Thomas Paine

I was reading about the French Revolution for my class in droit constitutionnel, and came across a list of those granted honorary French citizenship for being champions of the cause, so to speak. My boyfriend's hero Thomas Paine (a hero because, he has, inter alia, the "Norfolk connection") was one of them. Paine was in fact elected to the National Convention, and was allowed to vote, despite his inability to speak French. His support for the Revolution did, just like the Brunswick Manifesto, backfire terribly. He ended up in prison under allegations of sympathising with the Girondins, and narrowly escaped being executed. It was only because his prison cell door happened to be open when the guard drew the condemning white chalk mark, allowing him to close it with the mark was facing the wall. What luck!

Proof that the French cannot be trusted.