Because of his popular and famous treatise Common Sense, which castigated the British monarchy, Thomas Paine is often credited with being the father of the American Revolution. When that unpleasant encounter with Great Britain was over, Paine turned his attention to France, and wrote against the French monarchy. He then went to that country, where he stood in high favor with the revolutionaries and was granted honorary French citizenship and even elected to the National Convention, notwithstanding his inability to speak the language.
Unfortunately for Paine, he was not revolting enough to satisfy Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, the architect of the Reign of Terror. Paine, a foe of capital punishment, had suggested that the king and queen of France should be deported instead of executed. Robespierre, upset by Paine's woosie attitude towards decapitation, ordered his arrest in 1793. The American minister to France did not particularly like Paine and made less than lukewarm efforts to free him--even to the point of suggesting that Paine was a subject of France's archenemy, Great Britain, instead of its ally, the United States.
Paine was jailed in a palace which had been converted into a prison. As so often happened to those who irritated Robespierre, our hero was eventually sentenced to death. However, Paine had for several days a severe fever, probably typhus. He convinced his guards to keep his room door open for ventilation, and the guards did so, as there was no realistic chance for his escape. Each night, the guards would place a mark on the doors of prisoners slated for the guillotine the following morning. Because Paine's door was wide open and leaning against the wall of the hallway, they marked the inside face of the door instead of the outside on the night prior to Paine's scheduled execution. Paine simply closed his door after the guards left, thus concealing the mark from the executioner's crew making their rounds the next day. Shortly thereafter, Robespierre fell out of favor and was himself guillotined, which removed a lot of the impetus for killing Paine.
Later that year, James Monroe, the future President, was appointed as the American ambassador to France. Monroe liked Paine and was able to obtain his release from prison.
No comments:
Post a Comment