★★★★★★
Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution by R.R. Palmer
Political radicalism usually descend into tyranny. But how?
The historian and 18th century specialist Robert Roswell Palmer tell the story of the Terror in France from 1793-94, from day to day from the collective perspective of the dictatorial government 12 members strong Committee for the public safety.
Most people in revolutionary France was too busy securing enough food and paying their bills to participate in the political assemblies set up during the revolution. The result was that only 1%-3% of people participated, so that the people’s representatives where drawn from the most radical political clubs, consisting of mostly radical middle class lawyers and similar occupations.
—“It was characteristic of the revolutionary leaders that, with palpable evidence to the contrary, they still believed the people enthusiastically behind them. They lived by faith and hope; they meant by the “people” something higher and nobler than the people that they saw; had they been more swayed by observable facts they would in all probability not have accomplished what they did. Consequently, on matters of public opinion, deputies on mission could rarely make an accurate report to their own government.”
— “It was a cardinal principle of [revolutionaries] that the people, the real people, could not be divided in its will. The struggle, in their eyes, was between patriots and enemies of the public weal; between the people and various weak individuals, private interests and purveyors of false doctrine. But where Mountaineers saw the people, Girondists saw merely a faction”
Quotes
“The truth is that there was very little patriotism in France in 1793, if by patriotism we mean a willingness to suspend party conflict in wholehearted support of the government against foreign foes. To many Frenchmen the government seemed to be the worst enemy. In supporting it they would only encourage a body of men whose principles they detested, men who had outraged their monarchist sentiments, persecuted their religion, disrupted their business and made their property insecure.” ― R.R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution
422 pages, Kindle Edition
ISBN 9781400849390 (ISBN10: 140084939X) ASIN B00FH8B2B6 Language English
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