IN THE TIME OF THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION- In Robespierre’s Time

 

 

 

BOOK REVIEW

THE TERROR-THE MERCILESS WAR FOR FREEDOM IN REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE, DAVID ANDRESS, FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX, NEW YORK, 2005

This year marks the 223rd anniversary of the beginning of the Great French Revolution with storming of the Bastille on July 14^th 1789. An old Chinese Communist leader, the late Zhou Enlai, was once asked by a reporter to sum up the important lessons of the French Revolution. In reply he answered that it was too early to tell what those lessons might be. Whether that particular story is true or not it does contain one important truth. Militants today at the beginning of the 21st century can still profit from an understanding of the history of the French Revolution.

There are many books that outline the history of that revolution. I have reviewed some of them in this space. Probably the most succinct overview, although it was written over one half century ago, is Professor Georges Lefebvre’s study. For those who want a more up-to-date overview of the main events and political disputes reflecting the tremendous increase in scholarship on the subject the book under review has a lot to recommend it. The author, a professor at the University of Portsmouth, England, covers all the main points from the pre-revolutionary problems confronting France at the time including, its terrible debt problems caused in the main by its support of the American Revolution to the political, social and, yes, sexual inadequacies of Louis XVI. As has been noted by many commentators on revolution, including the author and myself, one of the prerequisites for revolution is that the old regime can no longer govern in the same way. The personage of Louis XVI seemingly fits that proposition to a tee.

Professor Andress goes on to highlight the key events. Obviously, and most visibly the storming of the Bastille that opened up the cracks in the old monarchial regime. He details the struggle to create a constitutional monarchy through the various legislative assemblies that sought to carry out the reforms necessary to bring France into the modern age short of declaring a republic. And also the attempts, including by Louis himself, by forces of the old regime to return the old monarchy or stop the revolution in its tracks. When those efforts failed and the revolution began in earnest the Professor Andress goes into great detail analyzing the internal struggle by the revolutionaries, most notably the great fight between the Girondins and Jacobins for power, and the formation of the republic. After the defeat of the Girondins this led to the further fights to ‘purify’ the revolution among the Jacobin forces and the reign of the Robespierre-led Committee of Public Safety that consolidated the gains of the revolution through the ‘Reign of Terror’. Finally, the professor highlights the downfall and execution of Robespierre in 1794 represented the reaction that most revolutions exhibit when the political possibilities for further revolutionary moves is no longer tenable.

The author has done more than that though for those who are trying to understand the sometimes confusing political alignments in Paris and in the country. He discusses the voting patterns of the those in the various legislative assemblies; the role of the sans-culottes in pushing the revolution left; the falling out among the Jacobins; the international situation (meaning the immediate European one); and, most importantly, the reaction in non-Paris, the countryside that rebelled for various reasons against the central authority in the capital. Other subjects include the murder of Marat by Corday that set the revolution bloodily leftward, the Festival of the Supreme Being as an attempt to finally destroy the power of the Catholic Church and other reforms by the left-Jacobins to consolidate the revolution. The major negative of this work is political. As almost always in any discussion of the first five years of the French Revolution there is an almost fatalistic portrait of the emergence of Robespierre intertwined throughout all of the earlier events giving the impression that he was inevitably bound to take power. And, also inevitably, due to the excesses of the ‘Reign of Terror’ to lose it. This may be a good way to save one’s political soul but it is bad history. Revolutions, particularly great revolutions, are few and far between. They are messy affairs at the time and as seen through the historical lens. Nevertheless if the social tensions in society could always, or should always, be resolved in a nice non- violent parliamentary way there would be no revolutions. Damn, where would that leave us as the inheritors of the sans-culottes tradition?