By 1668 Riquet’s reservoir and mountain channel were well under construction. He had solved the problem of how to fill the canal with water. ibid.
This was no ordinary sized canal. Riquet’s ambitious plan was to build a canal with twice the volume of any built before, so that it would be deep enough to carry ocean-going boats. ibid.
Riquet employed 12,000 workers to carve out the canal ... They even received sick-pay. ibid.
No-one had ever built a tunnel for a canal before. It was nicknamed Le Mal-Pas (the bad step). ibid.
What he does in Gaul – modern day France – is the stuff of legend. Whether the threat to Rome is real or imagined, Caesar needs no encouragement to begin a vast campaign of conquest. He will defeat three hundred different tribes, he will destroy eight hundred cities, he will kill one million people. Rome Revealed s1e1: Killing Caesar, National Geographic 2010
The story of the French Revolution through the destruction of art, buildings and symbols. Richard Clay, The French Revolution: Tearing Up History, BBC 2016
It’s the power of the people. For the first time in their history the people have a representative government. ibid.
This moment of unrest, violence … is meaningful. ibid.
To actually topple a statue is no mean feat. Anybody who’s seen the footage of the Statue of Saddam Hussein being brought down by American marines during the Gulf War will understand the scale of the task. ibid.
Statues of kings were toppling across the city … The statue was as hollow as the power of kings … All royal symbols were at risk. ibid.
Fascii is that symbol of Roman unity, also Roman law and order, that eventually becomes the symbol, that gives the name, to fascists. ibid.
For great were the auxiliaries which then stood upon our side
We who were strong in love.
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven. William Wordsworth
I want there to be no peasant in my kingdom so poor that he is unable to have a chicken in his pot every Sunday. Henri IV, 1553-1610
France was long a despotism tempered by epigrams. Thomas Carlyle, History of the French Revolution
France, mother of arts, of warfare, and of laws. Joachim du Bellay, 1522-60, French poet, Les Regrets
England is an empire. Germany is a nation, a race. France is a person. Jules Michelet
The courtiers who surround him have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing. Charles Francois du Perier Dumouriez, 1739-1823, French general of Louis XVIII
Freedom! Equality! Brotherhood! French revolution slogan
In eighteenth-century France King Louis IXV, scared his twin brother would steal his crown, sentences him to a terrible fate: Louis clamps his brother’s head into an iron mask. But historians have argued ever since this never really happened, and for three hundred years the prisoner’s real identity has been in doubt. Mystery Files: Man in the Iron Mask, Smithsonian 2010
Voltaire’s crime against the establishment is writing poems satirising the Regent Philip II. King Louis’s capacity for cruelty would no doubt be in Voltaire’s mind as his Bastille prison door slammed shut. ibid.
Just over thirty years later he would immortalise the story that would become one of France’s greatest mysteries. In 1751 Voltaire publishes a history of Louis’s reign, entitled The Age of Louis XIV. It contains the first reference ever printed of a masked man. ibid.
Voltaire confirms that the masked prisoner is transported by de Saint-Mars. ibid.
They were madmen; but they had in them that little flame which is not to be snuffed out. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, re men of French commune
France must be purged of all vice. Maximilien Robespierre
I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor Tribune, nor defender of the people: I am of the people. Maximilien Robespierre, speech 27th April 1792
The general will rules in society as the private will governs each separate individual. Maximilien Robespierre 5th January 1793
Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all. Maximilien Robespierre 24th April 1793
Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil. Maximilien Robespierre 24th April 1793
Wickedness is the root of despotism as virtue is the essence of the Republic. Maximilien Robespierre, 7th May 1794
Intimidation without virtue is disastrous; virtue without intimidation is powerless. Maximilien Robespierre
The king must die so that the country can live. Maximilien Robespierre
Come, children of our country, the day of glory has arrived ... To arms, citizens! Form your battalions! Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, La Marseillaise 25th April 1792
There was reason to fear that the Revolution, like Saturn, might devour in turn each one of her children. Pierre Vergniaud, 1753-93
I am commencing an undertaking, hitherto without precedent, and which will never find an imitator. I desire to set before my fellows the likeness of a man in all the truth of nature, and that man myself.
Myself alone! I know the feeling of my heart, and I know men. I am not made like any of those I have seen; I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those in existence. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, 1782
Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
Tranquillity is found also in dungeons; but is that enough to make them desirable places to live in? To say that a man gives himself gratuitously, is to say what is absurd and inconceivable; such an act is null and illegitimate, from the mere fact that he who does it is out of his mind. To say the same of a whole people is to suppose a people of madmen; and madness creates no right. Even if each man could alienate himself, he could not alienate his children: they are born men and free; their liberty belongs to them, and no one but they has the right to dispose of it. Before they come to years of judgment, the father can, in their name, lay down conditions for their preservation and well-being, but he cannot give them irrevocably and without conditions: such a gift is contrary to the ends of nature, and exceeds the rights of paternity. It would therefore be necessary, in order to legitimize an arbitrary government, that in every generation the people should be in a position to accept or reject it; but, were this so, the government would be no longer arbitrary. To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority, and, on the other, unlimited obedience. ibid. ch4
The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist. No one has a right to kill an enemy except when he cannot make him a slave, and the right to enslave him cannot therefore be derived from the right to kill him. It is accordingly an unfair exchange to make him buy at the price of his liberty his life, over which the victor holds no right. Is it not clear that there is a vicious circle in founding the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and death? ibid. ch4
From whatever aspect we regard the question, the right of slavery is null and void, not only as being illegitimate, but also because it is absurd and meaningless. The words slave and right contradict each other, and are mutually exclusive. It will always be equally foolish for a man to say to a man or to a people: ‘I make with you a convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I shall keep it as long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like.’ ibid. ch4
We may add that frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or remissness on the part of the government.
In a well-governed state, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a state is in decay that the multitudes of crimes is a guarantee of impunity. ibid. II:5
In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed. ibid. III:4
The very right to vote imposes on me the duty to instruct myself in public affair, however little influence my voice may have in them. ibid. III:11
Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse. ibid. III:15