The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
ROBESPIERRE
Robespierre met the fate, and his memory the execration, he so justly
merited. The rich were his victims, and perished by thousands. It is
by millions that Bonaparte destroys the poor, and he is eulogized and
deified by the syncophants even of science. These merit more than the
mere oblivion to which they will be consigned; and the day will come
when a just posterity will give to their hero the only preeminence he
has earned, that of having been the greatest of the destroyers of the
human race. What year of his military life has not consigned a million
of human beings to death, to poverty and wretchedness! What field in
Europe may not raise a monument of the murders, the burnings, the
desolations, the famines and miseries it has witnessed from him! And
all this to acquire a reputation which Cartouche attained with less
injury to mankind, of being fearless of God or man.
to Madame La Baronne De Stael-Holstein, 24 May 1813
|