ENCYCLOPEDIC GLOSSARY OF HISTORIC ALLUSIONS (ALL ENTRIES TAKEN FROM  http://www.wikipedia.org, EXCEPT WHERE OTHERWISE NOTED)

 

ACADEMY-An academy is an institution for the study of higher learning. The name Academy became known for the Athenian school of philosophy and learning that Plato founded in the gymnasium there, in approximately 385 BC.

BARBAROUX-Charles Jean Marie Barbaroux (1767 - 1794) was a French revolutionist.  In 1792 was commissioned to go to the Legislative Assembly and demand the accusation of the directory of the département of Bouches-du-Rhone.

BAS-Marat's secretary, Laurent Bas, was at the time folding the next day's edition of Ami Du Peuple. Bas told Charlotte Corday that Citizen Marat was indisposed. She insisted on seeing him, adding that this was the third time she had been turned away. Marat's sister Albertine then consulted with Corday in his office. He gave his consent to show her in.

BOOK OF JUDITH- The Book of Judith has a dramatic setting that appealed to Jewish patriotism, and it warned of the urgency of adhering to Mosaic law, generally speaking, but what accounted for its enduring appeal was the drama of its narrative.The subject: a daring and beautiful woman in her full maturity, dressed as for the feast with all her spectacular jewels, accompanied by an apprehensive maid, succeeds in decapitating the invading general, Holofernes. The moral is as much about the dangers of a beautiful woman, as had been told of Delilah and Samson, but here the woman was a culture-hero to the listeners.         

BRISSOT-In French history, Jacques Pierre Brissot (January 15, 1754 – October 31, 1793), who assumed the name of de Warville, was a leading member of the Girondist movement during the French Revolution. Some sources give his name as Jean Pierre Brissot. Brissot was quick, eager, impetuous, and a man of wide knowledge. However, he was indecisive, and not qualified to struggle against the fierce energies roused by the events of the Revolution. His party fell before The Mountain; sentence of arrest was passed against the leading members of it on June 2 1793. Brissot attempted to escape in disguise, but was arrested at Moulins. His demeanour at the trial was quiet and dignified; and on October 31 1793 he died bravely with several other Girondists.

BUZOT-François Nicolas Leonard Buzot (March 1, 1760 - June 18, 1794), was a French Revolutionary leader. In 1789 he was elected deputy to the states-general, and there became known for his extreme opinions. He demanded the nationalization of the possessions of the clergy, and the right of all citizens to carry arms. In 1792 he was elected deputy to the Convention, and joined the Girondists. In the trial of Louis XVI, Buzot voted for death and against anyone who should demand the re-establishment of the monarchy. Proscribed with the Girondists on June 2, 1793, he escaped, and took refuge in Normandy, where he contributed to organize a federalist insurrection against the Convention, which was speedily suppressed. Buzot was outlawed, and fled to the neighbourhood of Bordeaux; he committed suicide in the woods of St. Emilion.

CAMBON-b. 1754 or 1756, d. 1820, French financier and revolutionary. A merchant of Montpellier, he became a member of the Legislative Assembly and the Convention, and he guided the financial policy of the Revolution from Oct., 1791, to Apr., 1795. He refunded the debt, calling in all old government bonds (both royal and revolutionary), and issuing new certificates at 5%; that put a halt to wild speculation in bonds. His measure also freed the government temporarily from repaying the principal on the debt. Advocating war to “free” Europe, he advanced the policy of exploiting conquered territory. Feeling his fiscal program and his authority threatened by Maximilien Robespierre , Cambon assisted in the plot that led to Robespierre's downfall on 9 Thermidor. Despite this Cambon was distrusted by the Thermidorians, and his career ended after his brief triumph. He was exiled after the Bourbon restoration.

CANDIDE-Candide, ou l'Optimisme, (English: Candide, or Optimism) (1759) is a picaresque novel by the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire. Voltaire never openly admitted to having written the controversial Candide. The work is signed with a pseudonym: "Monsieur le docteur Ralph," literally "Mr. Dr. Ralph." Sardonic in outlook, it follows the naïve protagonist Candide from his first exposure to the precept that "all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds," and on through a series of adventures that dramatically disprove that precept even as the protagonist clings to it. The novel satirizes the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and is a showcase of the horrors of the 18th century world

CARMELITE CONVENT- (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11480c.htm) In  September 1792, the Carmelite Convent in Paris was attacked and looted.  More than 1600 were killed; among them, over 250 priests and nuns.

CASANOVA-Giacomo Casanova (April 2, 1725–June 4, 1798) was a famous 18th century Italian adventurer whose name has become synonymous with seduction.  Casanova's extraordinary life carried him across the breadth of Europe in all kinds of scandalous adventures which he memorialized in his Histoire de Ma Vie—perhaps the most fascinating source for the social history of The Enlightenment. During his travels Casanova made and lost fortunes and encountered many famous personalities such as the Pope Clement XIII and Voltaire in 1760, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1787.

COUNT D’ARTOIS-Robert I "the Good" (1216 - February 8, 1250) was Count of Artois. He was the third (and second surviving) son of King Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile. He was killed in Egypt during the Seventh Crusade of his nephew Louis IX of France.

CUCURUCU- (http://www.punchandjudy.com/who.htm) Certainly the figure of Punch as we know him today has a direct link with the commedia dell'arte of the seventeenth century, but the character is far, far older. "Cucurucu" who is very like Punch but has cock's feathers on his head. This Cucurucu seems very akin to Cirirrus of the Atellan comedy, so like, in fact, that the connection must be acknowledged -another link between Punch and the theatre of Ancient Greece.

DAMIENS - Robert-François Damiens (1715-1757) was a Frenchman who attained notoriety by unsuccessfully attempting the assassination of Louis XV of France in 1757. He was the last person to be executed in France with the traditional and gruesome form of death penalty used for regicides.

 

DANTON-(1759-94) French statesman, one of the leading figures of the French Revolution . A Parisian lawyer, he became a leader early in the Revolution. A member of the Commune of Paris, the overthrow of the monarchy. In the new republic, he became minister of justice and virtual head of the Provisional Executive Council. A member of the Convention, the National Assembly, he dominated the first Committee of Public Safety (Apr.-July, 1793), created by the Convention as the chief governing body of France. When France suffered military reverses, Danton began to advocate a conciliatory foreign policy. On Mar. 30, 1794, Danton and his followers were charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government. The trial was a mockery, and Danton was guillotined.

DUMOURIEZ-1739-1823, French general in the French Revolutionary Wars . After fighting in the Seven Years War, he was employed by King Louis XV on several secret missions. His career was fading when the outbreak of the French Revolution opened new prospects for him. Although close to the Jacobins in 1790, he offered his services to King Louis XVI and became (Mar., 1792) minister of foreign affairs in a ministry that included several Girondists and that sought war with Austria. Made minister of war (June, 1792), he resigned to take the marquis de Lafayette's place as an army commander when the latter was charged with treason (Aug., 1792). Dumouriez helped defeat the Prussians at Valmy (Sept., 1792), drove the Austrians from Belgium at Jemappes (Nov., 1792), and invaded the Netherlands (Feb., 1793). Defeated (March) at Neerwinden, he began negotiations with the Austrians, and after turning over to them the commissioners sent from Paris to investigate his defeat he finally (Apr., 1793) deserted to the Austrian lines. After wandering over Europe, disavowed even by the French royalists, he settled (1800) in England.

GENSONNE-Armand Gensonné (August 10, 1758 - October 31, 1793) was a French politician.  As a member of the Committee of General Defence, and as president of the Convention (March 7-21, 1793), he shared in the bitter attacks of the Girondists on the Mountain; and on the fatal day of June 2 his name was among the first of those inscribed on the prosecution list. He was tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal on October 24 1793, condemned to death and guillotined, displaying great courage.

GIRONDIN-The Girondists (in French Girondins, and sometimes Brissotins), comprised a political faction in France within the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention during the French Revolution. The Girondists were more a group of individuals holding certain opinions and principles in common than an organised political party, and the name was at first somewhat loosely applied to them owing to the fact that the most brilliant exponents of their point of view were deputies from the Gironde.

JACOBIN-In the context of the French Revolution, a Jacobin originally meant a member of the Jacobin Club (1789-1794). But even while the Club still existed, the name of Jacobins had been popularly applied to all promulgators of extreme revolutionary opinions; "Jacobin democracy" for example is synonymous with totalitarian democracy. In contemporary France this term refers to a centralistic conception of Republic, with a lot of power vested in the national government, at the expense of local governments. Jacobinism is not related to Jacobitism or the English Jacobean

LAFAYETTE-Marie-Joseph-Paul-Roch-Yves-Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette (September 6, 1757–May 20, 1834), was a French aristocrat most famous for his participation in the American Revolutionary War and early French Revolution. La Fayette is considered a national hero in both France and the United States and is one of only six people in history to become an Honorary U.S. Citizen.

LAVOISIER-Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (August 26, 1743 – May 8, 1794) was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry, finance, biology, and economics. He stated the first version of the Law of Conservation of Matter, recognized and named oxygen (1778), disproved the phlogiston theory, and helped to reform chemical nomenclature. Lavoisier is often referred to as the father of modern chemistry. He was also an investor and administrator of the Ferme Générale, a private tax collection company; chairman of the board of the Discount Bank (later the Banque de France); and a powerful member of a number of other aristocratic administrative councils. Due to his prominence in the pre-revolutionary government in France, he was beheaded at the height of the French Revolution.

LOUIS XIV-Louis XIV (Louis-Dieudonné) (September 5, 1638 – September 1, 1715) reigned as King of France and King of Navarre from May 14, 1643 until his death. Louis XIV, known as The Sun King (French: Le Roi Soleil) and as Louis the Great (French: Louis le Grand), ruled France for seventy-two years — a longer reign than any other French or other "major" European monarch. He worked successfully to create an absolutist and centralised state; historians and political scientists often cite him as an example of an enlightened despot. Louis XIV became the archetype of an absolute monarch. He is frequently claimed to have said "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the state").

LOUIS XVI-Louis XVI (August 23, 1754 – January 21, 1793), was King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then King of the French in 1791-1792. Suspended and arrested during the insurrection of the 10th of August, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of treason with the enemy, and guillotined on January 21, 1793.

LOUIS XV-Louis XV (February 15, 1710 – May 10, 1774), called the Well-Beloved (French: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1715 to 1774. Miraculously surviving the death of his entire family, he was loved by the French at the beginning of his reign. However, in time, his inability to reform the French monarchy and his policy of appeasement on the European stage lost him the support of his people, and he died one of the most unpopular kings of France.

LOVET-Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvrai (June 12, 1760 - August 25, 1797), was a French writer and politician. On August 10, he became editor of the Journal des débats, and in this capacity, as well as in the Assembly made himself conspicuous by his attacks on Robespierre, Marat and the other Montagnards, whom he declares he would have succeeded in bringing to justice in September but for the poor support he received from the Girondist leaders. It is more probable, however, that his ill-balanced invective contributed to their ruin and his own; for him Robespierre was a royalist, Marat the principal agent of England, the Montagnards Orleanists in masquerade. His courageous attitude at the trial of Louis XVI, when he supported the appeal to the people, only served still further to discredit the Girondists. He defended them, however, to the last with great courage, if with little discretion

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY-The National Assembly is the name of either a legislature, or the lower house of a bicameral legislature in some countries. The best known, if not first, National Assembly, was that established following the French Revolution in 1789, known as the Assemblée Nationale. Consequently, the name is particularly common in Francophone countries, but is also found in some Commonwealth countries. It was also the name of the legislature during the First Republic and the Consulate, and since 1946 has been the lower house of the French parliament, first under the Fourth Republic, and from 1958, the Fifth Republic.

NATIONAL GUARD-During the early years of the French Revolution, the National Guard was a military force separate from the regular army. Initially under the command of the Marquis de la Fayette, then briefly that of the Marquis de Mandat, it was strongly identified with the middle class and with support for constitutional monarchy. This changed radically in the summer of 1792, with the admission of the fédérés to the guard and with the subsequent takeover of the guard by Antoine Joseph Santerre when Mandat was murdered in the first hours of the insurrection of the 10th of August. During the Paris Uprising the army was replaced with a National Guard consisting of all able-bodied citizens capable of carrying weapons.

NECKER-Jacques Necker (September 30, 1732 – April 9, 1804) was a French statesman and finance minister of Louis XVI.

NELSON-The Right Honourable Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, KB (September 29, 1758 – October 21, 1805) was a British admiral who won fame as a leading naval commander. He is famous for his participation in the Napoleonic Wars, most notably in the Battle of Trafalgar, where he lost his life. He became the greatest naval hero in the history of Great Britain, eclipsing Admiral Robert Blake in fame. His biography by the poet Robert Southey appeared in 1813, while the wars were still being fought. His love affair with Emma Hamilton, the wife of the British ambassador to Naples is also well known, and he is honoured by the London landmark of Nelson's Column, which stands in Trafalgar Square.

PERRAGAUX- Jean-Frédéric PERREGAUX (1744-1808), a financier and the first leader of the Bank of France. 

PETITION-Pétion de Villeneuve, Jérôme (1756-94), French revolutionary. A leader of the Jacobins, Pétion sat in the Constituent Assembly, was elected (Nov., 1791) mayor of Paris over the marquis de Lafayette, and by inaction aided the antiroyal demonstration of June 20, 1792. Elected to the Convention, he clashed with Maximilien Robespierre and allied himself with the Girondists . Early in June his arrest was ordered but he escaped; he died probably by suicide while in hiding near Bordeaux.

ROBESPIERRE-Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, (May 6, 1758–July 28, 1794), known also to his contemporaries as "the Incorruptible," is one of the best known of the leaders of the French Revolution. He was an influential member of the Committee of Public Safety which oversaw the period of the French Revolution in which the revolutionaries consolidated their power, a period which is commonly known as the Reign of Terror. The myth that Robespierre himself became a virtual dictator in his final years is often repeated, but while the Committee of Public Safety was certainly a dictatorial committee, Robespierre was not in his own right a dictator. In Thermidor of the Revolutionary calendar's Year Two he was executed by his conspiring comrades.

ROSSIGNOL-General Jean-Antoine Rossignol, 1759-1802. Army officer and friend of Robespierre, suspected in some of the most horrible excesses of the revolution, especially in the suppression of the Vendée uprising. He was deported to the Seychelles by Napoleon in 1801.  Rossignol is also the French word for nightingale.

TALLEYRAND-Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (February 2, 1754 - May 17, 1838) was a French diplomat. He worked successfully from the regime of Louis XVI, through the revolution and then under Napoleon I, Louis XVIII and Louis-Philippe. Known since the turn of the 19th century simply by the name Talleyrand, he is widely regarded as one of the most versatile and influential diplomats in European history.

TRAFALGAR-Trafalgar, battle of.  Naval engagement fought off Cape Trafalgar on the SW coast of Spain on Oct. 21, 1805, in which the British fleet under Horatio Nelson won a famous victory over the allied French and Spanish fleets under Pierre de Villeneuve. Nelson's strategy was to divide his own fleet into two sections, one led by himself in the Victory, the other led by Cuthbert Collingwood in the Royal Sovereign, and to penetrate the enemy line in two places. This maneuver resulted in the capture of 20 enemy ships (one was blown up). The British lost no ships. Among the dead was Nelson himself, struck by a bullet from the French ship Redoutable. The decisive English victory ended Napoleon I's power on the sea and made a French invasion of England impossible. The words signaled by Nelson at the beginning of the battle— “England expects that every man will do his duty” —became immortal. 

VENDEE- Vendée is a département in west central France, on the Atlantic's Bay of Biscay. The name Vendée is taken from the Vendée river which runs through the south-eastern part of the département. It is also remembered as the place where the peasants revolted against the Revolutionary government in 1793. The bloody conflict, in support of the Monarchy and against the changes imposed on the Roman Catholic Church erupted in defiance of the Revolutionary government's military conscription. A guerrilla war, led by an underground faction known as the Chouans (screech owls), known as the Revolt in the Vendée and would cost more than 100,000 lives until it ended in 1796.

VERNIAUD- Vergniaud, Pierre Victurnien 1753-93, French revolutionary. A brilliant lawyer, he gained attention (1790) when defending peasants who had burned a castle. Elected a deputy to the legislative assembly from the Gironde, he was a leader of the Girondists and was one of the greatest orators of the French Revolution. His most noted speeches include his address (1792) in favor of beginning the war against Austria. During the trial of Louis XVI, he unwisely recommended a referendum on the punishment of the king. He led the fight against the bloc known as the Mountain and against Maximilien Robespierre. He fell with the Girondists and was guillotined.                                                                     .

VOLTAIRE-François-Marie Arouet (November 21, 1694 – May 30, 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, deist and philosopher. Voltaire was born in Paris to François Arouet and Marie-Marguerite Daumart or D'Aumard. Both parents were of Poitevin extraction, but the Arouets were long established in Paris, the grandfather being a prosperous tradesman. Nonetheless, throughout his life, Voltaire sometimes implied that he came from a noble background.