[1] This book was written in London between April and September 1822, and revised in February 1845 and December 1846.—T.
[2] Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794), perhaps the least contemptible of the demagogues of the time.—T.
[3] The National or Constituent Assembly passed the Constitution on the 3rd of September 1791, the King accepting it on the 13th. This Constitution created a Legislative Assembly, which alone was to retain the power of making laws, subject to the veto of the Sovereign. On the 30th of September the Constituent Assembly was dissolved and immediately succeeded by the Legislative Assembly, which consisted of 745 deputies elected by the people, and sat from 1 October 1791 to 21 September 1792. It was in this assembly that the parties of the Mountain and the Gironde were formed.—T.
[4] Jean Claude Marin Victor Marquis de Laqueville (1742-1810) commanded the corps of the nobles of Auvergne under the Comte d'Artois. He was impeached on the 1st of January 1792. He returned to France under the Consulate, and lived in retirement until his death.—B.
[5] M. Buisson de La Vigne, a retired captain of the Indian Company's fleet, had been ennobled in 1776.—B.
[6] Alexis Jacques Buisson de La Vigne, the Indian Company's manager at Lorient, married in 1770 Mademoiselle Céleste Rapion de La Placelière, of Saint-Malo.—B.
[7] Anne Buisson de La Vigne (1772-1813) married, in 1789, Hervé Louis Joseph Marie Comte du Plessix de Parscau (1762-1831). She died at Lymington in Hampshire, and is buried there with seven of her thirteen children. In 1814, the Comte de Parscau married Mademoiselle de Kermalun, a lady of forty, for the sake of the six young children left to him.—B.
[8] Knight of St. Louis.—T.
[9] Céleste Buisson de La Vigne (1774-1847), who became Madame de Chateaubriand.—B.