Lafayette (83 page)

12.
Mémoires
, I:260.

13.
Charavay, 181.

14.
Mémoires
, I:264.

15.
Ibid.

16.
Ibid, I:268–269.

17.
Lasteyrie, 215.

18.
Gottschalk and Maddox, 193.

19.
Mémoires
, I:276.

20.
Lasteyrie, 215.

21.
Whitlock, I:348.

22.
Davenport, I:161.

23.
Tulard et al., 761.

24.
Whitlock, I:345.

25.
Jefferson to Jay, September 23, 1789, in Gottschalk and Maddox, 287.

26.
Marat (1743–1793) apparently stood 5′1″, but his mannerisms and posture made him seem shorter and provoked his many critics and enemies to refer to him as “the dwarf.”—Tulard et al., 969–971.

27.
Mémoires
of René Levasseur, in Tulard et al., 970.

28.
Tulard et al., 969–971.

29.
Davenport, I:242.

30.
Ibid., I:223.

31.
Davenport, I:242 [Monday, October 5, 1789].

32.
Mémoires
, I:282.

33.
Whitlock, I:355.

34.
Mémoires
, I:282.

35.
Gottschalk and Maddux, 332.

36.
Ibid.

37.
Mémoires
, I:282. [When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon “river” into Italy to war against Pompey, “crossing the Rubicon” became a metaphor for making an irrevocable, life-changing decision—although the Rubicon was, and remains, more of a gully than a river.]

38.
Davenport, I:242 [Monday, October 5, 1789].

39.
Mémoires
, I:282.

40.
Ibid.

41.
There is some question of how many minutes or hours Lafayette slept, because his
Mémoires
contain two different descriptions of the critical events of October 5 and 6. The first is his own recollection, written in 1829; the other a reconstruction by his son, culled from notes Lafayette had planned to publish in 1814. In either case, he could not have slept more than three hours, and he may have slept far less.

42.
Corporal Bérard, of the Noailles Company, in Charavay, 190n.

43.
Mémoires
, I:283.

44.
Ibid.

45.
Ibid.

46.
Ibid., I:284.

47.
Ibid.

48.
Ibid.

49.
Short to Jay, October 9, 1789, in Gottschalk and Maddox, 385.

1.
The royal manège, or indoor riding facility, was a huge rectangular building that stretched from west to east on what is now the rue de Rivoli, at the intersection of the rue de Castiglione. The building was torn down in 1801, when Napoléon I ordered the construction of the rue de Rivoli as the new, wider, central east-west thoroughfare across the city, to replace the old, narrow rue Saint-Honoré, between the place de la Révolution (now the place de la Concorde) and the place de la Bastille.

2.
October 21, 1789, Davenport, I:252.

3.
Mémoires
, I:298.

4.
Taillemitte, 220.

5.
Davenport, I:382, Morris to Washington, Paris, January 24, 1790.

6.
Mémoires
, I:320–321.

7.
Sparks, I:322.

8.
Davenport, I:373 (Washington to Morris, New York, October 13, 1789, delivered in Paris 21 January 1790).

9.
Ibid., I:376–377, Morris to Washington, Paris, January 22, 1790.

10.
Washington to L, Mount Vernon, July 25, 1785, Idzerda, V:336–340.

11.
The issue had a total value of about $4 billion in today’s currency. Each assignat had a face value of 1,000 livres ($10,000), yielding annual interest of 5 percent—far too high for the average Frenchman, but well within reach of Assembly members, who could not only buy the bonds but vote to declare them in default and, therefore, claim huge parcels of valuable church land at no additional cost.

12.
Lasteyrie, 217–221.

13.
Mémoires
, I:523–526.

14.
Whitlock, I:385.

15.
Maurier, 181.

16.
L to Washington, Paris, March 17, 1790,
Mémoires
, I:322–323.

17.
Founded in 1789 after the Assembly moved from Versailles to Paris, the Jacobin club’s actual name was the
Société des amis de la Constitution
—“Society of the Friends of the Constitution.” It held its meetings in the refectory of the Jacobin Monastery, a Dominican monastery founded in 1217 in Paris on the rue Saint-Jacques, hence the sobriquet
Jacobins
. In 1613, the Dominicans moved their monastery to a site just off the rue Saint-Honoré to what is now the place du Marché Saint-Honoré, only a few steps away from where the Constituent Assembly of 1789 convened. Although the Dominican brothers renamed it the Couvent de l’Annunciation, they retained the Jacobin sobriquet that members of the political club eventually adopted. Political activists tended to meet in religious sites because of the sanctuary they provided from political arrest.

18.
Le Petit Robert
. . . , 1774.

19.
Mémoires
, I:305.

20.
Anecdotal, French Ministry of Culture.

21.
The Franciscan friars, or “gray monks,” as they were also called, earned the sobriquet of
cordeliers
from the thick ropes of braided strands they used as belts for their long gray robes.

22.
Whitlock, I:390.

23.
Ibid., 393.

24.
Taillemite, 237.

25.
Mémoires
, I:335–336.

26.
Ibid., I:336.

27.
Ibid.

28.
William Short to Morris, July 27, 1790, Davenport, I:565.

29.
Tulard et al., 1109.

30.
Mémoires
, I:337.

31.
Ibid.

32.
William Short to Morris, July 27, 1790, Davenport, I:565–566.

33.
[no author cited]
Histoire authentique et suivie de la Révolution de France
(Londres: 1792, 2 vols.), I:702, in Charavay, 234.

34.
Charavay, 235.

35.
Ibid., 236.

36.
Ibid., 238.

37.
Arguably, “
Ça ira”
can be translated as “All will be well”; “We’ll be all right”; “We’ll succeed,” etc.; thus:

All will be well, will be well, will be well;

The aristocrats to the lamppost [to be hung];

All will be well, will be well, will be well;

The aristocrats, we’ll hang them all.

. . . or thereabouts.

38.
William Short to Morris, July 27, 1790, Davenport, I:565.

39.
L to Washington, Paris, August 28, 1790,
Mémoires
, I:384.

40.
Mémoires
, I:338.

41.
Washington to L, New York, August 11, 1790. Ibid., I:382–383.

42.
Morris to Washington, August 16, 1790, Davenport, I:574.

43.
Morris to Washington, January 24, 1790, Davenport, I:384.

44.
Soirées amoureuses du général Motier et de la belle Antoinette, par le petit épagneul de l’Autrichienne
(unsigned, dated 1790; 32 pp., 8 vols.), cited in Charavay, 252, and probably written by Marat, who habitually called Lafayette “Motier.”

45.
Charavay, 247.

46.
L to Washington, Paris, March 7, 1791,
Mémoires
, I:394.

47.
Mémoires
, I:393. [The newborn’s full name was George Fayette Washington.]

48.
Davenport, II:68–69.

49.
Washington to L, Philadelphia, July 28, 1791,
Mémoires
, I:398–399.

50.
Lasteyrie, 223.

51.
Danton, June 21, 1791, Proceedings of
La Societé de Jacobins
, in Charavay, 269–270.

52.
Charavay, 272.

53.
L to Washington, Paris, June 6, 1791,
Mémoires
, I:397–398.

54.
Washington to L, Philadelphia, September 10, 1791,
Mémoires
, I:400.

55.
A. Goodwin, “Reform and Revolution in France: October 1789–February 1793,”
The New Cambridge Modern History
(Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 1965), VIII:692.

56.
Lasteyrie, 226.

1.
L to Washington, Chavaniac [undated], extracted from references contained in a second letter dated January 22, 1792,
Mémoires
, I:481.

2.
Mémoires
, I:400–401.

3.
Tulard et al., 95.

4.
Morris to Washington, Paris, December 27, 1791, Davenport, II:332–333.

5.
Morris to Washington, Paris, December 27, 1791, Davenport, II:334.

6.
L to Washington, Paris, March 15, 1792,
Mémoires
, I:483.

7.
L to Louis XVI, June 16, 1792,
Mémoires
, I:489.

8.
L to the Legislative Assembly, June 16, 1792, and read on June 18,
Mémoires
, I:450–452.

9.
Whitlock, I:455.

10.
Quotation attributed to the “head of the delegation of rioters.” Tulard et al., 95.

11.
Morris’s description of the king in a letter to Washington, November 22, 1790, Davenport, II:68.

12.
Mémoires
, I:435.

13.
Davenport, II:457.

14.
Ibid.

15.
Morris to Jefferson, Paris, August 1, 1792, Davenport, II:483.

16.
Whitlock, I:466–467.

17.
A. Goodwin, “Reform and Revolution in France: October 1789–February 1793,”
The New Cambridge Modern History
(Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 1965), VIII:704.

18.
“I am the state.” [Remark attributed to Louis XIV before the Estates General in 1651—
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
, 281:3.]

19.
The Knights Templar were a French religious military order founded in 1119 to protect Christian pilgrims bound for the Holy Land. After the loss of Palestine, they returned to Europe, where their involvement in power struggles between the Pope and various French kings led to the order’s demise and the execution of many of its members. Its last grand master, Jacques de Molay, was executed in 1314, and the order’s assets were seized by the church and state. Nothing remains of the fortress in Paris, which was built in 1139 and covered most of the land now bounded by the rue du Temple, rue Vendôme, rue Beranger, rue Picardie, and rue de Bretagne in the third arrondissement, just behind the huge Pompidou Center. The
donjon
prison was built in 1265 and demolished in 1809–1810. Section by section, the rest of the fortress was leveled over the next forty years.

20.
Whitlock, I:475.

21.
Whitlock, II:38.

22.
L to Madame de Lafayette, Rochefort, August 21, 1792,
Mémoires
, I:498–499.

23.
Morris to Jefferson, Paris, August 22, 1792, Davenport, II:531.

24.
L to William Short, Nivelle, August 26, 1792, Charavay, 582.

25.
L to Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld, Nivelle, August 26, 1792,
Mémoires
, I:499–501.

26.
Davenport, II:541.

27.
Davenport, II:540.

28.
Maurois, 219.

29.
Lasteyrie, 238.

30.
Lasteyrie, 240.

31.
Whitlock, II:18; Maurois, 221.

32.
Ibid., 253–254.

33.
Maurois, 239.

34.
Solon Reynaud to Frestel [undated], Maurois, 243; Whitlock, II.

35.
Charavay, 340–341.

36.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Pinckney (1750–1828) was educated at Westminster School and Oxford University before taking a year of training at the military academy in Caen, France. Admitted to the bar in England, he returned home to fight in the Revolution. He was wounded and captured at Camden, taken to Philadelphia, and freed after an exchange of prisoners.

37.
Thomas Pinckney to William Short, London, September 14, 1792.

38.
Morris to Short, Paris, September 12, 1792, Davenport, II:556–557.

39.
Short to Morris, November 13, 1792, Davenport, II:560.

40.
Short to Morris, The Hague, December 7, 1792, Davenport, II:560.

41.
Whitlock, II:14.

42.
Morris to Washington, Paris, October 23, 1792, Davenport, II:565.

43.
Whitlock, II:21.

44.
Lasteyrie, 264.

45.
A. Goodwin, “Reform and Revolution in France: October 1789–February 1793,”
The New Cambridge Modern History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), VIII:711.

46.
On ne saurait faire une omelette sans casser les oeufs
—French proverb from the French Revolution of 1789, of unknown origin. —
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
, 786:19.

47.
Tulard et al., 348.

48.
Ibid., 348–350.

49.
Proclamation of Cordelier leader Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, in the Convention, November 16, 1792. Tulard et al., 349.

50.
The French revolutionary, or “republican,” calendar, as they called it, began on the autumnal equinox, September 22, 1792. Each year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, with a five-day holiday period added at the end of each year and a sixth day added in leap years. Instead of weeks, every month was divided into
“décades”
of ten days each. The names of the months were
vendémiaire, brumaire, frimaire, nivôse, pluviôse, ventôse, germinal, floréal, prairial, messidor, thermidore
, and
fructidore
, with each name derived from the weather or farming activity typical of the period (e.g.,
ventôse
= wind time;
germinal
= planting time, etc.). Individual days were renamed for seeds, trees, flowers, fruits, animals, or tools, instead of saints or Christian festivals. Invented by Danton’s friend, the self-styled poet Philippe-François Fabré d’Eglantine, the calendar remained
in effect for thirteen years, until January 1, 1806, when Napoléon ordered a return to the Gregorian calendar used by the rest of the western world. D’Eglantine went to the guillotine with Danton on 15
germinal
of Year II (April 5, 1794).