888. BONAPARTE (N.), Robespierre and.—
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 sycophants 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 de Stael. Washington ed. vi, 114.
(M.
May. 1813)
