Coup

“ To foil your pursuers, your enemies, whether they take the form of armed assailants or of pressing creditors, by ever another and another daring combination, by sudden reliefs unthought of, by a bold coup executed at the very moment when the crisis seems inevitable, by all the happy yet desperate chances of warfare, has a fascination in it which no one could conceive as attending a sordid struggle for money. ”

“ The moment drew near when the coup d'état would storm us from every side, and when we should have to sustain the onslaught of an entire army. Would the people, that great revolutionary populace of the faubourgs of Paris, abandon their Representatives? Would they abandon themselves? ”

“ Whatever is striking is struck quick. The practice of the prize ring is the theory of wonders. The shoulder of a man propels a complex system of muscles, and a man in front has his countenance smashed. The suddenness of the experiment accounts for the surprise at its result. Preparations for great deeds are not always apparent. A coup d’etat is such because it is a coup. The killing of Mr. Lincoln was more astounding as a positive deed than the beheading of Charles the First, or the razoring of Louis the Sixteenth and his Queen, daughter of the Cæsars. ”

“ On one side were ranged her fanatical enthusiasm for a cause which she held to be as sacred as that of her faith, and her boundless belief in the efficacy of the coup which had been planned for this night. To jeopardize its [Pg 257] success now at this eleventh hour, by allowing her sensibilities to overmaster her, would in her eyes have been akin to the blackest, the most dire treachery toward her King and her country. ”

“ Where could a Napoleonic criminal, patiently planning and meditating a stupendous coup, find a better recruiting ground than among the desperate and ruined young men of his own class? The plan is in itself evidence of genius. ”

“ In the old days, when she had gone out into camp with her husband, and had sat silent in the tent amid the coming and going of troopers and mysterious spies, she had always divined when a great coup, resulting in the death or capture of some notorious malefactor, was vexing his brain. ”

“ A coup d’état is a practical confession that the regular and orderly methods of Government have failed in the hands of the Governor, and that he is driven to have recourse to irregular and lawless methods to compass his ends and vindicate his sovereignty. ”

“ Let him summon to him the National Assembly and the High Court, the Legislators in their sashes, the Judges in their scarlet robes; let him summon to him the citizens, let him summon to him the soldiers, let him go straight to the Elysée. Let him raise his hand in the name of Justice against the man who is violating the laws, and in the name of Jesus against the man who is shedding blood. Simply with his raised hand he will crush the coup d'état. ”

“ I mean to make an end of all parties, and only when you shall give their chiefs into my hand- -not for my personal vengeance, for I cherish no vengeance against those cowardly worms of conspirators, but for the righteous punishment and retaliatory laws of France—only when you are able, by one grand coup, and one well-founded charge, to destroy all conspiracies, and bring all secret coalitions to the light, only then shall you become chief of police—only then will the future emperor give you the title of duke. ”

“ Yes, for indeed we said to each other from the first, Ordinances, coups d'etat—what has all that to do with us? Our misery is great, our wages hardly buy bread for our children and ourselves; will our distress be any greater after the coup d'etat than before? And still we said that these Bourbons, these 'whites,' are the enemies of the people, and that we should seize the occasion to turn them out. But after all, what will it bring us? The same misery as in the past."
"What will we have gained by driving out Charles, Polignac, and the skull-cap bands?" added the other two workingmen. ”

“ Such was the situation which the Governmental coup transformed to tragedy unrelieved, giving us in the place of ordered lawlessness and responsible leadership a guerrilla warfare against society by irresponsive individuals, more or less unbalanced. ”

“ He shows the officers over the house, agrees with them that the coup must have been made by persons familiar with it; gives them every assistance; pities his master and mistress with a manly compassion; points out what a cruel misfortune it is to himself as an honest man, with his living to get and his family to provide for, that this suspicion should fall on him. ”

“ It has been a part of my life to go out on the warpath, ever since I was fourteen years old. As you know it is a part of our history that the man who goes on the warpath and kills the most enemies gets a coup stick, and the coup stick is the stepping-stone to become a chief. I remember my first war party was forty-one years ago. This battle was at Pryor Creek against the Crows. I was in four great battles, with my father, Chief Red Cloud. At the battle of Pryor Creek I captured many horses, and took three scalps. Thirty-four years ago I killed four Crows and earned my coup stick. ”

“ When we have accomplished our coup d'etat we shall say then to the various peoples: "Everything has gone terribly badly, all have been worn out with sufferings. We are destroying the causes of your torment—nationalities, frontiers, differences of coinages. ”

“ The Grand Coup consists in throwing away a superfluous trump. At the first glance it appears impossible to have a superabundance of trumps; but cases sometimes happen where a player has a trump too many. To get rid of this trump—as by undertrumping a trick already trumped by your partner, or by trumping a trick which he has won, or which you know he may win—is to play the grand coup. ”

“ The number of shots a man has fired during the fight, if over 10, counts a coup, inasmuch as it shows he has stood his ground long enough to fire that many.
Killing an enemy counts nothing unless his person is touched or struck. The first who strikes the dead foe counts the best coup, although each succeeding one counts as far as the fourth. ”

“ They see exactly how we stand; they know the relative forces of our army, and the enemy's; and if the "cautious islanders"—such was the phrase—advised a coup de main, it surely must have much in its favor. ”

“ Such is the power of Right, that, during four days these hundred and twenty men, who had nothing in their favor but the goodness of their cause, counterbalanced an army of 100,000 soldiers. At one moment the scale turned on their side. Thanks to them, thanks to their resistance, seconded by the indignation of honest hearts, there came an hour when the victory of the law seemed possible, and even certain. On Thursday, the 4th, the coup d'état tottered, and was obliged to support itself by assassination. ”

“ Even before the collapse of the dictatorship, members of the old regime may attempt to cut short the defiance struggle for democracy by staging a coup d'état designed to preempt victory by the popular resistance. ”

“ Some twenty-five thousand people had been killed or transported within a few weeks after the coup d'état, and fear seized the minds of those who were active in opposition, or suspected even of being hostile to the new government. ”

“ Relying implicitly upon their acknowledged superiority in a hand-to-hand fight, added to the well founded terror of their name, they may be said, practically speaking, to have burnt no powder at all, their brilliant coup-de-main being effected with the cutlass alone. ”

“ The dominant power thus resisted and baffled by Constitutional means, resorts to a coup d'état; the popular mind advances at once to the logical conclusion, that the further existence of that dominant power is incompatible with free institutions, and decrees its annihilation. ”

“ In the illustration the Indian is in the act of doing this. In olden times the coup was a stab with a weapon, but in later times the Indians were provided with coup sticks. Whoever first strikes the victim with the coup can rightfully claim the scalp. ”

“ In cases where the villains were not killed at the first fire, the sergeant administered coup de grace. Many of the thugs begged piteously for mercy, but no attention was paid to their feelings and they suffered the same stern fate as the rest. ”

“ It is a faction, and generally a small one, that overthrows a dynasty or remodels a constitution. A small party, strong by long exile from power, and desperate of success except by desperate means, invariably has recourse to a coup d’état.... ”

“ There are those who profess to fear that our government is becoming a mere irresponsible tyranny. If there are any who really believe that our present Chief Magistrate means to found a dynasty for himself and family, that a coup d'etat is in preparation by which he is to become ABRAHAM, DEI GRATIA REX,—they cannot have duly pondered his letter of June 12th, in which he unbosoms himself with the simplicity of a rustic lover called upon by an anxious parent to explain his intentions. ”

“ Whatever expedient he may adopt to deaden his feelings, although he may be for ever ringing in his own ears the seven million five hundred thousand little bells of his plebiscite, the man of the coup d'état reflects at times ”

“ Certainly we must hasten to pay a visit to that—’ (another awful descriptive epithet quite unfit for repetition) . ‘Devil take me if we don’t pull off a coup that will set us all up for a long time.’
“He saw all that lot of dollars melted into bars and disposed of somewhere on the China coast. Of the escape after the coup he never doubted. There was Niclaus’s prau to manage that in. ”

“ It is an age of incredible scandal, of mob law, of coups d'état and proscriptions, saved only from utter gloom by the illusory light shed from the figures of a few great men and by the never absent sense of freedom and expansion. ”

“ The most celebrated coups d'éclat in general military history, have mostly been, so to speak, the children of inspiration, seizing Time by the forelock,—thus using opportunity which sometimes exists but for a few minutes, and thus a doubtful struggle terminates in a brilliant success. ”

“ Riots and coups d'état, the struggles between parties often destitute of any scruple and the banishment of the vanquished, the Parliamentary debates and the adventures of illustrious men, in a word, all the events of its political history were in the eyes of our fathers only very secondary accessories to the wars of liberty. ”

“ I hesitated for a long time before publishing that letter, but, as all the world knows now, I was perfectly justified in doing so. On no less than six occasions we have brought off the most remarkable coups, and all owing to that extraordinary old man who comes and goes in the most mysterious fashion and who is never wrong. ”

“ I can picture to myself the affrighted looks of the Council; the alarm depicted in every face, when the post brings the intelligence, that a force is on its march towards the capital; and then—then, when I can lay my hand on each rebel of them all, and say, this man is a traitor, and that, a rebel—when I can show where arms are collected and ammunition stored—when I can tell the plan of their operation, their numbers, their organization, and their means—I have but to name the price of my reward. ”

“ You must declare you, whether you determine To act a treason 'gainst your lord and sovereign, Or whether you will serve him faithfully. ISOLANI. Treason! My God! But who talks then of treason? OCTAVIO. That is the case. The prince-duke is a traitor— Means to lead over to the enemy The emperor's army. Now, count! brief and full— Say, will you break your oath to the emperor? Sell yourself to the enemy? ”

“ A retreat before the enemy is a misfortune, but retreat before rebels is treason. Before I descend from this tribune I want to know whether the will of the majority of the French people is to be respected, or whether we are to bow before the authority of the Sections—we, the will of the nation. ”

“ Every person, being a commissioned officer, or acting as such in the service of the enemy, who shall, during the present war, excite, attempt to excite, or cause to be excited, a servile insurrection, or who shall incite, or cause to be incited, a slave or rebel, shall, if captured, be put to death, or be otherwise punished at the discretion of the court. ”

“ Charvát.—However, as a punishment for the spilling of blood and for incendiarism, I announce in the name of the district government: From each insurrectionist estate and land-holding, one mature man must be enrolled in the army. The plotters of the rebellion will, it is true, have their life, estate and liberty assured them, but as a fine and as a humiliation as well and a punishment for their crime they shall be publicly flogged here in the presence of their lords and of their people whom they stirred up to rebel. ”

“ What, there are rebels to punish? The Representatives of the people aimed at them with a decree, and the King opposed his veto to the decree! Instead of allowing the punishment, imposed by the Assembly upon the Emigrants, to take its course, the King proposes a declaration of war, a sham war, whose only aim is to place a formidable military force at the disposal of the enemies of the Revolution, or to open to them our frontiers, thanks to the treason of the aristocratic generals still at the head of our armies! ”

“ It is used and given you (by the king's counsel) as an evidence of this, that he did conspire to raise an insurrection, and to cause a rising of the people, to make as it were a rebellion within the nation, and to surprise the king's guards, which, say they, can have no other end, but to seize and destroy the king; and 'tis a great evidence (if my lord Russell did design to seize the king's guards, and make an insurrection in the kingdom) of a design to surprise the king's person. ”