In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy. G. A. Henty

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       G. A. Henty

      In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy

      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664636942

       PREFACE.

       CHAPTER I

       A Journey to France

       CHAPTER II

       A Mad Dog

       CHAPTER III

       The Demon Wolf

       CHAPTER IV

       The Clouds Gather

       CHAPTER V

       The Outburst

       CHAPTER VI

       An Anxious Time

       CHAPTER VII

       The 2d of September

       CHAPTER VIII

       Marie Arrested

       CHAPTER IX

       Robespierre

       CHAPTER X

       Free

       CHAPTER XI

       Marie and Victor

       CHAPTER XII

       Nantes

       CHAPTER XIII

       In the Hands of the Reds

       CHAPTER XIV

       The Noyades

       CHAPTER XV

       England

       Table of Contents

      MY DEAR LADS,

      This time only a few words are needed, for the story speaks for itself. My object has been rather to tell you a tale of interest than to impart historical knowledge, for the facts of the dreadful time when "the terror" reigned supreme in France are well known to all educated lads. I need only say that such historical allusions as are necessary for the sequence of the story will be found correct, except that the Noyades at Nantes did not take place until a somewhat later period than is here assigned to them.

      Yours sincerely,

       G.A. HENTY.

      A Journey to France

       Table of Contents

      "I don't know what to say, my dear."

      "Why, surely, James, you are not thinking for a moment of letting him go?"

      "Well, I don't know. Yes, I am certainly thinking of it, though I haven't at all made up my mind. There are advantages and disadvantages."

      "Oh, but it is such a long way, and to live among those French people, who have been doing such dreadful things, attacking the Bastille, and, as I have heard you say, passing all sorts of revolutionary laws, and holding their king and queen almost as prisoners in Paris!"

      "Well, they won't eat him, my dear. The French Assembly, or the National Assembly, or whatever it ought to be called, has certainly been passing laws limiting the power of the king and abolishing many of the rights and privileges of the nobility and clergy; but you must remember that the condition of the vast body of the French nation has been terrible. We have long conquered our liberties, and, indeed, never even in the height of the feudal system were the mass of the English people more enslaved as have been the peasants of France.

      "We must not be surprised, therefore, if in their newly-recovered freedom they push matters to an excess at first; but all this will right itself, and no doubt a constitutional form of government, somewhat similar to our own, will be established. But all this is no reason against Harry's going out there. You don't suppose that the French people are going to fly at the throats of the nobility. Why, even in the heat of the civil war here there was no instance of any personal wrong being done to the families of those engaged in the struggle, and in only two or three cases, after repeated risings, were any even of the leaders executed.

      "No; Harry will be just as safe there as he would be here. As to the distance, it's nothing like so far as if he went to India, for example. I don't see any great chance of his setting the Thames on fire at home. His school report is always the same—'Conduct fair; progress in study moderate'—which means, as I take it, that he just scrapes along. That's it, isn't it, Harry?"

      "Yes, father, I think so. You see every one cannot be at the top of the form."

      "That's a very true observation, my boy. It is clear that if there are twenty boys in a class, nineteen fathers have to be disappointed. Still, of course, one would like to be the father

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