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

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

It's worse than idiotic, if Robespierre never actually said it (and as far as I'm aware, it's famously attributed to Danton) - he uses the words to sum up that the Terror as a sadistic, Robespierrist enterprise. I was looking up the references in 'Citizens' because someone online was praising Schama...his intro to Robespierre says 'these lessons in moral earnestness he learned from his lawyer father' - wtf? Was that before he disappeared? On the next page, he says Robespierre was a provincial nobody, yet immediately describes him as attracting fan letters from Saint-Just in "1789" (he says the letter was "1789" again later in the book, too, and then goes on to describe Saint-Just's "black hair" in the same paragraph). On p815, he says Robespierre wrote to Danton on the death of his wife in Febrary 1794 just before his arrest: even though Schama has already mentioned Danton's second marriage and new wife on p 809! (I've just noticed, flipping through the pages, the line "Miffed at being denied an execution, Fouquier-Tinville..." Miffed? Miffed is a schoolgirl word, dictionary definition 'petulant displeasure/a petty quarrel' - not a word a serious historian should be using to describe the life or death workings of a tribunal. God, he is awful!)

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know: I don't have the book -- why the hell would I? -- but I know that he says Desmoulins perished at the hands of Saint-Just -- oh yeah -- and doesn't even give the right age of death to Desmoulins!

He is an awful, vastly incompetent, unjustifiably arrogant and overpaid idiot. Factual mistakes? His whole career is a factual mistake.