Saturday, December 21, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Napoleon Bonaparte

« All quotes from this author
 

Give them a whiff of grapeshot.
--
This is often quoted as a command Napoleon issued when dispersing mobs marching on the National Assembly in Paris (5 October 1795), or it is occasionally stated that he boasted "I gave them a whiff of grapeshot" sometime afterwards, but the first known use of the term "whiff of grapeshot" is actually by Thomas Carlyle in his work The French Revolution (1837), describing the use of cannon salvo [salve de canons] against crowds, and not even the use of them by Napoleon.

 
Napoleon Bonaparte

» Napoleon Bonaparte - all quotes »



Tags: Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes, Authors starting by B


Similar quotes

 

A whiff of grapeshot.

 
Thomas Carlyle
 

Socialism is the legitimate and inevitable corollary of Mr. Bright's doctrine. If want is the crime of the Government, then the duty of the Government must be to provide against want. This is Socialism pure and simple. It begins with national workshops, and ends with what Mr. Carlyle calls a "whiff of grapeshot." Mr. Bright may pretend to direct his attacks against the aristocracy alone, but it is the possessors of capital, the employers of labour, the great middle class of this country who have real cause to dread his revolutionary language.

 
William Harcourt
 

Flowers she would pick like guitar strings, for a real good whiff of how how life behind par seems.

 
Lupe Fiasco
 

This melancholy London. I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.

 
William Butler Yeats
© 2009–2013Quotes Privacy Policy | Contact