Memoirs of Barras

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE THE Second Volume of the Memoirs of Barras comprises the history of the home and foreign policy of the Directorate, from the installation of the government born of the Constitution of the Year III. (22nd August i795) to the coup d'Etat of the i8th Fructidor, Year V. (4th September i797). The volume...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE THE Second Volume of the Memoirs of Barras comprises the history of the home and foreign policy of the Directorate, from the installation of the government born of the Constitution of the Year III. (22nd August i795) to the coup d'Etat of the i8th Fructidor, Year V. (4th September i797). The volume about to be perused is composed of two elements, which, although really distinct, the editor has not seen fit to deal with separately, leaving them, on the contrary, constantly amalgamated: ? i. A series of analytical summaries of the sittings of the Directorate. 2. A series of anecdotes, comments, and opinions on contemporary personages or occurrences. We have thought proper to adopt a typographical disposition which, without altering the text in the slightest degree, or in any way remodelling the composition of the work, affords the reader the faculty of at once realising which of the two elements is represented in the page under his notice. We therefore publish in small type the summaries of the sittings of the Directorate and all passages akin to them from the somewhat dry precision of the narration. We have printed in ordinary type those portions? numerous and important, as it will be seen?wherein the Memoirs resume the briefly interrupted course of the personal recollections of Barras. 1.?The Analytical Summaries Of The Sittings Of The Directorate, And Their Historical Importance. These analytical summaries have been composed from notes taken by Barras on leaving every sitting of the Directorate. Assiduous at our sittings from the first to the last, I hardly ever left without having jotted down some notes about our ordinary labours. Imbued with the idea that a functionary invested with so high a mandate as ours owed his fellow-citizens a mor...