The Scarlet Pimpernel - Historical Allusions

Historical Allusions

As a writer Baroness Orczy often alluded to historical events and figures but adapted these freely in creating her tales.

Citizen Chauvelin, the recurring villain of the Scarlet Pimpernel series, is based to some extent on the real-life Bernard-François, marquis de Chauvelin, who survived the Revolutionary period to serve as an official under Napoleon I of France. He was a noted liberal Deputy under the Bourbon Restoration.

Other real life historical figures who appear in Orczy's Pimpernel series include:

  • Maximilien Robespierre
  • Louis de Saint-Just
  • Jean-Lambert Tallien
  • Thérésa Cabarrus
  • Georges Danton
  • François Chabot
  • Fabre d'Églantine
  • Claude Bazire
  • Baron Jean de Batz
  • Jean-Paul Marat
  • Paul Barras
  • Georges Couthon
  • Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac
  • Éléonore Duplay

Read more about this topic:  The Scarlet Pimpernel

Famous quotes containing the word historical:

    This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.
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