Quotation help wanted...

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

On page 792 of the hardback US Edition of Schama's 'Citizens', he winds up his chapter 'Terror is the order of the day' with the lines "Commenting on the Revolution of the 10th August, Robespierre had rejoiced that 'a river of blood would now divide France from her enemies'"

Leaving aside that horrific 'rejoiced' - cos, yeah, he did it for the lulz! - I've only ever heard those 'river of blood' words attributed to Danton. Did Robespierre ever use the same words?

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I searched Google Books with the words "Robespierre 'fleuve de sang'" and even then it only came up with that quote attributed to Danton. According to l'AMRID, he was also supposed to have been referring to the September Massacres, rather than 10 August. Of course, it's nothing new for Schama to misattribute quotes in order to better "prove" his point.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

It's a really quite breathtaking bit of lying, even by his low standards! He actually uses that quote to hang the conclusion of his 'Terror'chapter around, despite the fact that it's misattributed, and attributed to the wrong event, and the chapter itself is discussing September 1793 not 1792. I tried googling, too, and it seems to be quite a well known attributed-to-Danton quote, from the number of times it came up, so this has to be deliberate.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Really, it's doubly disgusting. Even if it were correctly attributed, taking a quote out of context like that, one can prove just about anything. For example, I wouldn't even have to misattribute a quote in order to "prove" that Robespierre was a royalist--all I would really have to do is take a quote about the "good prince" Louis from his 1788 pamphlet and insert it into a chapter on 1793. It's absurd how easy it is to make those kinds of falsifications. More absurd, however, is how people just seem to eat that kind of thing up!