THEY ARE HONEST, BRAVE, DISINTERESTED...
The hero of the iconic painting represents real people:
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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, to whom we will return, 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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