The Project Gutenberg EBook of El Dorado, by Baroness Orczy

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Title: El Dorado

Author: Baroness Orczy

Posting Date: October 15, 2008 [EBook #1752]
Release Date: May, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EL DORADO ***

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EL DORADO

By Baroness Orczy

FOREWORD

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

The identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel is in no way whatever connected
with that of the Baron de Batz, and even superficial reflection will
soon bring the mind to the conclusion that great fundamental differences
existed 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 was
the chief agent in a vast network of conspiracy, entirely supported by
foreign money--both English and Austrian--and which had for its object
the overthrow of the Republican Government and the restoration of the
monarchy in France.

In order to attain this political goal, it is averred that he set
himself the task of pitting the members of the revolutionary Government
one against the other, and bringing hatred and dissensions amongst them,
until the cry of "Traitor!" resounded from one end of the Assembly of
the Convention to the other, and the Assembly itself became as one vast
den 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 the
so-called "Foreign Conspiracy," ascribe every important event of the
Great Revolution--be that event the downfall of the Girondins, the
escape of the Dauphin from the Temple, or the death of Robespierre--to
the intrigues of Baron de Batz. He it was, so they say, who egged the
Jacobins on against the Mountain, Robespierre