and the executioner will follow me. ”

“ An onlooker, watching the strange procession as it approached from the far side of Moutiers and slowly ascended the hill, would have found it difficult to make out the meaning of the strange jumble of men on foot and on horseback: Whites in the costume made sacred by Charette, Cathelineau and Cadoudal, Blues in the Republican uniform, accompanied by women, children and peasants, and rolling along in the midst of this human tide, restless as the waves of the ocean, an unknown machine—unless the spectator had seen one of Coster de Saint-Victor's placards. ”

“ I know but little Latin, for which I have a strong dislike, and still less Greek, of which I don't understand a word. On the other hand, give me a horse, I don't care what it is, and I can ride it; I can hit the bull's-eye at twenty paces every time, and Augereau had told you himself that I need fear no one with sword or sabre. As soon as I hear a drum or a trumpet, my heart beats and the blood rushes to my head. I shall certainly be a soldier like my father. Who knows? Perhaps I shall become a general like him. It's fine to be a general. ”

“ But royalty is my second religion, and for that, as for my first, I have faith."
"You are a brave man, general," said Morgan, "and whether or no we meet again I should like to have your friendship. If we do not meet again, it will be because I am dead—either shot or guillotined. In that case, just as my elder brother inherited vengeance from my father, and I in turn from him, so will my younger brother inherit from me. If royalty, thanks to the sacrifices we have made for it, is saved, we will be heroes. If, in spite of those sacrifices, it is lost, then we shall be martyrs. ”

“ Augereau, who was to start the next day with full authority from Bonaparte, raised his glass and said:
"To the union of all French Republicans! To the destruction of the Clichy Club! Let the conspirators tremble! From the Adige and the Rhine to the Seine is but a step. Let them tremble! Their iniquities are known, and the price is at the end of our bayonets!"
As he uttered the last words, trumpets and drums sounded the charge. Each soldier sprang to his gun, as if he were obliged to start on the instant; and the men could scarcely be induced to resume their places at the tables. ”

“ On this particular evening of the night of the 12th and the 13th Vendémiaire, when the Convention was in the greatest uproar, Madame de Staël's salon was crowded with company. The gathering was very brilliant, and no one, looking at the apparel of the women and the easy carriage of the men would have imagined that people were about to cut each other's throats in the streets of Paris. And yet amid all this gayety and wit, which is never so great in France as in hours of danger, one might have discovered certain clouds, such as summer casts over fields and harvests. ”

“ Monnet, the third, was not a stranger to Charles, and the boy welcomed him with a cry of joy. He had been a soldier, a grenadier, in his youth, and when he left the service had become a priest and prefect of the college in Besançon, where Charles had known him. When he was twenty-eight years of age, and had begun to regret the vows he had taken, the Revolution came to break them. He was tall and stooped a little, was full of kindness and courtesy, and possessed a melancholy grace which attracted strangers to him at first sight. ”

“ Mad with rage, they rallied, and made a fourth attempt, but this time only a few scattered shots replied to their shouts of death. The little troop had exhausted its ammunition. The grenadiers awaited the enemy with fixed bayonets.
"Friends," cried Roland, "remember that you have sworn to die rather than be made prisoners by Djezzar the Butcher, who cut off your comrades' heads."
"We swear it!" replied Roland's two hundred men with one voice.
"Long live the Republic!" said Roland.
"Long live the Republic!" they all repeated after him.
And each man prepared to die, but to sell his life dearly. ”

“ Thus the new Breton insurrection had opened with a victory.
When the Blues were fairly in the town, and had posted their sentinels, Cadoudal also ordered a retreat, for he meditated a fresh expedition for the night.
The victorious Chouans could be seen joyfully returning through the thickets of furze and briar which edged the road, and above which, now that they were marching without disguise, they sometimes towered more than a head. They were calling to each other and crowding around one of their number who was playing the bag-pipe, as soldiers follow the trumpet of the regiment. ”

“ I beg of your tenderness one of those favors which a man cannot refuse to his betrothed. Some pride mingles with my happiness. It is not in Plobsheim, a poor village of Alsace, that the first of our citizens should give his name to the woman whom he loves and whom he has chosen. I desire that the people should recognize me for Schneider's wife and not for his concubine. In every town you have been accompanied by a mistress, and the mistake might easily be made. It is only fifteen miles to Strasbourg. ”

“ Take the Abbé Maury, proud as a duke, insolent as a lackey, son of a shoemaker, more aristocratic than the son of a great lord.
We have said, Avignon, Roman city; let us add, Avignon, city of hatreds. The heart of the child, born elsewhere free from the taint of hate, came into the world in the midst of hereditary hatred, bequeathed from father to son, and from son to son in turn, a diabolical inheritance for his children. In such a city every one was forced to make definite choice, and act a part in accordance with the importance of his position. ”

“ She was still beautiful, although the sun of Egypt had darkened her complexion.
"Rose here!" exclaimed Faraud.
"Do you know the citizeness?" asked Roland, laughing.
"I should think so; she is my wife!" replied Faraud.
"Citizeness," said Bonaparte, "I saw you at work in the midst of the musket balls. Roland wanted to pay you for the brandy you gave him when he came out of the water, but you refused. As I had no brandy here, and my guests each desire a glass, Roland said: 'Let us call the Goddess of Reason, and we can pay her for it all at the same time.' So we called you. Now serve us." ”

“ The soldiers who were to effect a junction with Roland's two hundred men, a portion of whom had already slid down into the town, while the others were fighting on the ramparts or in the ditches, being assailed by volleys from four sides, hesitated as the bullets whistled and the cannon roared around them, falling like hail and passing like a hurricane. Lannes, wounded in the head by a musket ball, fell upon his knees, and was carried off by his soldiers. Kléber held his own like an invulnerable giant in the midst of the fire. ”

“ The inspiration breathed by the young general's reply thrilled every heart.
"Arms! Give us arms!" cried the Conventionals. "We will die together!"
The Convention, humiliated for a moment, had recovered itself. The lives of its representatives were not yet saved, but their honor was. Bonaparte profited by the spark of enthusiasm which he had just kindled. Each deputy received a musket and a packet of cartridges. Barras exclaimed: "We are going to die in the streets in defence of the Convention. It is for you to die here, if need be, in defence of liberty." ”

“ Long live the Republic.
The enemy still continued to advance; the rolling of drums, the blare of the trumpets, and from time to time, when the wind was favorable, the harmonious tones of music could be heard in the distance. But every sound was soon lost in the roar of the cannon; a storm of shot, thick as hail, fell upon the French ranks, the body of officers being especially singled out. Pichegru rose in his stirrups, and noticing a slight movement among the soldiers, shouted: "To your ranks!" ”

“ Austria wants Alsace and the Franche-Comté; Prussia the Margraviates of Anspach and Beyreuth. The nobles form three divisions; one attacks us on the Rhine, another on the Loire, and a third conspires. War within, war without! Foreign war and civil war! On the frontier thousands of men lying on the battlefields; in France itself thousands of men massacred in prison, thousands of men dragged to the guillotine. Why? Because the king, after taking the oath, did not keep it, and instead of trusting to his people, to France, threw himself into the arms of his family, the enemy. ”

“ As he finished dictating this bulletin to Bourrienne, Bonaparte rose and went out of his tent as if to breathe more freely. Bourrienne followed him uneasily; events seldom left such a deep impression upon that heart of bronze.
Bonaparte climbed the little hill which overlooked the camp, seated himself upon a stone, and remained for a long time staring at the partially demolished fortress and the ocean which lay before him in its immensity. Finally he said: "The men who will write my life will not understand why I was so anxious to take this wretched little place. ”

“ Never had such audacity and ardor, never had more impetuous courage and obstinate valor, struggled for the possession of a city.
Generals, officers and soldiers fought together in confusion in the trench. Kléber, armed with an Albanian rifle which he had wrested from its owner, made a club of it, and raising it above his head as a thresher uses his flail, he brought down a man with every blow. Murat, with his head uncovered and his long hair floating in the wind, was flashing his sabre back and forth, its fine temper bringing its message of death to all those who came in contact with it. ”

“ There was the papal city, with its magnificent papal palace, its hundred churches, each more splendid than the other, and its innumerable bells, always ready to sound the tocsin of incendiarism or the knell of murder.
The French city, with its Rhone, its silk manufactories, and its crossroads going from north to south, from east to west, from Lyons to Marseilles, from Nîmes to Turin—the French city, the accursed city, longing for a king, jealous of its liberties, shuddering beneath the yoke of vassalage, a vassalage with the clergy for its lord. ”

“ The young man suffered this examination in a silence which seemed to defy Pichegru's scrutiny.
"Hungarian or Russian?" asked Pichegru in French.
"Polish," replied the young man, laconically, in the same language.
"An exile then?" asked Pichegru.
"Worse than that!"
"Poor people! So brave and so unfortunate!" and he held out his hand to the young man.
"Wait," said the latter; "before doing me this honor, you must know—"
"Every Pole is brave," said Pichegru. "Every exile has the right to the hand-clasp of a patriot." ”

“ Barthélemy and his faithful Letellier—that brave servant who had refused to leave his master—dashed on deck; and seeing their four comrades in the clutches of soldiers who were dragging them toward the cell, they slid rather than climbed down the ladder, and found themselves in the hold with them.
"Here!" cried the captain from the top of the hatchway; "come back here, or I will have you driven up with the bayonet." But they lay down.
"There is neither first nor last among us," they retorted; "we are all guilty or we are all innocent. You must treat us all alike." ”