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5 (p. 247) “He is a traitor since the decree. His life is forfeit to the people. His cursed life is not his own!”: The patriot here is incorrect, or Dickens has forgotten that it was not until March 1793 that emigrés faced death if they ventured to return to France.

6 (p. 248) circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up together singing a Liberty song: “Trees of Liberty,” treated by Louis-Sébastien Mercier in his post-revolutionary volume Nouveau Paris (1799), were popular symbols of the Revolution. The most famous, 60 feet high and topped by a red cap, stood in the Champ de Mars. The “Liberty song” is, of course, La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, which was composed during the Revolution and sung by French revolutionary forces.

7 (p. 251) prison of La Force: Once an aristocratic residence, the Prison of La Force became a prison in 1780 and was a focus of the September massacres in 1792.

8 (p. 253) horrible massacre: The notorious September massacres of 1792 consisted of summary executions of nearly 2,000 prisoners, male and female, in the four main Paris prisons. Carlyle devotes much space to this event in The French Revolution (1837), and historians consider it the single greatest atrocity of the Revolution, six days of murderous mayhem that are a chilling counterpart to the sustained, organized slaughter that took place during the Reign of Terror (1793-1794).

Chapter 2: The Grindstone

1 (p. 257) the Saint Germain Quarter: The medieval quarter on the left bank of the River Seine, named for its famous church, Saint-Germain was once the preferred residence of aristocrats and has long been considered the heart of intellectual and cultural life in Paris.

2 (p. 257) A mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still in his metempsychosis: Metempsychosis refers to the transmigration of souls speculated upon by Greek philosophers. There is also an allusion here to Ovid’s epic poem Metamorphoses (A.D. 1-8), specifically the story of Actaeon, the hunter who was transformed into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds.

3 (p. 257) would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into the Gazette: The Gazette was the official public organ of the British government; it published news of military victories, but also contained lists of bankruptcies, the function alluded to here.

4 (p. 258) Lombard-street: Lombard Street in the City of London has been known since medieval times as a center of banking and finance.

5 (p. 261) False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them: Dickens somewhat comically sanitizes a shocking incident during the September massacres, in which a gang of sansculottes murdered the Princesse de Lamballe, decapitated her, then cut off her pubic hair and plastered it to their faces. Carlyle hints at but does not specify the indignity, but Mercier describes it explicitly in Nouveau Paris (1799).

Chapter 4: Calm in Storm

1 (p. 270) whose business was with all degrees of mankind, bond and free: This is an allusion to the Bible, 1 Corinthians 12:13: “Whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free” (KJV).

2 (p. 271) The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms: Dickens now jumps ahead in time, past the execution of Louis XVI on January 21, 1793, to the crisis of February and March 1793, when the French army, now representing the revolutionary government, lost a series of battles to advancing Austrian and Prussian armies, prompting a massive call-up of reinforcements.

3 (p. 271) three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon’s teeth had been sown broadcast: According to the classical myth of the founding of Thebes, Cadmus killed a dragon and sowed its teeth into the earth, from which sprung an entire army.

4 (p. 271) Year One of Liberty: The French Revolutionary Calendar,