The source of the attribution was French statesman, historian and thorough- going conservative Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877), and he was not paying Rousseau a compliment. Thiers, in his ten-volume History of the French Revolution , asserted that Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, president of the Paris Commune made a rabble- rousing speech to the people of Paris during the revolution’s Reign of Terror. In this speech Chaumeete is supposed to have claimed: Rousseau etait peuple aussi, et il disait: Quand le peuple n’aura plus rein a manger, il mangera le riche. That is . . . “Rousseau was also one of the people and he said: When the people will have nothing left to eat, they will eat the rich.” Adolphe Thiers was president of the French Third Republic, formed after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. In 1871 left-wing radicals seized power in Paris, establishing what was, once again, called the Paris Commune. Thiers ordered the brutal suppression of this Paris Commune by the French army. Between 6,000 and 7,000 “communards” were killed or executed during the fighting. As for eating the rich, my bet is the poor will find Warren Buffet to have gone off a bit, Bill Gates stringy and poorly dressed, Jeff Bezos all gristle, Mark Zuckerberg indigestible, and Elon Musk impossible to catch and skin.
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