A Tale of Two Cities (Barnes & Noble Classics) - Charles Dickens [209]
3 (p. 213) Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke: In The French Revolution (1837), Carlyle begins his account of the storming of the Bastille by conceding that the event “perhaps transcends the talent of mortals” to describe. By concentrating on the role of the fictional Defarges, Dickens mostly steers clear of Carlyle’s panoramic model, but he does borrow these details of the Bastille architecture.
4 (p. 216) Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to the Hôtel de Ville for judgment: The Marquis de Launay, governor of the Bastille, first negotiated with the mob on July 14, 1789, before rejecting their demands for access to the Bastille’s gunpowder stores. In the confusion, the drawbridge was lowered, and the crowd surged inside; de Launay ordered his soldiers to fire and more than a hundred of the insurgents were killed. When the revolutionaries prevailed, de Launay was marched toward the Hôtel de Ville, and killed on the way. Dickens bestows the honor of that retribution on Madame Defarge.
5 (p. 217) Seven faces of prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had burst their tomb: The great irony in the storming of the Bastille, that great symbol of state oppression, was that only seven prisoners were liberated, none of them political prisoners except in the broadest sense; they included two madmen and an aristocratic disciple of the Marquis de Sade.
Chapter 22: The Sea Still Rises
1 (p. 219) the complimentary name of The Vengeance: The substitution of individual names with allegorical monikers was popular during the Revolution; for example, Louis-Philippe-Joseph, duc d’Orléans, became Philippe-Égalité (meaning “equality”). It is also a favorite device of Dickens, particularly in his later fiction. In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens strictly limits the individual identities of his revolutionaries, instead emphasizing their collectivity.
2 (p. 219) red cap: Based on an ancient symbol of liberty, a red cap became the headgear of choice during the Revolution. Louis XVI was forced to wear one after the assault on the Tuileries Palace in June 1792.
3 (p. 219) old Foulon: Joseph-Francois Foulon was a counselor to Louis XVI known for his remark that the people should eat grass if they were hungry. For that, as well as his long-standing reputation for manipulating food distribution to his own profit, he was one of the first victims of the mob, strung up on a lantern rope, decapitated, and his mouth stuffed with grass.
4 (p. 223) son-in-law of the despatched: In his position as a senior tax official, Bertier de Sauvigny was suspected of crimes similar to those charged to his father-in-law Foulon—specifically, of withholding needed food supplies from the people. They died together in July 1789, when the mob overwhelmed the National Guardsmen and escorted them to the Hôtel de Ville for trial.
Chapter 23: Fire Rises
1 (p. 225) Monseigneur began to run away: The so-called “first emigration” of French nobility to England began in July 1789. Joining them was the Comte d’Artois, younger brother of Louis XVI, who later led an organization of loyalist resistance to the Revolution.
2 (p. 225) dust he was and to dust he must return: This verse from the Bible, Genesis 3:19, is most familiar from its use in the burial service in the Book of Common Prayer.
Chapter 24: Drawn to the Loadstone Rock
1 (p. 231) Drawn to the Loadstone Rock: The image of the Loadstone Rock comes from “The Third Kalandar’s Tale” in The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments; the hero, Ajib, finds his ship drawn magnetically toward a forbidding black mountain made of loadstone.
2 (p. 231) a people, tumultuous under a red flag and with their country declared in danger: The revolutionary government, fearing invasion from the east by a counterrevolutionary