Biographie Moderne: Lives of Remarkable Characters, who Have Distinguished Themselves from the Commencement of the French Revolution, to the Present Time. From the French ...

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Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1811 - France

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Page 223 - Madame de Lamballe's sincere attachment to the Queen was her only crime. In the midst of our commotions she had played no part ; nothing could render her suspected by the people, to whom she was only known by repeated acts of beneficence. When summoned to the bar of La Force, many among the crowd besought pardon for her, and the assassins for a moment stood doubtful, but soon murdered her. Immediately they cut off her head and her breasts ; her body was opened, her heart torn out ; and the...
Page 104 - Religion considered as the only Basis of Happiness and of true Philosophy, published in 1787; the Annals of Virtue; and Christian Hours.
Page 342 - Calvinist parents, was not five feet high ; his face was hideous, and his head monstrous for his size. From nature he derived a daring mind, an ungovernable imagination, a vindictive temper, and a ferocious heart. He studied medicine before he settled in Paris, where he was long in indigence. At last he obtained the situation of veterinary surgeon to the Count d'Artois. At the period of the Revolution, his natural enthusiasm rose to delirium...
Page 86 - South, he displayed all the activity of his coadjutor, and shewed besides an inexhaustible fund of cruelty, in his correspondence and in his private conduct. On their arrival at Marseilles, in the beginning of October, 1793, they organized there a committee, which occasioned all the calamities of the town, erected scaffolds, destroyed workshops, and ruined commerce; they published there a proclamation, announcing that terror was the order of the day, and that to save Marseilles, and to raze Toulon...
Page 77 - A considerable number of victims were one day met in their way to the tribunal by Fouquier, who had not been present at their trial, he asked the jurymen on what crime they had been pronouncing sentence? " They did not know," they said, " but he might run after the condemned persons and inquire;" upon which they all began to laugh, saying,
Page 341 - Manuel was born at Montargis in 1751. On the trial of the King, he voted for imprisonment and banishment in the event of peace. When the Queen's trial came on, he was summoned as a witness against her, but only expressed admiration of her fortitude, and pity for her misfortunes.
Page 78 - Fouquier Tinville who was excessively artful, quick in attributing guilt, and skilled in controverting facts, showed immoveable presence of mind on his trial. While standing before the tribunal from which he had condemned so many victims, he kept constantly writing ; but like Argus, all eyes and ears, he lost not while he wrote, one single word uttered by the president, by an accused person, by a judge, by a witness, or by a public accuser. He affected to sleep during the public accuser's recapitulation,...
Page 134 - Father Duchene is very uneasy, and will be very angry when Sampson makes him tipsy." At the foot even of the scaffold he heard these phrases called from his journal. A young man, whose family he had destroyed, cried out to him, " To-day is the great anger of Father Duchene. We must see how angry he is with those false patriots who are going to play at hot-cockles, look through the little window, and sneeze in the bag.
Page 171 - E. ,••!(•• with repeated cries of " To arms! to arms!" At this moment several deputies represented to the Assembly that the determination which it had taken was imprudent, that an end ought to be put to a dangerous crisis...
Page 128 - Henriot was clerk of the barriers, but was driven thence for theft. He was then received by the police into the number of its spies, and was again sent to the Bicetre, which he quitted only to be flogged and branded ; at last, passing over the piled corpses of September, where he drank of Madame de Lamballe's blood, he made himself a way to the generalship of the 2nd of June, and fmally to the scaffold.

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