Historically speaking, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, is based upon the events of the French Revolution. Native Hungarian literature highly influenced Baroness Orczy, especially during her childhood. She wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel after she and her husband returned from Monte Carlo, and she had been lured by its culture into the great history of France. Anne Commire states in her World Authors "After five years of being sent to different publishing companies all over England, a small company in northern England finally accepted the Baroness' novel" (Commire 586). The story presents the heroic deeds of the character Sir Percy Blakeney using the symbol of the guillotine to show the horrors of the French Revolution.

The Scarlet Pimpernel leads a band of daringly brave Englishmen across the English Channel into France to rescue French aristocrats from the up-roaring sans-calotte (those without breaches; peasants). "The Scarlet Pimpernel is one...