HISTORY

OF

THE GIRONDISTS;

OR

Personal Memoirs of the Patriots

OF

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

FROM UNPUBLISHED SOURCES.

BY

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE,

Author of "Travels in the Holy Land," &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

TRANSLATED BY H. T. RYDE.

LONDON:
HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1856.

LONDON
PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.
NEW-STREET SQUARE

Robespierre

ADVERTISEMENT.

We have not thought it necessary to preface this recital by anyintroduction of the preceding epochs of the Revolution.

We have not re-produced, with the minute elaboration of an annalist, thenumerous parliamentary and military details of all the events of theseforty months. Two or three times we have, in order to group men andcircumstances in masses, made unimportant anachronisms.

We have written after having scrupulously investigated facts andcharacters: we do not ask to be credited on our mere word only. Althoughwe have not encumbered our work with notes, quotations, and documentarytestimony, we have not made one assertion unauthorised by authenticmemoirs, by unpublished manuscripts, by autograph letters, which thefamilies of the most conspicuous persons have confided to our care, orby oral and well confirmed statements gathered from the lips of the lastsurvivors of this great epoch.

If some errors in fact or judgment have, notwithstanding, escaped us, weshall be ready to acknowledge them, and repair them in sequent editions,when the proofs have been transmitted to us. We shall not reply one byone to such denials and contradictions as this book may give rise to; itmight be a tedious and unprofitable paper-war in the newspapers. But wewill make notes of every observation, and reply en masse, by ourproofs and tests, after a certain lapse of time. We seek the truth only,and should blush to make our work a calumny of the dead.

As to the title of this book, we have only assumed it, as being unableto find any other which can so well define this recital, which has noneof the pretensions of history, and therefore should not affect itsgravity. It is an intermediate labour between history and memoirs.Events do not herein occupy so much space as men and ideas. It is fullof private details, and details are the physiognomy of characters, andby them they engrave themselves on the imagination.

Great writers have already written the records of this memorable epoch,and others still to follow will write them also. It would be aninjustice to compare us with them. They have produced, or will produce,the history of an age. We have produced nothing more than a "study" of agroup of men and a few months of the Revolution.

A. L.

Paris, March 1. 1847.

CONTENTS.