Louis Auguste Blanqui: Stormbird of Revolution
During over half a century, writes W.J. Fishman, Blanqui virtually personified the revolutionary movement in nineteenth-century France.
It is a paradox of history that Louis Auguste Blanqui, the most consistent and memorable of revolutionaries, should have received such brief notice in recent historical appreciations. Yet during over half a century of conspiracy, violent action and imprisonment, he virtually personified the revolutionary movement in nineteenth-century France.
Selected themes from the grand tragedy of his life may give us a key to the depreciation from which he has suffered and help us reappraise his importance.
Born in 1805, he was already the prisoner of a revolutionary tradition. His father Dominique was a Girondist, who survived the Terror and became a sous-préfet under Napoleon. The return of the Bourbons meant the loss of home and office, but, thanks to a timely heirloom of property settled on Madame Blanqui, the family was saved from destitution.
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