Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (9 March 1749 – 2 April 1791) was a French writer, orator, statesman and a prominent figure of the early stages of the French Revolution.

Quotes

• Nous sommes assemblés par la volonté nationale, nous n’en sortirons que par la force.
  • We are here by the will of the nation, and we shall not leave except we are driven out by force.
  • Édouard Fournier, L'Esprit dans l'histoire, 5th ed. (1883), pp. 372–3
  • Reply of Mirabeau to the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé, Grand Master of the Ceremonies, when sent by Louis XVI, on 23 June 1789, to dissolve the National Assembly, according to the version given by the Marquis’ son, Scipion de Dreux-Brézé, in the French House of Peers on 9 March 1833. Source: Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 1805

• [Insert French]
  • The genius which has freed America and poured a flood of light over Europe has returned to the bosom of the Divinity.
  • Statement to the French National Assembly, 11 June 1790, on the death of Benjamin Franklin. Source: American Literature: An Historical Sketch, 1620–1880 by John Nichol (1882), p. 62

Attributed

• Le silence du peuple est la leçon des rois.
  • A people's silence is a lesson to their kings.
  • Sermons de Messire J. B. Charles Marie de Beauvais, Evêque de Senez, vol. 4 (Paris, 1807), p. 243 (Oraison Funébre de Louis XV., le Bien-aimé, 8. Denis, Juillet 27, 1774)
  • The passage is as follows:—Le peuple n’a pas, sans doute, le droit de murmurer; mais, sans doute aussi, il a le droit de se taire; et son silence est la leçon des rois.—"The people, no doubt, has not the right to murmur; but, as certainly also, it has the right to hold its peace, and the people’s silence is a lesson to its king." The preacher was contrasting the unpopularity of the king’s latter years with the earlier part of his reign. On the Good Friday previous (1 April 1774), the same prelate in the course of his sermon had said, Sire, mon devoir de ministre d’un Dieu de vérité m’ordonne de vous dire que vos peuples sont malheureux, que vous en êtes la cause, et qu’on vous le laisse ignorer.—"Sire, my duty as minister of the God of Truth compels me to tell you that your people are wretched, that you are the cause of their misery, and that you are left in ignorance of the fact." His text was Jonas iii. 4: "Yet forty days, and Ninive shall be destroyed"; and forty days (to a day) afterwards, 10 May, Louis died—a literal fulfilment to which the orator refers in the Funeral Discourse (Sermons de Beauvais, vol. 4, p. 217). See: Nouvelle Biographie Générale, vol. 5 (Didot, 1852), BEAUVAIS. The bishop’s words were not forgotten, and on the morrow of the taking of the Bastille, 15 July 1789, when the National Assembly (Versailles) was momentarily expecting, with feelings of relief and even of joy, the entry of the King, "one of the members" observed, Qu’un morne respect soit le premier accueil fait au monarque dans un moment de douleur. Le silence des peuples est la leçon des rois. N. J. Hugou, Mémoires de la Révolution de France, vol. 8 (Paris, 1790), p. 269. Thiers, in his Révolution Française (vol. 1, chap. 2), quotes Hugou’s words, and makes the "member" to be Mirabeau. Source: Classical and Foreign Quotations, 3rd ed. (1904), no. 1366

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau on Wikipedia