Under bad governments, this equality is only apparent and illusory: it serves only to-keep the pauper in his poverty and the rich man in the position he has usurped. In fact, laws are always of use to those who possess and harmful to those who have nothing: from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all have something and none too much. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The best kings desire to be in a position to be wicked, if they please, without forfeiting their mastery: political sermonisers may tell them to their hearts’ content that, the people’s strength being their own, their first interest is that the people should be prosperous, numerous and formidable; they are well aware that this is untrue. Their first personal interest is that the people should be weak, wretched, and unable to resist them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Crowns have been made hereditary in certain families, and an order of succession has been set up, to prevent disputes from arising on the death of kings. That is to say, the disadvantages of regency have been put in place of those of election, apparent tranquillity has been preferred to wise administration, and men have chosen rather to risk having children, monstrosities, or imbeciles as rulers to having disputes over the choice of good kings. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
All that destroys social unity is worthless; all institutions that set man in contradiction to himself are worthless. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Leave those vain moralists, my friend, and return to the depth of your soul: that is where you will always rediscover the source of the sacred fire which so often inflamed us with love of the sublime virtues; that is where you will see the eternal image of true beauty, the contemplation of which inspires us with a holy enthusiasm. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La Nouvelle Heloise, 1761
At this point the revolution was the romantic movement in action. And perhaps its greatest legacy to posterity has been its message to the young. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 12/13: The Fallacies of Hope, BBC 1969
I can see them still through the window of the university of the Sorbonne impatient to change the world, vivid in hope, although what precisely they hope for or believe in I don’t know. ibid.
The Revolutionaries wanted to replace Christianity with the religion of Nature. ibid.
And on the name Robespierre one remembers how horribly all this idealism came to grief in the prisons of the terror. ibid.
What in all this glory had happened to the great heroes who spoke for humanity in the revolutionary years? ibid.
Beethoven wasn’t a political man, but he responded to the generous sentiments of the revolution. ibid.
When the Paris Commune took the management of the revolution in its own hands; when plain working men for the first time dared to infringe upon the governmental privilege of their ‘natural superiors’, and under circumstances of unexampled difficulty performed their work modestly, conscientiously and efficiently – performed it at salaries the highest of which barely amounted to one fifth of what, according to high scientific authority, is the minimum required for a secretary to a certain metropolitan school board – the old world writhed in convulsions of rage at the sight of the Red Flag, the symbol of the Republic of Labour, floating over the Hotel de Ville. Karl Marx, The Civil War in France
France: famed in all great arts, in none supreme. Matthew Arnold, To a Republican Friend – Continued, 1852
If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt. G M Trevelyan, English Social History
I myself just cherish the French tongue. Lolita 1997 starring Dominique Swain & Jeremy Irons & Frank Langella & Melanie Griffith & Suzanne Shepherd & Keith Reddin & Erin J Dean & Joan Glover & Pat Pierre Perkins & Ed Grady et al, director Adrian Lyne
The French Revolution operated in reference to this world in exactly the same manner as religious revolutions acted in view of the other world. It considered the citizen as an abstract proposition apart from any particular society, in the same way as religions considered man as man, independent of country and time. Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancient Regime, 1856
It is not always by going from bad to worse that a society falls into revolution ... The social order destroyed by a revolution is almost always better than that which immediately preceded it, and experience shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform. ibid.
The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction. On either side it is pride, but understood in a different way. ibid.
The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction. On either side it is pride, but understood in a different way. Alexis de Tocqueville, Voyages en Angleterre et en Irlande
Welcome to the bloody age of the guillotine. France was a hell of a place to be a couple of centuries ago. The country was in the grip of revolution. The king had already been killed along with hundreds of aristocrats. The whole country was being turned on its head. Power now lay in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians who every day were becoming more ruthless. They ordered anyone declared an enemy of the new regime rich or poor be shot or taken to the national razor. But with upheaval came opportunity. For one young refugee from Corsica this was the chance of a lifetime. This is the little-known story of how Napoleon Bonaparte first emerged from obscurity, how he risked everything and set out on a path that would see him crowned Emperor of France. Warriors: Napoleon
There is in all change something at once sordid and agreeable, which smacks of infidelity and household removals. This is sufficient to explain the French Revolution. Charles Baudelaire, Journaux Intimes, 1887
A man so corrupt he would willingly have paid for the pleasure of selling himself. Christopher Hitchens, re Jacques Chirac, citing Sentimental Education, 1869
Mr Chirac to me as well as being a pimp and a fraud and a man who had to run for re-election in order to preserve his immunity from very serious charges of corruption which still stand against him is a pseudo-republican. Christopher Hitchens, Islam and the West
When the German conquest of France arrived, these forces eagerly collaborated in the rounding up and murder of French Jews, as well as in the deportation of forced labor of a huge number of other Frenchmen. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great pp236-237
Napoleon Bonaparte, thirty-five years old, was about to be crowned Emperor of France. ‘I found the crown of France in the gutter,’ he said, ‘and I picked it up.’ It was December 2nd 1804. Within three years Napoleon’s conquest would extend his empire across almost all of Europe. Empires: Napoleon I: to Destiny, PBS 2000
Seizing the crown in his own hand he held it aloft then brought it to rest on his own head. ibid.
Corsica was now a French colony. ibid.
Napoleon set foot in France for the first time in the winter of 1778, a thin sallow nine year old. ibid.
He began his apprenticeship as a soldier at sixteen. ibid.
On July 14th 1789 Paris erupted. Angry crowds stormed through the streets crying, Liberty! Equality! Brotherhood! ibid.
The Revolution turned into the Terror. Torn by civil war, France was also at war with almost all of Europe. ibid.
The Republic continued to fight for its life. ibid.
On October 5th 1795 crowds of Parisians stormed through the streets alongside national guardsmen bent on restoring the monarchy. ibid.
Bonaparte called her Josephine. ibid.
He had made himself the head of a provisional Italian government. Empires: Napoleon II: Mastering Luck
She [Josephine] was spending her time with a dapper young army lieutenant. ibid.
After marching two weeks across the desert Bonaparte’s army came within site of the pyramids. ibid.
The battle of the pyramids was over in an hour. ibid.
On October 9th 1799 he landed in France. ibid.
Bonaparte determined to find a way to seize power for himself. ibid.
Napoleon Bonaparte, thirty years old, was the most powerful man in France. ibid.
In the spring of 1800 he took his men over the Alps. ibid.
He laid the foundation for a new France. ibid.
Bonaparte ruled with the carrot and the stick. ibid.
Bonaparte’s France was a police state. ibid.
The only country he had to fear was Great Britain. ibid.
Notre Dame ... Napoleon Bonaparte was about to be crowned emperor of France. Empires: Napoleon III: The Summit of Ambition
The Bogie Man, or Boney Man. ibid.
The British: the most powerful maritime force in the world. ibid.
Russia, Austria, Great Britain v France. ibid.
Great Britain had lost its greatest sailor. But never again would the French challenge the might of the British Navy. Napoleon no longer had a fleet he could rely on. ibid.