I.

INTRODUCTION.

I now undertake to write the history of a small party of men who, cast
by Providence into the very centre of the greatest drama of modern
times, comprise in themselves the ideas, the passions, the faults, the
virtues of their epoch, and whose life and political acts forming, as we
may say, the nucleus of the French Revolution, perished by the same blow
which crushed the destinies of their country.

This history, full of blood and tears, is full also of instruction for
the people. Never, perhaps, were so many tragical events crowded into so
short a space of time, never was the mysterious connexion which exists
between deeds and their consequences developed with greater rapidity.
Never did weaknesses more quickly engender faults,--faults
crimes,--crimes punishment. That retributive justice which God has
implanted in our very acts, as a conscience more sacred than the
fatalism of the ancients[1], never manifested itself more unequivocally;
never was the law of morality illustrated by a more ample testimony, or
avenged more mercilessly. Thus the simple recital of these two years is
the most luminous commentary of the whole Revolution; and blood, spilled
like water, not only shrieks in accents of terror and pity, but gives,
indeed, a lesson and an example to mankind. It is in this spirit I would
indite this work. The impartiality of history is not that of a mirror,
which merely reflects objects, it should be that of a judge who sees,
listens, and decides. Annals are not history; in order to deserve that
appellation it requires a conviction; for it becomes, in after times,