Love and Liberty

A Thrilling Narrative of the French Revolution of 1792

Alexandre Dumas

• Publisher: Aeneas Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9785501623644
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

Dumas went to Varennes in 1856 to find men who had seen the king's carriage stopped, and came back with this: the Revolution told from below by René Besson, a boy of the town who grows up into it. The Bastille, the flight of Louis, the Terror and the fall of Robespierre, all at eye level and from inside the crowd rather than above it. The narrator is invented; the old men Dumas sat with at Varennes were not, and the book is angrier than his usual manner. Fifty-seven plates, among them Daumier and Chardin, carry the century's own view of its people from the fêtes galantes of Watteau's age to the hardships of war.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Love and Liberty
• Chapter I. How M. Dumas Came to Write These Memoirs.
• Chapter I. Concerning His Parentage and Early Youth.
• Chapter II. The First Seeds of a Political Faith.
• Chapter III. A Stranger of Influence Turns Up.
• Chapter IV. I Educate Myself for Contingencies.
• Chapter V. I Break with the Aristocracy.
• Chapter VI. The Nation and the Bastille.—Verdict for the Former.
• Chapter VII. Concerning the Bastille.
• Chapter VIII. The Duke D’enghien’s Last Day’s Sport.
• Chapter IX. I Go to Make Captives and Am Taken Captive Myself.
• Chapter X. Touching Mademoiselle Sophie.
• Chapter XI. What “Brotherhood” Meant.
• Chapter XII. What Passed in the Forest.
• Chapter XIII. The People in Council.
• Chapter XIV. My New Parisian Friends.
• Chapter XV. I Go to the Jacobins’ Club.
• Chapter XVI. Paris Before the Revolution.
• Chapter XVII. I Attend a Meeting at the Cordeliers.
• Chapter XVIII. The Female Element in Politics.
• Chapter XIX. The Field of the Federation.
• Chapter XX. I Go Back Again.
• Chapter XXI. I Exchange My Gun for the Plane.
• Chapter XXII. My New Life Under Sophie’s Father.
• Chapter XXIII. The Arrival of the Dragoons.
• Chapter XXIV. The Night of the 21st of August, 1791.
• Chapter XXV. The Tragedy of Royalty Begins.
• Chapter XXVI. What Happened at Paris Before the Departure.
• Chapter XXVII. How They Set Out.
• Chapter XXVIII. The Road.
• Chapter XXIX. Still in Flight.
• Chapter XXX. What Happened in the Grocer’s Little Shop.
• Chapter XXXI. The Return of Royalty in Arrest.
• Chapter XXXII. What M. De Bouille Did in the Meantime.
• Chapter XXXIII. An Old Acquaintance Turns Up.
• Chapter XXXIV. The Critics Criticised.
• Chapter XXXV. Is Love Eternal?
• Chapter XXXVI. Barnave and Petion.
• Chapter XXXVII. Paris.
• Chapter XXXVIII. I Resume My Original Profession.
• Chapter XXXIX. Touching the Princess Lamballe.
• Chapter XL. The Tide Rises.
• Chapter XLI. Concerning the Bill of Forfeiture.
• Chapter XLII. What Took Place Between the Hairdresser and the Invalid.
• Chapter XLIII. The Red Flag.
• Chapter XLIV. The Massacre of the Champ De Mars.
• Chapter XLV. Robespierre Pays a Visit to M. Duplay.
• Chapter XLVI. Installation.
• Chapter XLVII. A Break.
• Chapter XLVIII. The Threat Is Louder.
• Chapter XLIX. The King Quits the Tuileries.
• Chapter L. The Massacres of September.
• Chapter LI. The King’s Trial Proceeded with.
• Chapter LII. Near the Block.
• Chapter LIII. The Sacrifice of Blood.
• Chapter LIV. Execution of Louis XVI.
• Chapter LV. What Follows.
• Chapter LVI. The Reign of Terror.
• Chapter LVII. Wholesale Massacre.
• Chapter LVIII. Marie Antoinette.
• Chapter LIX. Marie Antoinette Finds Peace at Last.
• Chapter LX. The Twenty-Two.
• Chapter LXI. The Red Flag.
• Chapter LXII. The Blood of Women.
• Chapter LXIII. Robespierre Falls.
• About the Author