by Eugène Sue
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THE SWORD OF HONOR
THE FULL SERIES OF
The Mysteries of the People
:: OR : :
History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages
By EUGENE SUE
_Consisting of the Following Works_:
THE GOLD SICKLE; or, _Hena the Virgin of the Isle of Sen_. THE BRASS BELL; or, _The Chariot of Death_. THE IRON COLLAR; or, _Faustina and Syomara_. THE SILVER CROSS; or, _The Carpenter of Nazareth_. THE CASQUE'S LARK; or, _Victoria, the Mother of the Camps_. THE PONIARD'S HILT; or, _Karadeucq and Ronan_. THE BRANDING NEEDLE; or, _The Monastery of Charolles_. THE ABBATIAL CROSIER; or, _Bonaik and Septimine_. THE CARLOVINGIAN COINS; or, _The Daughters of Charlemagne_. THE IRON ARROW-HEAD; or, _The Buckler Maiden_. THE INFANT'S SKULL; or, _The End of the World_. THE PILGRIM'S SHELL; or, _Fergan the Quarryman_. THE IRON PINCERS; or, _Mylio and Karvel_. THE IRON TREVET; or, _Jocelyn the Champion_. THE EXECUTIONER'S KNIFE; or, _Joan of Arc_. THE POCKET BIBLE; or, _Christian the Printer_. THE BLACKSMITH'S HAMMER; or, _The Peasant Code_. THE SWORD OF HONOR; or, _The Foundation of the French Republic_. THE GALLEY SLAVE'S RING; or, _The Family Lebrenn_.
Published Uniform With This Volume By
THE NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.
28 CITY HALL PLACE NEW YORK CITY
THE SWORD OF HONOR
: : OR : : THE FOUNDATION OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
A Tale of The French Revolution
By EUGENE SUE
IN TWO VOLUMES
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH By SOLON DE LEON NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY, 1910 Copyright, 1910, by the NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.
[The two volumes have been included in one etext. (Note of Transcriber)]
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
Most persons know the French Revolution as a tremendous outburst inhuman affairs. Many know it as one of the race's great steps forward.That, however, it was the revolution which carried into power the thenrising bourgeois, now capitalist, class; that this class, whileappealing for and using the help of the working class, secretly hatedand feared the demands of the latter, and blocked them at everyopportunity; that finally the bourgeoisie, having obtained asrevolutionists, by the aid of the workers, their end of the revolution,became as violently reactionary as had been the nobility they fought,and ruthlessly shot and guillotined to pieces the then definiteproletarian movement for full political equality and collectiveownership of the tools of production--that is an insight into the FrenchRevolutionary period hitherto vouchsafed to few. To that insight EugeneSue's genius has, with the present thrilling novel, made straight theway for all.
This, _The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic_,is the eighteenth and culminating unit in Sue's great historic-fictionseries, _The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a ProletarianFamily Across the Ages_. Following close upon the previous volume, _TheBlacksmith's Hammer; or, The Peasant Code_, in which the popular stormwas seen gathering head under the atrocities of the gilded age of theGrand Monarch, the present story portrays that storm breaking in allthe accumulated vigor of its centuries of postponement, and sweepingaway the empty lay figures of an outgrown feudalism. True, one barrierto human liberty was thrown down only to disclose another. To the empireof birth and privilege was to succeed the empire of the shekel; to therule of do-nothing kings, the rule of do-nothing plutocracy. But it isin the act of drilling itself for the overthrow of that final parasiteclass--for the final conquering, in other words, of freedom for therace--that Sue portrays the proletariat in the next and closing work ofthe series, _The Galley Slave's Ring; or, The Family of Lebrenn_. Thoughhe minimizes none of the difficulties, his message for the future is ofhope only.
Nothing is more unanimous among historians of the period thanexpressions of commiseration for the condition of the French peoplebefore the Revolution. Yet nothing, on the other hand, is more unanimouseither than the condemnation showered upon this people the moment itseizes the reins and enters upon the task of putting down its age-longtyrannizers. Into this absurd breach of consistency Sue's genius savedhim from falling. In his pages Marat, Danton and Robespierre walk totheir doom with head erect, clean from the smut slung at them by theirbourgeois enemies, for whom _they were going too far_. Friends of thePeople once, so they remained to the end; and in that mantle Sue haspreserved their memory for all time. For him who would rail at theirsummary deeds Sue has far from spread a bed of roses. The memory of theroyalist massacres in the Vendee and of the triumphant bourgeoismassacres during the White Terror, rescued by his pen from the oblivionin which they were sought to be buried, have thrown the RevolutionaryTerror into its proper perspective. It is a bagatelle beside the actscommitted by its denouncers.
Sue's clear presentation of the maxim, "To the peasant the land, to theworkman the tool"; his unflinching delineation of the debauchery ofcourt and ecclesiastical circles of the time; his revelation of the roleof the political machine under the guise of religion sending out itsarms as willing regicides or _agents provocateurs_ by turn; and hisclear depiction of the cowardly, grasping, double-dealing andfraud-perpetrating character of the bourgeois, all of which is presentedin the easy reading of a story, make this thrilling work of fiction anunsurpassable epitome of the period in which its action elapses.
Finally, it is the distinctive test of good literature upon any topic,that it does not sate, but incites to further thought and study. Not theleast of the values of _The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of theFrench Republic_, is that it performs this reverent duty matchlessly forthe momentous period of which it treats.
SOLON DE LEON.
New York, April, 1910.