MORE ON BOURGEOIS HEROES

THEY ARE HONEST, BRAVE, DISINTERESTED...

The hero of the iconic painting represents real 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)

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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)

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