ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE,

Author of "Travels in the Holy Land," etc.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

TRANSLATED BY H. T. RYDE.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS.

ADVERTISEMENT.

We have not thought it necessary to preface this recital by any introduction of the preceding epochs of the Revolution. We have not re-produced, with the minute elaboration of an annalist, the numerous parliamentary and military details of all the events of these forty months. Two or three times we have, in order to group men and circumstances in masses, made unimportant anachronisms.

We have written after having scrupulously investigated facts and characters: we do not ask to be credited on our mere word only. Although we have not encumbered our work with notes, quotations, and documentary testimony, we have not made one assertion unauthorized by authentic memoirs, by unpublished manuscripts, by autograph letters, which the families of the most conspicuous persons have confided to our care, or by oral and well-confirmed statements gathered from the lips of the last survivors of this great epoch.

If some errors in fact or judgment have, notwithstanding, escaped us, we shall be ready to acknowledge them and repair them in sequent editions, when the proofs have been transmitted to us. We shall not reply one by one to such denials and contradictions as this book may give rise to; it