I witnessed a military review at which the King of Sardinia assisted. The
troops made a very brilliant appearance and manoeuvred well. His Majesty
has a very good seat on horseback and a distinguished military air. He is a
man of honor tho' he has rather too high notions of the royal dignity and
authority, and is too much of a bigot in religion; but his word can be
depended on, a great point in a King; there are so many of them that break
theirs and falsify all their promises. He will not hear of a constitution,
and endeavors to abolish or discountenance all that has been effected
during his absence. The priests are caressed and restored to their
privileges, so that the inhabitants of Piedmont are exposed to a double
despotism, a military and a sacerdotal one; the last is ten times more
ruinous and fatal to liberty and improvement than the former.
I have put up in Turin in the Pension Suisse, where for seven franks per
diem I have breakfast, dinner, supper and a princely bed room. The houses
are in general lofty, spacious and on a grand scale.
[67] Francois Lamarque, born 1756, a member of the Convention, ambassador
in Sweden, prefect of the Tarn and member of the Cour de Cassation
(1804). He was exiled in 1816. - ED.
[68] Major Frye (who wrote the name Despinassy) certainly means
Antoine-Joseph Marie Espinassy de Fontanelle's (1787-1829), who was a
member of the Convention, voted the King's death and served in the
Republican army of the Alps. In 1816, he was banished and went to
Lausanne, where he died 1829. - ED.
[69] Pardoux Bordas (1748-1842) was a member of the Convention. Though he
had not voted the death of Louis XVI, he was banished from France in
1816 and did not return there before 1828. - ED.
[70] Antoine Francis Gauthier des Orcieres (1752-1838) was elected to the
Etats Generaux in 1789, and, in 1792, to the Convention, where he
voted the death of Louis XVI. Later on, he was member of the Conseil
des Anoiena, juge au tribunal de la Seine and conseiller a la cour
imperiale de Paris (1815). Banished in 1816, he returned to France in
1828.
[71] Jean Baptists Michaud, a member of the Directoire du departement du
Doubs, and a member of the National Convention, voted the death of
Louis XVI and against the proposed appeal to the people. - ED.
[72] Jean Daniel Paul Etienne Levade (1750-1834), Protestant minister first
in England, then in Amsterdam, finally minister at Lausanne and
professor of theology at the Academie of the same town. - ED.
[73] Countess de Boigne, in her interesting Memoirs (of which there is an
English translation) abstained from describing her husband's career in
India; this lends additional interest to the information collected by
Major Frye, - ED.
