Carlyle's error about the distance to Varennes

Chris R. Vanden Bossche, Professor of English, University of Notre Dame

[Home —> Authors —> Thomas Carlyle —> Works —> Carlyle and the Search for Authority]

[Chapter 3, note 46, of the author's Carlyle and the Search for Authority, which the Ohio State University Press published in 1991. It appears in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright. indicates a link to material not in the original print version. GPL]

Carlyle's error about the distance to Varennes, the topic of much controversy among historians, is discussed in Ben-Israel, 142-43 (see also J. Rosenberg, V). The point here is that Carlyle's error reveals only that he was more concerned with the symbolic import of the event-that the inability of the monarchy to move swiftly in flight indicated its inability to govern rather than literal facts.

Contents last modified 26 October 2001