File:Symbol and satire in the French Revolution (1912) (14596463950).jpg

Identifier: symbolsatireinfr01hend (find matches)
Title: Symbol and satire in the French Revolution
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Henderson, Ernest F. (Ernest Flagg), 1861-1928
Subjects: Caricatures and cartoons
Publisher: New York, London, G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
capital punishment. As late as May,1791,^ even Robespierre had denounced it as acowardly abuse of the infinite power of all againstone, as a, solemn form of assassination, asunjust, ineffectual, and barbarous—like theslaying of a vanquished and captured enemy. From the very first there were instances of finebravery and self-possession among the victims ofthe guillotine. One, a scientist, wrote and beggedthe National Assembly to have his blood, whichwould no longer be of any use to himself, transfusedinto the veins of an older man to see if the resultwould be rejuvenation. There were cases innu-merable where retributive justice overtook thosewho had sent others to the guillotine, but doubtlessnone more striking than when, also in these earliestdays, the executioner in the very act of holding up asevered head fell off the platform and was killed Debats et Decreis, May 30th. Massacre 277 himself. That Doctor Guillotin perished by meansof his own invention is a statement often met with,
Text Appearing After Image:
Plate 120. A portrait of Danton. From an oil painting. but it is untrue. There is a letter of his in theNational Archives, written long after the Reign ofTerror—a mere little note, but enough to show that 278 The French Revolution he was alive. He incidentally sends his love toMadame Guillotin, which would tend, even, toshow that he was happy. With such props as the Revolutionary Tribunaland the guillotine and with a Legislative Assemblyonly too anxious to efface itself and be gone, theCommune of Paris reigned supreme. To read itsaddresses to the provinces, however, one wouldimagine it imbued with the strongest sense of thepower and dignity of the National Assembly. Bull-faced Danton^ and his fellows had inau-gurated a marvellous campaign for the controlof public opinion. On the very day of the stormingof the Tuileries, an iron hand had descended on thepress. Every sheet with the least royalist tend-ency was permanently prohibited. But morethan this: the city gates had immediately b

Note About Images