El Dorado: An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel Read online

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  EL DORADO

  By Baroness Orczy

  FOREWORD

  There has of late years crept so much confusion into the mind of thestudent as well as of the general reader as to the identity of theScarlet Pimpernel with that of the Gascon Royalist plotter known tohistory as the Baron de Batz, that the time seems opportune for settingall doubts on that subject at rest.

  The identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel is in no way whatever connectedwith that of the Baron de Batz, and even superficial reflection willsoon bring the mind to the conclusion that great fundamental differencesexisted in these two men, in their personality, in their character, and,above all, in their aims.

  According to one or two enthusiastic historians, the Baron de Batz wasthe chief agent in a vast network of conspiracy, entirely supported byforeign money--both English and Austrian--and which had for its objectthe overthrow of the Republican Government and the restoration of themonarchy in France.

  In order to attain this political goal, it is averred that he sethimself the task of pitting the members of the revolutionary Governmentone against the other, and bringing hatred and dissensions amongst them,until the cry of "Traitor!" resounded from one end of the Assembly ofthe Convention to the other, and the Assembly itself became as one vastden of wild beasts wherein wolves and hyenas devoured one another and,still unsatiated, licked their streaming jaws hungering for more prey.

  Those same enthusiastic historians, who have a firm belief in theso-called "Foreign Conspiracy," ascribe every important event of theGreat Revolution--be that event the downfall of the Girondins, theescape of the Dauphin from the Temple, or the death of Robespierre--tothe intrigues of Baron de Batz. He it was, so they say, who egged theJacobins on against the Mountain, Robespierre against Danton, Hebertagainst Robespierre. He it was who instigated the massacres ofSeptember, the atrocities of Nantes, the horrors of Thermidor, thesacrileges, the noyades: all with the view of causing every section ofthe National Assembly to vie with the other in excesses and in cruelty,until the makers of the Revolution, satiated with their own lust, turnedon one another, and Sardanapalus-like buried themselves and their orgiesin the vast hecatomb of a self-consumed anarchy.

  Whether the power thus ascribed to Baron de Batz by his historians isreal or imaginary it is not the purpose of this preface to investigate.Its sole object is to point out the difference between the career ofthis plotter and that of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

  The Baron de Batz himself was an adventurer without substance, save thatwhich he derived from abroad. He was one of those men who have nothingto lose and everything to gain by throwing themselves headlong in theseething cauldron of internal politics.

  Though he made several attempts at rescuing King Louis first, andthen the Queen and Royal Family from prison and from death, he neversucceeded, as we know, in any of these undertakings, and he never onceso much as attempted the rescue of other equally innocent, if not quiteso distinguished, victims of the most bloodthirsty revolution that hasever shaken the foundations of the civilised world.

  Nay more; when on the 29th Prairial those unfortunate men and women werecondemned and executed for alleged complicity in the so-called "ForeignConspiracy," de Batz, who is universally admitted to have been thehead and prime-mover of that conspiracy--if, indeed, conspiracy therewas--never made either the slightest attempt to rescue his confederatesfrom the guillotine, or at least the offer to perish by their side if hecould not succeed in saving them.

  And when we remember that the martyrs of the 29th Prairial includedwomen like Grandmaison, the devoted friend of de Batz, the beautifulEmilie de St. Amaranthe, little Cecile Renault--a mere child not sixteenyears of age--also men like Michonis and Roussell, faithful servantsof de Batz, the Baron de Lezardiere, and the Comte de St. Maurice,his friends, we no longer can have the slightest doubt that the Gasconplotter and the English gentleman are indeed two very different persons.

  The latter's aims were absolutely non-political. He never intriguedfor the restoration of the monarchy, or even for the overthrow of thatRepublic which he loathed.

  His only concern was the rescue of the innocent, the stretching out of asaving hand to those unfortunate creatures who had fallen into the netsspread out for them by their fellow-men; by those who--godless, lawless,penniless themselves--had sworn to exterminate all those who clung totheir belongings, to their religion, and to their beliefs.

  The Scarlet Pimpernel did not take it upon himself to punish the guilty;his care was solely of the helpless and of the innocent.

  For this aim he risked his life every time that he set foot on Frenchsoil, for it he sacrificed his fortune, and even his personal happiness,and to it he devoted his entire existence.

  Moreover, whereas the French plotter is said to have had confederateseven in the Assembly of the Convention, confederates who weresufficiently influential and powerful to secure his own immunity, theEnglishman when he was bent on his errands of mercy had the whole ofFrance against him.

  The Baron de Batz was a man who never justified either his own ambitionsor even his existence; the Scarlet Pimpernel was a personality of whoman entire nation might justly be proud.