Excerpt from The Life of Barnave, Vol. 2 of 2 To pardon everything would be no less imprudent, and there would be no motives for it. Public officials who forget their most sacred duties in critical times, leaders of the people who defy the law knowing what the consequences of their actions will be, deserve no indulgence. To grant it would be to encourage resistance. Our indulgence towards them would not be humanity, it would be a real crime against justice. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Life of Barnave, Vol. 1 of 2 This book is the result of an inquiry begun entirely to satisfy myself and without any idea of where it would lead me; my reasons for attempting to write will be found in the Introduction. As I knew from the outset that I could only hope to get at the truth from documents of the period, I turned to these at once, and on these alone I have based my opinions. There is hardly an event in the French Revolution which has not given rise to a controversy, and a writer who treats of a subject connected with it must needs be dogmatic at times or his work would be interminable. It is only in some cases that he can present the arguments for the conclusions he has formed; in others he has to state his conclusions without doing the justice he would Wish to opinions which he does not hold. All that he can do is to try honestly to understand other points of view, and to hope that his readers will not think that he has failed to appreciate what may be said for them. It is, I fear, certain that, in spite of care, there must be many errors and inaccuracies in a book like this, and for all these I would beg forgiveness. There must also be omis sions it is probable that some of the documents in the Archives Nationales to which I have given no other reference have been published, though I have not come across them, that informa tion which I found in newspapers and pamphlets has been used in books which have appeared lately and which I have not read; but I think that wherever I owe a debt I have acknowledged it by a reference. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A major new biography of Antoine Barnave--the politician and writer who advocated for a constitutional monarchy in revolutionary France Antoine Barnave was one of the most influential statesmen in the early French Revolution. He was a didactic man of austere morals and vaulting ambition who dressed as an English dandy, running up considerable tailor's bills. Before his execution at age thirty-two, he played a decisive role in revolutionary politics and even governed France in 1791 through a secret correspondence with Marie-Antoinette. In the first biography for more than a century, John Hardman traces Barnave's life from his youth in Dauphiné to his role in the Constituent Assembly and his part in forming the Feuillants, the party dedicated to the moderate cause. Despite his early death, Barnave left a remarkable volume of material, from published works to thousands of manuscript pages. Hardman uses this rich archive to explore the life of this elusive writer, politician, and thinker--and sheds new light on the revolutionary period.

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