Despite the apparent triumph of the ‘cultural turn’ and post-revisionism, older classic approaches to the Revolution keep resurfacing. Justification of the Terror, for instance, has found a disturbing fresh voice in S. Wahnich, In Defence of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution (London, 2012). And one of the oldest explanations of the whole episode has been vigorously revived by J. Israel in Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre (Princeton, NJ, 2014). According to Israel, ideas were the driving force of the Revolution from its origins and throughout. It was animated by the pursuit of certain core democratic and republican values rooted in the radical Enlightenment, whose development he had previously studied in three vast volumes. But unlike previous writers attributing agency to the Enlightenment, he sees the Terror as a perversion of its values rather than a logical consequence. These claims are highly contentious, but then controversy has always dogged every aspect of the Revolution. The main problem in forming a viewpoint on any of them is the sheer quantity of writing it has provoked. It is said that more is published every year on this subject than on the rest of early modern French history put together. The range of reading set out here can be no more than indicative and arbitrary. But most of the works cited have important bibliographies of their own, or indicate their sources in learned footnotes.
Notes
Preface to the Second Edition
1. M. Vox (ed.), Correspondance de Napoléon: Six cent lettres de travail (1806–1810) (Paris, 1943), 215; 12 Apr. 1808.
Chapter 1: France under Louis XVI
1. Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788 and 1789, ed. C. Maxwell (Cambridge, 1929), 275–6.
2. Quoted in W. Scott, Terror and Repression in Revolutionary Marseilles (London, 1973), 10.
3. Travels, 180.
4. Travels, 10 June 1787 (p. 23).
5. Quoted in F. Bluche, La Vie quotidienne au temps de Louis XVI (Paris, 1980), 275.
6. Quoted in O. H. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth Century France 1750–1789 (Oxford, 1974), 11.
7. Quoted in Hufton, The Poor, 69.
8. Quoted in O. H. Hufton, ‘Towards an Understanding of the Poor of Eighteenth Century France’, in J. F. Bosher (ed.), French Government and Society 1500–1850: Essays in Memory of Alfred Cobban (London, 1973), 152.
9. Journal de ma vie: Jacques-Louis Ménétra compagnon vitrier au 18e siècle, ed. D. Roche (Paris, 1982).
10. Tableau de Paris (12 vols., Amsterdam, 1783), quoted in S. L. Kaplan, ‘Réflexions sur la police du monde de travail 1700–1815’, Revue historique, 329 (1979), 70.
11. Quoted in Y. Durand, Les Fermiers Généraux au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1971), 190.
12. Travels, 26 Aug. 1787 (p. 60).
13. Quoted in M. Garden, Lyon et les Lyonnais au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1970), 534–5.
14. Travels through France and Italy (London, 1763), Letter IV.
15. Memoirs of Louis-Philippe Comte de Ségur, ed. E. Cruikshanks (London, 1960), 41.
16. Maximes et pensées: Caractères et anecdotes, ed. C. Roy (Paris, 1963), 76.
17. Quoted in M. Marion, Dictionnaire des institutions de la France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1923), 314.
18. Travels, 23 Oct. 1787 (p. 89).
19. Mme Campan, Mémoires sur la vie de Marie-Antoinette, reine de France et de Navarre, ch. 4.
20. Diary of Lord Herbert, 7 May 1780, in The Pembroke Papers, ed. Ld. Herbert (London, 1942), 473.
21. Quoted in S. K. Padover, The Life and Death of Louis XVI (NY, 1963 edn.), 50–1.
Chapter 2: Enlightened Opinion
1. Quoted in L. Réau, L’Europe française au siècle des lumières (Paris, 1938), 47.
2. Quoted in D. Mornet, Les Origines intellectuelles de la Révolution française 1715–1787 (Paris, 1933), 311.
3. Quoted ibid. 307.
4. Quoted in R. Darnton, The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie 1775–1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 295–6.
5. De l’esprit des lois (Geneva, 1748), bk. xi, ch. vi.
6. Quoted in M. Cranston, Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1754 (London, 1983), 228.
7. Quoted in J. Lough, France on the Eve of Revolution: British Travellers’ Observations 1763–1788 (London, 1987), 160–1.
8. Quoted by M. Ozouf in K. M. Baker (ed.), The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, i: The Political Culture of the Old Regime (Oxford, 1987), 422.
9. Quoted in T. Besterman, Voltaire (London, 1969), 427.
10. Mme d’Epinay to Galiani, in L’Abbé F. Galiani: Correspondance, ed. L. Perey and G. Maugras (2 vols., Paris, 1890), i. 375.
11. Quoted in W. Doyle, The Parlement of Bordeaux and the End of the Old Regime 1771–90 (London, 1974), 205.
12. Quoted in J. Lough, An Introduction to Eighteenth Century France (London, 1960), 192.
13. Quoted in Correspondance de Félix Faulcon, ed. G. Debien (2 vols., Poitiers, 1939), i. 180.
14. Quoted in B. S. Stone, The French Parlements and the Crisis of the Old Regime (Chapel Hill, 1986), 147–8.
15. The Adams Papers: Series I, ed. L. H. Butterfield (4 vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1961), iv. 35.
16. Quoted in D. Echeverria, Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of American Society to 1815 (Princeton, 1957), 152–3.
17. Adolphe, ou Principes élémentaires de politique (London, 1795), 91.
Chapter 3: Crisis and Collapse, 1776–1788
1. Quoted in Orville T. Murphy, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes (Albany, 1982), 235.
2. Quoted in D. Dakin, Turgot and the Ancien Régime in France (London, 1939), 131.
3. Despatches from Paris 1784–1790, ed. O. Browning (2 vols., London, 1909–10), i. 134.
4. Quoted in W. Doyle, Origins of the French Revolution (2nd edn., Oxford, 1988), 51.
5. Quoted ibid. 97.
6. Quoted ibid. 98.
7. 5 May 1787. The Letters of Lafayette to Washington 1777–1799, ed. L. Gottschalk (Philadelphia, 1976), 322.
8. Avertissement, in Calonne, De l’état de la France, présent et à venir (London, 1790), 439.
9. Quoted in J. Egret, La Pré-Révolution française 1787–1788 (Paris, 1962), 59.
10. Quoted ibid. 60.
11. Quoted in Journal de l’Assemblée des Notables de 1787, ed. P. Chevallier (Paris, 1960), 79.
12. H. Swinburne, The Courts of Europe at the Close of the Last Century (2 vols., London, 1895), ii. 22.
13. Travels, 75.
14. Ibid. 80.
15. Les Remontrances du parlement de Paris au XVIIIe siècle, ed. J. Flammermont (3 vols., Paris, 1888–1908), iii. 738–9.
16. Despatches from Paris, ii. 44, 8 May 1788.
17. A. F. Bertrand de Molleville, Private Memoirs Relative to the Last Years of Lewis the Sixteenth, Late King of France (3 vols., London, 1797), i. 108.
Chapter 4: The Estates-General, September 1788–July 1789
1. Despatches from Paris, ii. 140.
2. Quoted in Egret, La Pré-Révolution, 334.
3. Correspondance secrète sur Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, la cour et la ville de 1777 à 1792, ed. A. de Lescure (2 vols., Paris, 1866), ii. 305.
4. Quoted in M. Gresset, Gens de justice à Besançon (1674–1789) (2 vols., Paris, 1978), ii. 756.
5. Despatches from Paris, ii. 161, 19 Feb. 1789.
6. Travels, 134.
7. Despatches from Paris, ii. 217.
8. J. A. Creuzé-Latouche, Journal des États Généraux et du début de l’Assemblée Nationale (18 mai–29 juillet 1789), ed. J. Marchand (Paris, 1946), 130.
9. Travels, 154.
10. A Diary of the French Revolution by Gouverneur Morris, 1752–1816. Edited by Beatrix Cary Davenport (2 vols., London, 1939), i. 200.
11. Travels, 159.
Chapter 5: The Principles of 1789 and the Reform of France
1. Quoted in G
. Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789 (Eng. trans., London, 1973), 102.
2. Quoted in J. P. Hirsh, La Nuit du 4 août (Paris, 1978), 128–9.
3. Marquis de Ferrières: Correspondance inédite 1789, 1790, 1791, ed. H. Carré (Paris, 1932), 114.
4. The Correspondence of William Augustus Miles on the French Revolution 1789–1817, ed. C. P. Miles (2 vols., London, 1890), i. 200.
5. Despatches from Paris, ii. 268. Fitzgerald to Duke of Leeds, 15 Oct. 1789.
6. Quoted in L. G. Wickham Legg, Select Documents Illustrative of the History of the French Revolution: The Constituent Assembly (2 vols., Oxford, 1905), i. 173–4.
7. Quoted in S. Herbert, The Fall of Feudalism in France (London, 1921), 121–2.
Chapter 6: The Breakdown of the Revolutionary Consensus, 1790–1791
1. Quoted in A. Aulard, Christianity and the French Revolution (London, 1927), 59.
2. Quoted in G. Lewis, The Second Vendée: The Continuity of Counter-Revolution in the Department of the Gard 1789–1815 (Oxford, 1978), 28.
3. Quoted in P. de la Gorce, Histoire religieuse de la Révolution française (5 vols., Paris, 1902–23), i. 303.
4. Venise et la Révolution française: Les 470 dépêches des ambassadeurs de Venise au doge, 1786–1795, eds. A. Fontana, F. Furlan, and G. Sarlo (Paris, 1997), 508.
5. François Ménard de la Groye, député du Maine aux Etats généraux. Correspondance (1789–1791), ed. Florence Mirouse (Le Mans, 1989), 322.
6. Aug. 1790. Quoted in R. Lacour-Gayet, Calonne: Financier, réformateur, contre-révolutionnaire 1734–1802 (Paris, 1963), 290.
7. The Despatches of Earl Gower, ed. O. Browning (Cambridge, 1885), 79.
8. Miles, Correspondence, i. 245.
9. Ferrières, Correspondance, 362–3.
10. G. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution (Oxford, 1959), 89 and 91.
11. Despatches of Gower, 79–80.
Chapter 7: Europe and the Revolution, 1788–1791
1. Quoted in A. Cobban, Ambassadors and Secret Agents (London, 1954), 212.
2. Quoted in G. P. Gooch, Germany and the French Revolution (London, 1920), 39–40.
3. Quoted in C. Nordmann, Grandeur et liberté de la Suède (1660–1792) (Paris/Louvain, 1971), 430–1.
4. Quoted in P. Dukes, ‘Russia and the Eighteenth Century Revolution’, History (1971), 380.
5. Romilly to Dumont, quoted in A. Cobban (ed.), The Debate on the French Revolution 1789–1800 (London, 1950), 39–40.
6. Quoted in C. A. Macartney, The Habsburg Empire 1790–1918 (London, 1969), 134.
7. Quoted in Cobban, The Debate, 64.
Chapter 8: The Republican Revolution, October 1791–January 1793
1. Quoted in J. M. Thompson, English Witnesses of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1938), 146.
2. Quoted in de la Gorce, Histoire religieuse, ii. 30.
3. Quoted in J. M. Thompson, French Revolution Documents (Oxford, 1933), 161.
4. Quoted in Scott, Terror and Repression in Revolutionary Marseilles, 33.
5. Lettres d’“Aristocrates”: La Révolution racontée par les correspondances privées,1789–1794, ed. P. de Vaissière (Paris, 1907), 422. 4 juin 1792.
6. Quoted in Thompson, Documents, 177.
7. Morris, Diary, ii. 453.
8. Despatches of Gower, 238.
9. H. Morse Stephens, The Principal Speeches of the Statesmen and Orators of the French Revolution (2 vols., Oxford, 1892), ii. 359.
Chapter 9: War against Europe, 1792–1797
1. Quoted in T. C. W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars (London, 1986), 137.
2. Stephens, Orators, ii. 189.
3. Ibid.
4. Quoted in Blanning, Origins, 137.
5. 19 July 1793. Quoted in J. H. Rose, William Pitt and the Great War (London, 1914), 144.
6. Quoted in B. Lesnodorski, Les Jacobins polonais (Paris, 1965), 88.
7. Quoted in I. de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (London, 1981), 446.
8. Quoted in S. Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780–1813 (London, 1977), 201.
9. Quoted in R. Herr, The Eighteenth Century Revolution in Spain (Princeton, 1958), 325.
10. Quoted in H. Acton, The Bourbons of Naples (1734–1825) (London, 1956), 254.
Chapter 10: The Revolt of the Provinces
1. Quoted in J. Hardman (ed.), French Revolution Documents, ii (Oxford, 1973), 23.
2. Quoted in M. J. Sydenham, The Girondins (London, 1961), 126.
3. Quoted in D. Sutherland, The Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brittany 1770–1796 (Oxford, 1982), 260.
4. Quoted in C. Tilly, The Vendée (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1964), 317.
5. Quoted in A. Schmidt, Tableaux de la Révolution française (3 vols., Leipzig, 1867), i. 174.
6. Quoted in Scott, Terror and Repression in Revolutionary Marseilles, 55.
7. Quoted ibid. 84.
8. Quoted in Hardman, Documents, ii. 67.
9. Quoted in A. Forrest, Society and Politics in Revolutionary Bordeaux (Oxford, 1975), 67.
10. Quoted ibid. 99.
11. Quoted in M. H. Crook, ‘Federalism and the French Revolution: The Revolt of Toulon in 1793’, History, 65 (1980), 393.
12. Quoted in D. Stone, ‘La Révolte Fédéraliste à Rennes’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 43 (1971), 368–9.
13. Quoted in Hardman, Documents, ii. 102.
14. Quoted in Forrest, Bordeaux, 111.
Chapter 11: Government by Terror, 1793–1794
1. Quoted in Hardman, Documents, ii. 149.
2. Quoted in Forrest, Bordeaux, 226.
3. Quoted in Hardman, Documents, ii. 357.
4. Quoted in Thompson, Documents, 258–9.
5. Quoted in Hardman, Documents, ii. 157.
6. Un Allemand en France sous la terreur: Souvenirs de Frédéric-Christian Laukhard, ed. W. Bauer (Paris, 1915), 272–3.
7. Quoted in de la Gorce, Histoire religieuse, iii. 246.
8. Quoted in R. Sécher, Le Génocide franco-français: La Vendée-Vengé (Paris, 1986), 159.
9. W. Markov and A. Soboul, Die Sansculotten von Paris (Berlin, 1957), 206.
10. Quoted in Robespierre: Textes choisis, ed. J. Poperen (3 vols., Paris, 1958), iii. 99.
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