Legends and curiosities of history (part 2).

 

Prefecture of Arras, France. Photo: Pir6mon, 2011.
Lic. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

A wolf in sheep's clothes. 

By the year 1785, in Arras, a small city, to the north of France, lived a young and unknown lawyer. He was not a particularly appealing person. For sure, he only was another one, destined to become a bureaucrat... just one more, among many! In him, a bourgois air lived, elegantly dressed, with a powdered wig, so much in vogue between the wealthy people. But, at the same time, he was a passionate addict to the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. With his  controversial thoughts, this intellectual molded the ideas of many youngsters of the last third of the eighteenth century. His addiction was such, that even could be said that scratched in the unhealthy. The truth is, that those kind of readings, prepared the soil, for the remarkable events to come, not only in France, but in the rest of the western hemisphere. 

Legends and curiosities of history (part 1)

 

Group of sculptures at the Campidoglio, Rome.

One of the main tasks of the history scholars, is to reconstruct, as accurate as possible, the sequence of the events of the past. At the same time, is important to understand their subsequent implications. The great personages, with their acts (for better or worse), have decisively marked those happenings. But is often possible to note something, about the life of them: the profusion of anecdotal or curious stories. As a consequence, certain reasonable doubts may emerge, between the verifiable facts and what should be only taken as a legend.