“There the ex-slaves of the San Domingo Revolution established their affinity with the population of revolutionary France. Between 1789 and Waterloo in 1815 the people of France staggered Europe and the world with the colossal scope of their achievements in war and in peace.
No one had previously conceived that so much power was hidden in a people. Hilaire Belloc has perhaps expressed it best when he said that after August 1792 the reactionary classes of Europe armed against this new monster and…