THEY ARE HONEST, BRAVE, DISINTERESTED...
The hero of the iconic painting represents actual people:
 |
Liberty Guides the People (detail) by Eugène Delacroix |
- "Another republican leader, as honest as the other was not but crazier yet, since he agitated a great deal without the least hope of making money..."
-- Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen
- Jacques Clément-Thomas, who will return to our story, is a historic figure who resembles him.
He is one of the five or six republican fighters whom Adolphe Thiers (the next page introduces him) invites to meet the new king, Louis-Philippe. When the conversation stalls, Thiers slaps Clément on the back...
 |
| Harald Wolff |
"Wouldn't he make a great colonel?"
"Do you think we are women selling ourselves? I will never serve your cause!"
-- Georges Valence, Thiers, bourgeois and revolutionary, 2007 (in French)
# # #
But like other republicans Clément will repress the humble with the same savagery as conservatives:
"Those we had seen standing proudly
were horrified at the revolution...
they crushed the disinherited under new names."
-- Louise Michel (more later)
* * *
Next,
Next,
No comments:
Post a Comment