Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/132

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112
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

to Jamaica, where his father, a well-known traveller, had settled. Mr. Algernon Swinburne is of the same family.

There is a singular contrast between the treatment of two young men destined to be admirals. Christopher Nesham, a youth of eighteen, was living at Vernon, in Normandy, in October 1789, when a furious mob fell on Planter, a corn merchant who had been charitable to the poor, but who, having sent flour to Paris, was accused of wishing to starve Vernon. The town-hall, where he had taken refuge, was stormed, and Planter was dragged down the stairs towards the lamp-post at the corner of the building. Attempts were made to fasten the rope round his neck. Renoult, a barrister who had vainly tried to defend Planter inside the hall, pressed forward, along with the octogenarian priest Courotte and young Nesham. The latter placed himself in front of Planter, snatched a pistol from one of the mob, and with it warded off the blows aimed at himself. Knocked down, he sprang up again and vigorously resisted the mob. Planter was at last got away from the lamp-post into an adjoining street, and a door being thrown open for the priest, he was pushed in and saved. One of the first acts of the municipality, on the restoration of order, was to confer citizenship on Nesham (November 17th, 1789). The Paris municipality in the following January presented him with a civic wreath and sword. The