I
"DARE, DARE AGAIN, ALWAYS DARE"[1]
(1792)
Born in 1759, died in 1794; led the attack on the Tuileries in 1792; implicated in the "September Massacres"; helped to organize the Revolutionary Tribunal; Member of the Committee of Public Safety; overthrown by Robespierre.
It is gratifying to the ministers of a free people to have to announce to them that their country will be saved. All are stirred, all are excited, all burn to fight. You know that Verdun[2] is not yet in the power of our enemies. You know that its garrison swears to immolate the first who breathes a proposition of surrender.
One portion of our people will proceed to the frontiers, another will throw up intrenchments, and the third with pikes will defend the hearts of
- ↑ Delivered in the National Assembly on September 2, 1792. Translated for this edition by Scott Robinson. Danton's speeches offer a notable exception among the speeches of the orators of the French Revolution, in that they were delivered without previous preparation. The other orators carefully wrote out and read their speeches and then had them printed, "but Danton," says Mr. Stephens, "always improvised; he never drew up a report or published a single speech." For the text of Danton's speeches we have to rely entirely on the reports in the Moniteur.
- ↑ Verdun surrendered on the day this speech was made.
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