Plainpalais
Plainpalais is a promenade to the south of the city of Geneva.
A statue of Rousseau stands in the
square. During the Geneva Revolution of 1792-1795, Geneva's syndics were
killed in an uprising in Plainpalais. Mary Shelley recounts this
incident in A History of a Six Weeks' Tour, Letter II:
To the south of the town is the promenade of the Genevese,
a grassy plain planted with a few trees, and called Plainpalais.
Here a small obelisk is erected to the glory of Rousseau, and
here (such is the mutability of human life) the magistrates, the
successors of those who exiled him from his native country, were
shot by the populace during that revolution, which his writings
mainly contributed to mature, and which, notwithstanding the
temporary bloodshed and injustice with which it was polluted, has
produced enduring benefits to mankind, which all the chicanery of
statesmen, nor even the great conspiracy of kings, can entirely
render vain. From respect to the memory of their predecessors,
none of the present magistrates ever walk in Plainpalais.
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