Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

by Simon Schama

The most authoritative social, cultural and narrative history of the French Revolution, and one of the great landmarks of modern history publishing.'Monumental...provocative and stylish, Simon Schama's account of the first few years of the great Revolution in France, and of the decades that led up to it, is thoughtful, informed and profoundly revisionist' Eugen Weber, The New York Times Book Review

Genres: History, Nonfiction, France, French Revolution, European History, Politics, World History

976 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 1989

About the author

Sir Simon Michael Schama is an English historian and television presenter. He specialises in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University.

Schama first came to public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled Citizens, published in 1989. He is also known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC television documentary series A History of Britain (2000—2002), as well as other documentary series such as The American Future: A History (2008) and The Story of the Jews (2013).

Schama was knighted in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read about the French Revolution. So I searched on Amazon for the biggest, cheapest book that I could find, to give me an overview. Now, the French Revolution is complicated. It makes the start of World War I seem simple and inevitable. This book will not help clear that up. Which is not to say that this is a bad book. Rather, it's not a starter book. You should probably know a little bit about what's going on before you crack the covers. I am ashamed to say I had to use Wikipedia to get the chronology straight.

This isn't a retelling of the French Revolution from start to finish. Indeed, historians still argue about when it started, and when it finished. Rather, this is more of an impression of the Revolution, as told through participants, through literature, and through art. Schama does not take the normal historian's route of moving from one Historical Event to the next Historical Event. Instead, he works to give the impression of how these things must have felt, rather than focusing on a step-by-step retelling of what happened. As I said, this makes it hard for a newbie to the FR (that's what the kids are calling the French Revolution these days). The chapters are broken up chronologically, but Schama has a tendency to jump around a bit, so it's hard to keep things in order. He also will mention something, such as the Diamond Necklace Affair, but won't explain what that is until fifty pages down the road. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if I knew anything about the FR beforehand, but still, Schama is a popular historian, not an academic, so it's not totally okay with me that he expects such a high level of pre-knowledge on the subject.

The best parts of the book are his mini-biographies on some of the leading characters, such as Necker, Robespierre, Malesherbes, Lafayette, Voltaire, Delacroix, David, Marat, etc. For whatever reason, he skimps on Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. In fact, he barely mentions how Marie came to France, even though her Austrian relations proved important to events in the Revolution. Schama does spend inordinate amounts of time on the libelous pornography devoted to portraying poor Marie as a whore, a lesbian, and an eager participant in orgies. Some of this is interesting, especially in the way that these contemporary portrayals still hurt her reputation (she NEVER said "Let them eat cake"), but I would've liked a bit more on her character, rather than its assassination.

All in all, my troubles with the book mostly stemmed from my own unfamiliarity with the subject (I got especially bored with Schama taking potshots at other FR scholars). His analysis and conclusions, that violence was the fulcrum of the Revolution, rather than an aspect of it, might not be readily accepted, especially since his account is so anecdotal, though I will reserve judgment until I read something else on the subject.

While the anecdotal nature of the book may detract from its scholarship, it certainly brings the period to life. Even if you don't know for sure why the Bastille is being stormed, you'll be caught up in the account of its fall.

I especially enjoyed the story of Talleyrand, the (in)famous diplomat with nine (or more) lives. Apparently, while Talleyrand was making his escape to America, he arrived at a foreign port where he had a conversation with none other than Benedict Arnold, America's most famous traitor, who was on his way to England. The two of them had a conversation then parted ways. One alleged traitor talking to another. Now that is a great historical moment. The stuff you can't make up, history has already provided.

[Jan-Maat]

From this place & this time forth commences a new era in world history & you can all say that you were present at its birth
Goethe, after the battle of Valmy

Prelude
This is my impression of this book: Schama and Edward Burke take a stroll through an apple orchard in the late spring,
-look at the beautiful trees
- how marvellous, and the busy little bees flying amongst the blossom
- the blossom on the trees, so charming and delicate and full of future promise!
In the autumn they return and walk through the same orchard and exclaim
-oh how vile and disgusting! Apples, apples everywhere and in an apple orchard too, how shameless and disgusting!

Or to put it anyway, imagine Schama saying: stupid French-people; life was getting better and better, things were good, there was nice culture in the wealthier cities, and lots to eat if you were rich, educated people got to read lots of sophisticated stuff, and life was so good that the King had decided to demolish the Bastille and have the site turned into a park.

At which one replies - well why then did Royal authority collapse so rapidly, why was there such a melt down of government? A problem with arguing that the ancien regime was basically fine and well intentioned and nice while the revolution wasn't, is that the people involved in both are the same, one has to believe in dramatic head injuries occurring to most of the population of France, otherwise what one has - is that the Revolution was a natural development from the ancien regime, its actors and responses were shaped by it. Schama in the final pages comes close to discussing the role of the press and of journalists as responsible parties in stirring up hatred and blood lust, but as I felt throughout this book, just as one of the basic problems of monarchy are monarchs, so too the basic problem with a Simon Schama book is Simon Schama somebody else has to write that book, and maybe they have, it would be very relevant to contemporary politics in many countries.

To explain the sudden end of the ancien regime he tells us that pornographic tracts featuring the lesbian shepherdess adventures of Marie Antonette alienated the ruling class from the monarchy this might be a sensible argument, if the writer was Swiss or Turkish or American, but the man born in Essex ought to know better and there was rampant Atheism, and an obsessive identification with the Roman republic and the American revolution, anyhow Rousseau was to blame and being conveniently dead is no excuse.

Interruption
I interrupt this review to bring you a brief précis of the book by the author:
Long ago a student asked a Professor if the French Revolution was a good thing or not, famously the professor replied that it was too early to tell. This was the wrong answer , the French Revolution was bad, NAUGHTY FRENCH PEOPLE, GO TO YOUR BEDS, SHAME! I know this because I am a very great professor and if you don't understand the subtleties of my argument it is because you are not very clever, because all the clever people see how brilliant and fantastic I am, also please write to your local TV station and ask them to make a TV series of my book with me presenting it. I think it would be really good, particularly if we can find the right actor to do Talleyrand.

The problem with Simon Schama
The problem is that what he really wants to do is present a TV series, he wants warm direct intimacy without the mediation of Lesbian shepherdesses with the viewer, he wants to be arch and witty to the camera, to be cleverish and entertain, but he's a bit lazy and doesn't want to work like you have to in a serious book, he wants to assert, but not to have to prove late in the book Schama says put your hands on your head that Napoleon met French budget deficits by invading places and extorting money from them, which is an interesting idea, but then war is itself an expensive business, one can think of others' who have tried to do that, whether anyone has succeeded I don't know, it would be easy to back up such an idea with a table of data but Schama doesn't provide backup in fact since there are no footnotes one can not trace back or check over anything he says, which is unsettling. He also comes out with some weird stuff, so he says of the adoption of the principle of expansion to France's 'natural' frontiers that this was a change, a new aggressive policy from the Republic (and so in line with his stress on the revolution as violence) but what about those Chambres de réunion of Louis XIV? The Revolution may have marked a change in how the policy was articulated, but there was nothing new about the policy as such.

as entertainment
it works after a fashion, there are interesting details and amusing asides, and it is very long, and appropriately gruesome but can't really get past that because Schama won't discuss his assertions and because these overlap at times I was left thinking, well if that is what you think, if that is the story you are telling then the previous one, two or three hundred pages earlier was just redundant but entertaining verbiage.

What we are left with is implicit Whiggery - sorry Frenchies but the Anglo-Saxons managed it better , admittedly this isn't a view that will hamper book sales, but it does become a struggle to see from this perspective why the French Revolution is of significance in World History or indeed to see why it marks the beginning of Modern History and our current political age apart from a conservative view point which sees it as the point at which everything went wrong and the best thing that can be done is to pretend it is possible to turn the clock back, resurrect Pope Innocent III and make a papal theocracy an actual functioning authority

At his best I felt his book worked like a commentary on de Tocqueville's The Old Regime and the French Revolution. What the old Frenchman expressed in a pithy sentence, the Briton will tell a rambling story around. This is ok, narrative history is fun, there is a hunger for it, but seriously even this is an indictment of Schama's offering - if he picked up after de Tocqueville you could cut four or five hundred pages from the book!

I was interested to notice how flat an effect Schama achieves, I read Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety and page by page thought 'wow, how interesting, the Rolands, the physiocrats, Danton, Robespierre, bribery and corruption, idealism', by contrast Schama plainly doesn't have the same sense of passionate engagement in his subject matter though he tries hard to achieve like a novelist an effect her book is shorter though and more fun although she doesn't have as much Madame de Staël

He indulges with one of my pet hates - dropping in his big ideas casually in the epilogue so they stand out like rocks in the sea at variance to the information he has presented up to that point. If I had been his teacher, I am not sure if I would have despaired or put my hands on his shoulders and given him a good shake to rattle his thinking before telling him to have a reworked version on my desk by Monday afternoon the material on Talleyrand also gets my goat, ok Talleyrand is this atheist/irreligious bishop with this quiet decent bourgeois home life with his mistress and their child and he turns out to one of History's great survivors but he is not very relevant to much of what happens in France as he gets marooned in England in unofficial exile, but Schama never bothers to tell us why there is such a focus on him - did he leave great memoirs? Was Schama planning a sequel to this book? This is why I despair, the stories he tells are entertaining but how do they fit into a big picture, is there a big picture, why is Schama writing about Talleyrand and not somebody else, is there a creative intelligence somewhere in the universe making a conscious decision to include or exclude certain details, and what are the criteria that determine the choice? Simply calling the book 'a chronicle' doesn't escape this issue because there is always a degree of selection even in chronicles . Toward the very end he comes up with the idea of the revolution as a process that creates the concept of being a citizen in France, I feel that's a great idea, I suspect somebody has in Peasants into Frenchmen written something along those lines but since this is a paraphrase of de Tocqueville with some other stuff, rewriting somebody else's book isn't such a radical departure, and that to make that concept congruent with the entire book one would need to rewrite the whole thing not necessarily by Monday afternoon though, and it would make better sense of the title.

So my overall impression of this book is mild frustration, there are lots of interesting books in here that could have been written, but just not the one that Schama did write.

In any case because the French revolution is the birth of our contemporary era, it is a very resonant subject, the response to the death of Marat at the hands of Charlotte Corday put me in mind of Lenin Lives and how the ideology of martyrdom is so powerful to us. The efforts of the Revolutionary regime to turn France into an arms factory suggest Mao in China having everybody melt down their pots and pans to turn China into the world's leading steal producer. Revolutionary France as exemplar.

The narrative of the Revolution as arising out of a conflict between the spread of a Capitalist mode of working and a paternalistic mode, which it fails to resolve is incarnated on a human scale in Robespierre the supporter of mass executions who began as an opponent of capital punishment. I received this book as a gift and it means a lot to me as it is a theme which puts an edge on the teeth, the Enlightenment dream merges into the sleep of reason and we see ourselves in the mirror, Heine, and his Ideen. Das Buch Le Grand is the one to turn to.

It is a mess, sometimes a fun mess, but it relies on length as a proxy for authoritativeness, he is also vague on dates, and I suspect deliberately so, so without reference to some other source the inter relationship between events in different places is lost. When he does make definite statements frequently they are not even congruent with the material he himself has presented in his own book which is a bit off a worry it is as though he had subcontracted out the writing to a dozen under graduates and then skim read it and added a few sentences of his own here and there, generally I felt his heart wasn't really in it, judging by the bibliography it seemed more a regurgitation of what he had learnt in a post graduate seminar than arising out of any personal passion or research, as a chatty ancien regime loving introduction to the French Revolution that aims to entertain it works well enough though.



1,400 dead isn't very many by contemporary standards, but I ask you to bear in mind that the modern age was only just beginning, in the future people would do better.

p242 Schama makes the argument that partial reforms succeeded only in alienating in particular the traditional financial backers of the government thus undermining the government and precipitating the revolutionary situation - if that is his view then most of the preceding 242 pages are redundant to his narrative

keen to grab an american audience?


capitalism and market economy as colonial venture into France profounde
narrative an insidious form

What is argument ie financial crisis - a failure of brinkmanship and people management? A long term crisis waiting to burst open, a failure of imagination/guts/ confidence? Some combination of these?
when discussing the unrest on the streets in Grenoble got the feeling that he thinks that an initially resolute handing with soldiers - a flash of cold steel, the whiff of gunpowder and everything would have been fine...

[Karen· · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schama takes 700 odd pages to cover the period from 1778 to the death of Robespierre in 1794, something that other no less respectable historians manage to do in a fraction of the space. So what is Schama doing differently? For one thing he scrupulously avoids any kind of schematization, any form of large structural overview, instead concentrating on what indeed he declares it to be in the title, a chronicle, a careful catalogue of events, without giving them ideological interpretation. He also gives us plenty of anecdote and biographical background to the personalities involved, and does not ignore the provinces, a timely reminder that France is more than Paris alone, and that some of the resistance to the Revolution had more to do with resentment at centralization as opposed to federalism rather than any nostalgia for royalty. What he also manages to do, in contrast, he claims, to many of his learned colleagues, is to take a long, hard, impassive and yet critical look at the horrific violence. He takes other historians to task for either glossing over this aspect or dismissing it as a kind of necessary concomitant evil to the seismic shifts of change. His view is that violence was the heart and soul of the revolution, and indeed, the dilemma of those who were trying to run the country was always the question: should they appeal to the masses (incite violent insurrection) or should they strengthen the authority of the few (authority that could only be applied through military style or 'Terreur' violence)?

Schama also concentrates on pointing out many of the continuities between pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary society. This is the trend in historiography: in order to make the endless march of time a bit more manageable it has always been divided into chunks, like 'The Renaissance' 'The Reformation'. This tends to give the impression that these events heralded a sudden sea change in every aspect of life, whereas scholarship now is more aware of how artificial and euro-centric these markings-off are. Certainly the French Revolution is often seen as the crucible of modernity, as if European society was feudalistic, its government absolutist monarchical, and its economy regulated and controlled before the revolution and suddenly became free, democratic, liberal and ruled by the market after 1789. Naturally the process is that, a process, and there was a patchwork of measures and changes in political life that didn't always translate through to much difference in social structures.

As other comments here have emphasised, this concentration on daily events and the mix of continuities and discontinuities makes this a demanding read, as the reader is not given any help in ordering these events into categories that might help in grasping their significance. But that is precisely its greatest asset: it avoids ideology.

[Breck Baumann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Known for its utopian idealism and terrifying violence both in its own time and in the present, the French Revolution is a topic that should keep the reader’s attention with ease as it lets the imagination run wild with suspense and shameful fascination. Simon Schama has scoured through primary (and secondary) resources to retell the history of the Revolution and Reign of Terror from the late 1770’s and on through to Robespierre’s death in 1794. It’s here in almost 800 pages of narrative that he manages to provide an interesting yet at times drawn-out and scattered focus on the people and places involved in the Revolution. With the book itself fortunately following a chronological format, Schama bravely tries to tackle all the experiences and ideas that were founded and eventually shaped from the French and their civil war.

This seems appropriate, but rather than coming up with a “chronicle” to both digest and gain knowledge from, Schama instead manages an encyclopedia-like history of interesting points and abridged biographies taken from the revolutionary period—a fact that will leave his audience paging back to the saga’s index for future reference. Topics such as famine, suicide, loyalty, and the Bastille are scrutinized and broken down in detail, and Schama appropriately leaves almost a third of his book dedicated to sources and the heavy research that accompanies each chapter. Unfortunately, Schama has a tendency to slight previous works on the French Revolution for their faults—even on the basis of mere opinion—which is completely unnecessary and only adds to an already lengthy work:

The war crisis of 1791 and 1792 is often seen by modern historians (many of them not much interested in diplomatic history) as an aberration of the Revolution, something so obviously foolish as to be explicable only in terms of Brissotin tactics to capture power from the Feuillants. But this instrumentalist view of revolutionary war fails to see that patriotic war was, in fact, the logical culmination of almost everything the Revolution represented. It had begun, after all, as the consequence of patriotic exertion in America and had continued to define itself, through allusions to Rome, as the reinvigoration of national power through political transformation.

Nonetheless, the shortcomings of the book are indeed just that—as the work as a whole is full of a wide range of facts and conjecture that will indeed appeal to those who already have extensive knowledge of the period and its unfolding events. The casual reader should be wary, as this is an academic undertaking that at times can feel rather slow and monotone in its style and flow—which is akin to quite a letdown given the fanatic history and horrific nature of the French Revolution. More than twenty illustrations are provided, with a couple of maps full of the various cities of France from the years covered, and a final epilogue which is unique in its telling of the bittersweet reunions that took place after such a barbarous ordeal.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Born in Blood

The French Revolution shock society and sent the world on a rocky new path. Napoleon Bonaparte was born out of the revolution, the thousand year old Holy Roman Empire and Republic of Venice were both dismantled because of him. The Ancien Régime in France, Italy, Spain and Germany were all changed forever and the divine right of kings and church questioned. Representative government became an idea in Europe. The Declaration of the Rights of Man was proclaimed, a precursor to modern human rights legislation. The idea of a citizen, over a subject was manifested. Not ruled, but reigned or governed over. With rights, as humans. This is Simon Schama’s biggest takeaway from this monumental event. We humans are people, who have a voice. Citizens of the world. However, to achieve that society has to be torn down and thousands of innocents had to be murdered in the process. This is not a march of freedom, but a war on liberty as much as the fight for it. As Schama states, some of the revolutionaries themselves were in fact ‘anti-revolutionary’, those of The Committee of Public Safety and The Directory come to mind. But like Saturn, the sons of the Revolution get eaten just the same.

Schama focuses much of his attention to the first few years of the Revolution, starting with the end of King Louis XVI’s reign. A well meaning but indecisive man, who tried to walk the right line between exerting his authority and trying to plead everyone. Like with the fall of Tsar Nicholas II and the fall of Imperial Russia, he seemed to get it all wrong. Advisors like the Comte de Mirabeau having hidden agendas causing the king to undermine himself and chose the wrong decisions. Schama tells us that the French Revolution was not a new class of bourgeoisie attacking a stagnant government or despotic aristocracy. In fact he shows many of the aristocracy were open to new ideas and were part of the revolution itself. Nor was the Ancien Régime old, but in fact fairly new, around two thirds of the nobility had been ennobled with the last 150 years or so. Some great wealthy magnates, others toiling their own fields, struggling to feed their families and hardly recognisable from the peasants. The nobles liked change and followed the Enlightenment, such as the Marquis de Lafayette, who supported a constitutional monarchy. Schama argues the violence broke out in fact, to prevent too much change rather than drive it.

There were unfortunate mistruths spread in this sense about aristocrats and indeed bourgeoisie as those preventing change, holding down the common man or stopping progress. The government was most interested in efficiency rather than upholding old traditions and many of those in government in the 1780s would be brought back under Napoleon to sort out the mess the revolution and terror had left behind. Curiously Queen Marie Antoinette spent less than half the money the British monarchy did in the same period, but was considered a greedy big spender. It was however, money which caused the whole thing. The country was suffering fiscally. Tax exemptions at the top caused tax evasion at the bottom. This was an unfair system. There was a huge debt, which they knew they would incur to kick the British out of North America and the disastrous Mississippi Company bubble burst in the early part of the century was still rumbling on. But even this was all manageable by the standards of the time. The government was not lazy or incompetent, it just failed to reform in the right areas. Officials often pushed in different directions which led to slow progress. So the money crisis led to a political one. As I said above Louis XVI simply chose the wrong route or ministers which in the end led to his downfall.

On top of this, the two years before the Estates General was called, there were poor harvests, lack of food and bread. This living on government support increased to as much as 40 percent. This was as much about food as any political motive. On 12/07/1789 the customs warehouses and offices of Paris were sacked and burnt and then two days later the infamous prison the Bastille (much smaller in real life than the painting suggest), a supposed symbol of oppression, was stormed. All seven prisoners were released, four forgers, two lunatics and one aristocrat placed there at his family’s request. The Marquis de Sade had left a few years earlier. The governor, another aristocrat was murdered, his head hacked off with a pocket knife and displayed on a pike. The bloody revolution had begun. But again, this was for weapons not freedom. But things had changed forever. As Schama testifies, 1793 and the terror was 1789 with more death. The revolution was bloody and violent and came hand in hand. It also came with those it most effected to relinquish their privileges and their power, the church and the high aristocrats such as dukes. Both can be found supporting the revolution for different reasons. Louis de Saint-Just and Maximilian Robespierre were created and grown in the murder of 1789 and executed the Terror as the authority and right ordained on them in this power vacuum after the outrageous execution of the king in 1793.

The revolution is long, complex and disjointed. No one person controlled it or steered in to a clear defined goal. Not did anyone foresee what truly had begun in 1789. Schama, however does a great job in explaining these events as they start with Louis XVI’s government and end with the military dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is intelligent and well written. However, I still found it not as as engaging Jeremy D Popkin’s A New World Begins. Which for me was really good. The iconoclasts are the worst part, the total destruction of society is always sad. But the ideas of the early days were needed, a constitutional monarchy would have brought France to greater freedom and liberty than the revolution cemented on the people. Unfortunately the Bourbons didn’t learn this in 1815. Schama’s narrative ends in 1794, before the Directory, Consulate and then Empire. But he does explain how the revolution caused over 25 years of war, destruction and death. The ruin of industry and its population, which at 1815 was smaller than 1789. It was also broke and set the economy back another century or so. So in the end the revolution changed everything and nothing at the same time.

[Janitor-X]

Poor Louis XVI. He just wanted to make maps and hang out with sailors.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The standard narrative of the French Revolution is of the oppressed proletariat heroically rising up to throw off the intolerable burden of a cruel and indifferent monarchy. The reality, of course, was far more complicated, and Simon Schama’s Citizens raises the question of whether the revolution was necessary at all.

Like his other books, Citizens is thoroughly researched and well written. Schama does not write dry, detached histories, but instead creates immersive narratives that illuminate the motives of the key players by explaining their past, their alliances, and their motives. If you want to know what it was like to be in France during the critical early years of the revolution, this book is an excellent place to start.

To begin with, France was bankrupt. Taxes were gathered by an unfair and exploitative system which was thoroughly corrupt; the government granted too many exemptions which allowed nobles to avoid taxes altogether; and it had mortgaged its future by selling the rights to collect future taxes in exchange for the loans needed to close the gaps in its current budgets. The finance minister had urged Louis XVI not to support the American revolution, knowing that the country could not bear the expense, but Louis would not be denied. It is interesting to speculate on how history would have been different if the American colonies had been left to confront Britain alone, and if France had managed to stabilize its internal economy.

Nevertheless, as the author points out, the French financial system was not hopeless, and was not really any worse that that of England. Wars are expensive, and often pushed governments to the brink of insolvency. This was especially true when operations were financed out of current-year revenues, without the ability to run deficits that could be paid down in later years.

France was already simmering with calls for government reforms, although they were not coming from the peasantry or the middle classes. “It is at the top, rather than in any imaginary middle of French society, that the cultural roots of the Revolution should be sought. While any search for a conspicuously disaffected bourgeoisie is going to be fruitless, the presence of a disaffected, or at the very least disappointed, young ‘patriot’ aristocracy is dramatically apparent from the history of French involvement with the American Revolution.” (p. 40)

In addition, several bad harvests in a row pushed food prices to levels that caused starvation in the cities and brigandage in the countryside. The government seemed paralyzed, its financial programs swinging between poorly implemented and easily avoided new taxes and do-nothing polices that promised to fix the situation without addressing any of the underlying problems.

Although the king remained popular, his Austrian wife Marie Antoinette was hated. She had been an immature teenage bride who had imbibed the Romanticism of Rousseau and affected a simple posture that was completely at odds with the behavior that France expected of a queen. She also chose her confidants poorly, allowing them to bring many friends and relatives into well paid government sinecures. She lost whatever respect she might otherwise have had, and became the object of scurrilous accusations, from attempting to betray France to every conceivable sexual perversion. Ironically, as the crisis deepened, she matured and became the King’s best advisor, “[Mirabeau] was also impressed by her fortitude and intelligence, especially when he compared it with the King’s hapless irresolution. ‘The King has only one man on whom he could depend, he remarked -- his wife’” (p. 533)

The queen’s newfound maturity came too late, and in any case her good advice was lost on the king. Had the stakes not been so high and the consequences so grave, Louis would have been remembered as a slapstick figure. No matter how bad the situation, he could always be counted on to make it worse. When the moment called for diplomacy and a show of support for the reformers he would assert his divine rights as king, and then when he could have benefited from taking a strong position he vacillated and failed to follow through.

Again and again the author returns to what he considers the fundamental question of revolutions, of any country or age. “What is the relationship between violence and legitimacy? It was one that would dog the French Revolution through its entire history as successive regimes fell before their opponents’ willingness to sanction punitive violence in the interest of patriotic righteousness. Only when the state restored to itself a monopoly of force – as it was to do in 1794 – would the question go away.” (p. 445)

The book does an excellent job explaining the descent of the popular government from high minded declamations of freedom, justice, and equality to the madness of the Terror. As time went by the acclaimed proposals of one faction became the traitorous infamies of the next.

The willingness of politicians … to tolerate these acts, only to find themselves and their regime on the receiving end, perpetuated the notion that ‘popular justice’ was part and parcel of the legitimate self-expression of the ‘sovereign people.’ At each successive phase of the Revolution, those in authority attempted to recover a monopoly on punitive violence for the state, only to find themselves outmaneuvered by opposing politicians who endorsed and even organized popular violence for their own ends.” (p.623)

Modern histories tend to sanitize the bloody and widespread violence of the French Revolution, turning it into an unfortunate but minor episode in the otherwise heroic transformation of society. Simon Schama is having none of that.

In France, until very recently, the literature on the September massacres was dominated either by counter-revolutionary martyrology or the massive volume of Pierre Caron, which self-consciously set out to purge the record of hagiographic myths...The book which resulted, and which is still cited reverentially by historians, is a monument of intellectual cowardice and moral self-delusion….To those who insist that to prosecute is not the historian’s job, one may reply that neither is selective forgetfulness practiced in the interest of scholarly decorum. (p.631-632)

The amazing thing is that the revolution survived long enough for Napoleon to arrive on the scene and sweep it away. It was constantly in a state of near collapse. Its money was debased until it was essentially worthless; its anti-clericalism was deeply unpopular in the countryside, spurring revolts such as the one in the Vendée which was practically genocidal in its bloodshed. Its revolutionary armies were beaten again and again, with many of its best generals defecting to the enemy rather than face the hysterical charges of collusion and treason sure to follow any military setback.

Somehow the revolutionary government found a way to pull itself together. The call for a levée en masse filled its ranks, and industry was militarized to provide weapons and supplies. France’s situation was helped by the reluctance of the British, Austrians, and Prussians to press the military campaigns too far, in part because they did not want to bear the costs of another war, and in part because it seemed possible that the revolution might collapse under its own weight at any moment.

The book ends with the final bloody days of the Terror, when the Jacobins overplayed their hand and Robespierre threatened even more and more terrible retribution against those he perceived as enemies. The other political factions realized he was talking about them and with their own lives at stake finally found the courage to stand up against the howling mobs which the Jacobins commanded, overthrow Robespierre, and send him and his allies to the guillotine. When he realized the end was near Robespierre attempted suicide but only managed to mutilate his jaw, and when he mounted the guillotine the executioner ripped off the bandage, so he went to his death with animal screams of agony, a gruesome end for a patriot turned maniacal fanatic, ready to commit limitless violence in the name of the people.

Schama did not intend this book to be a strictly chronological record of the revolution. It is instead a look at France as it moved from a hapless monarchy to a hopeful democracy to government by violent populism. It is full of memorable characters, such as the wily Talleyrand and the brilliant revolutionary theorist Mirabeau. Some of the players are brave and thoughtful, some cowardly, and some dangerously destructive. Jean-Paul Marat, martyr of the revolution, was demonic in his hatefulness. He pioneered a form of journalism, popular in our own times, where anyone who disagreed with him was not just wrong, but knowingly, perniciously wrong, a traitor to the cause who should be eliminated by any means possible.

The final lesson of the Revolution is that it was carried out by ordinary men, with the greatness and frailty of any people and any age. It is worth understanding the French Revolution because it has valuable lessons for out own time. Every generation must sort out its alternatives and decide whether to take the easy, populist way of blaming others and avoiding its problems, or find the courage to make unpopular decisions and create viable solutions.

[Hadrian]

As he stood before the plank, his shirt splattered with the blood of his best friends, Danton told Sanson, "Don't forget to show my head to the people. It is well worth the trouble."

The apocryphal remark attributed to Zhou Enlai that it is still too early to understand the effects of the French Revolution, is still quoted at the beginning of this long study. It might even be said to end too early - after almost one thousand pages, Schama feels ready to end his narrative at the events of Thermidor and the formation of the Directory in 1795. In the conclusion of a chapter on the War in the Vendée, Schama writes that this was the "logical conclusion" of the events of the revolution, and one that "dehumanized" its adversaries.

Citizens is a history written through collective biography. Schama, in order to address the bewildering and outsized cast of characters in these years, writes his figures to contribute to this conclusion of inevitable violence. He writes through caricature and contrast, making a montage between a character's idealistic rhetoric and the blood and guts of revolution. After so many pages of such a montage, the bare description of a statue or a speech can be a slashing criticism. Later chapters cover shorter and shorter spans of time, and I get the impression that the full momentum of events is overwhelming.

Two characters he refers to often are the idealist Marquis de Lafayette, who is lampooned by the vicious revolutionary press for kissing too many hands, and the later Prince of Talleyrand, who has become a byword for cynical and ruthless diplomacy - and changing sides to survive. Both of these men survive the revolution; one embodies its idealism and the other the cold logic of statecraft.

While I'm impressed by Schama's ornate prose style, I still admit some doubt over the story he tells, even if I am no expert on the country or the period. Were all of the peasantry as violent as he describes? Was the Ancien Régime really as dynamic and innovative as he makes them out to be in the early chapters? He talks about mistakes in decision-making and the collapse of state capacity, and so understates any discussion of economics and prices.

There is still a lot here, in the form of anecdotes and personalities, for the patient general reader. But as the Revolution itself continues to be a stand-in for so many other arguments and discussions, this or any book is far from the last word.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elephant of the Bastille

Arrogant and bloated style and in such detail that after a while one just wants to scream. 948 pages of it! Skimming through the really snoozy parts but after twenty hours of listening I have still over half to go.

Seven months later: Loaded what was left of this into the mp3 so I could garden and walk and that worked better for me. Saying that though, I am glad to see the back of it!

[Mikey B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed book on the French Revolution. The best aspects of this book are when the author becomes personal – as when he is describing the lives of individuals – Talleyrand, Lafayette, the King and Queen, Mirabeau... The first portion of the book lacks chronology – there is a constant shifting to and fro between 1770 and 1789 and events become confusing. Starting with Part II there is a sequence and key aspects of the Revolution are well described, such as the seizure of the Bastille.

Myths are also destroyed. France prior to 1789 was a dynamic and changing society. Very few prisoners were “liberated” from the Bastille (less then 10); it was stormed to obtain gunpowder for weapons. The Revolution did redefine the meaning of the word “citizen” and given the time period, gave vast publicity for the term “political freedom”.

During 1789 – 1794 everything became open for questioning (and later you could be guillotined for these questions). I believe that Mr. Schama minimizes the attacks on the Roman Catholic Church during this era. The Revolution during 1792-93 rejected the Vatican and priests were forced to swear loyalty to the French state. Atheists flourished in Paris. Today France could be considered one of the more secular societies in the developed countries.

There is a lot of name-dropping – and I suspect many of these names are used only one or twice throughout the book. Perhaps the over 800 page length got to me after awhile. The illustrations (at least 200) are excellent and capture the spirit and dynamism of the era.

[Katia N]

It is a narrative history and not the bad one though not the best one either. It is not analytical enough, but do not pretend to be so either. However Shama has an argument: the abundant violence is the inherent part of the revolution, not an avoidable aberration. And it was used by all sides, instigated by rhetorics. Also as far as I understood him the revolution has started due the state overstretching its military power. I do not know enough about this to judge but the book was not whole convincing on that. Someone said that there is not a person who studied this revolution as was not mystified. I agree. I was definitely mystified, especially how these people, revolutionary leader have become so paranoid and how much of that was a state of mind. I need to read more on this.

[Sebastien]

This is not necessarily bad. I just got lost in the maddening warrens of information/various characters. I may try and come back to this at some future date but I probably need to find a more straight forward history to give me better fundamental schooling on the French Revolution. It's quite complex and Schama doesn't really ground things with solid timelines and exposition imo. Probably a better read for those who already have some knowledge on the subject.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

The real achievement in this book is that the author managed to make one of the most lively and interesting periods in history not only boring, but painfully, excruciatingly boring.

The French Revolution was bloody and funny and dark and incredible and really important to present day events. Yet trying to read this account of it is most like being slowly torn to bits by a mob while on heavy tranquilizers.

The writing is bad, the organization is schizophrenic, and it is several hundred pages too long. I wasted three months of my life (it normally takes me a week or two to read a nonfiction book) slogging through this nemesis of a tome and I wish I had that time back. I thought if I stuck it out long enough, I could learn something about the French Revolution, which I sincerely wanted to do. I have learned my lesson, and next time, I'll go for Wikipedia first.

The best use for this book is as a doorstop, or a way to get your kid to change their major from history to business.

[Robert · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dear Mr Schama,
If you can't find the time to edit your own books then might I suggest hiring someone to edit them for you?

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book a number of years ago. It is a good solid read on the French Revolution.

It is a long read but not a slog. This period in French history was marked by the chaos of many political factions trying to attain power.

It covers its beginnings and the political key figures who built the framework and guided the Revolution.

This included those who led radical factions, Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Danton, Jean-Paul Marat, and the Jacobins. This led to a reign of terror. 17,000 people were executed by the guillotine, and another 10,000 is estimated to have died in the prisons.

The revolution consumed itself in the end.

The Thermidorians were a group who overthrew Maximilien Robespierre and the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.

They were led by figures like Paul Barras, Jean-Lambert Tallien, and Joseph Fouché, and included others who sought a more moderate republic.

The Thermidorian period was a time of political instability and factionalism, ultimately paving the way for the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte.

[Kelly]

I've always adored Simon Schama's storytelling. Is it melodramatic at times? Yes. Does he have his biases? Oh yes. Do I love it anyway? Absolutely.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent, enjoyable narrative about the period surrounding and including the French revolution, but it is not a great history. Schama does make his points, two of them being (1) that things weren't so bad and were getting better in 1789 and (2) the revolution was a bloody and unnecessary affair. He does not, however, prove much of everything by what amounts to a rather unsystematic collection of facts and anecdotes. Nor does he pay sufficient attention to what the events of the revolution, exemplified by, say, "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" meant to the world. Compared to Lefebvre's treatment, his is weak. Still, it is quite fun to read and the points he makes are worthy of pursuit.

A similar critique of the American Revolution could be made as well--and of the English, the Russian etc. As regards the USA one could point to Canada or Australia, comparing their peaceful transitions to independence to our bloody one--but then what of "Common Sense" or "The Declaration of Independence"? Schama goes on of course to discuss the Napoleonic Wars following the revolution, decrying them as well. Indeed, after the early wars of liberation so well outlined by R.R. Palmer in his Age of Democratic Revolution, Napoleon did institute sheer wars of imperialist aggression. Those certainly were what most moderns, excepting the recent Bush administration, would consider war crimes. Yet our own revolution was followed by genocides covering the continent. Further, the British abolished slavery decades before we did.

All of this raises questions about the role of the historian. On the one hand, one would want one's history straight--just the facts and no judgments beyond weighing facts and factors as more or less important. On the other hand, if history is to be relevant, then something like moral judgment would seem to come into play. The contrast is not actually this pronounced. Some of what must be dealt with is the record of decision-making, a practice inevitably involving ethical considerations. Here I suppose good prefaces and introductions are in order. It should be the responsibility of the author to make clear his or her method and intentions in writing a history.

[Sense of History]

Very exhaustive treatment of the French Revolution. Major theses: violence was inherent to the revolution, even the engine of it; it was not a revolution of the third estate, but of the illuminated part of the nobility (this is a sometimes rather forced these); the King and Queen played a pernicious role, but were wronged; Rousseau has laid the foundations for the derailment of the revolution.

[Audrey Babkirk Wellons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book made me want to read more history -- or, at least, more history written by Mr. Schama.

You can get a taste of his style in his recent New Yorker article (link below), but he basically introduces the reader to a subject with colorful characters and the social climate that they lived in. I certainly didn't know that Ben Franklin was a fashionable superstar in France for a time, or that one of the causes of the Revolution was financial mismanagement.

I got a little weary after Louis and Marie Antoinette were executed, and there were times when I would've appreciated a brief glossary, or a chart illustrating the structure of the government. But Schama isn't writing a textbook -- he's writing a pretty engaging take on a well-worn subject.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics....

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding piece of narrative history that overturns many long held views on the origins and progress of the revolution. In particular it shows how widespread change was already underway whilst the monarchy was still in charge and strips away a lot of the Marxist ideology that had informed so much of the historiography. The result is a far less glamourous and heroic epoch. Schama is no reactionary and this book is an important corrective to a lot of previously unquestioned assumptions.

The book is outstandingly written with a wealth of anecdotal detail about politics, culture, society and the lives of those involved. The outcome is a period of history that is both darker and more fascinating.

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

'...they were given neither shelter nor quarter. Hunted down, they were mercilessly butchered: sabbered, stabbed, stoned and clubbed. Women stripped the bodies of clothes and whatever possessions they could find. Mutilators hacked off limbs and scissored out genitals and stuffed them in gaping mouths or fed them to the dogs. What was left was thrown on bonfires, one of which spread to the palace itself. Other bits and pieces of the six hundred soldiers who perished in the massacre were loaded haphazardly onto carts and taken to common lime pits. It was, thought Robespierre, "the most beautiful revolution that has honoured humanity."'

Here's a massive opus, starting from the coronation of Louis XVI up to the death of Robespierre. Clocking at about 900 pages, 'Citizens' is obviously a huge and vast chronicle of the French Revolution! The flow is alright. The problem is that the author may have tried to chew way more than he could, and, so, might be a bit dull at times despite unfolding it all like a dramatic action movie for the most part. The issue is, he focuses so much on violence that he tends to downplay its heritage.

It starts fine. Describing the financially exhausted France before the revolutionary earthquake that would shatter it, he reminds us of the impact of feudalism. Yet, he counterbalances it by showing such a system might have been on its way out anyway, not least because of the shy nascent of capitalism. It's a fine start, echoing Tocqueville in its conclusion:

'...elite were not a creation of the Revolution and the Empire but of the last decades of the Bourbon monarchy, and... it marched into the nineteenth century not as a consequence of the French Revolution, but in spite of it.'

He then goes on into narrating the Revolution itself, intricate events after intricate events. No matter how detailed and in length, though, this is where things go a tat off track. Simon Schama is of the opinion indeed that 'violence was the Revolution itself', not a by-product of it:

'violence was not just an unfortunate side effect from which enlightened Patriots could selectively avert their eyes; it was the Revolution's source of collective energy. It was what made the Revolution revolutionary.'

Now, don't get me wrong! Of course, the violence underpinning such events should not be under-estimated, and, as he rightly insist, it has been unjustly downplayed by other historians whereas it should be fully part of its historiography. But the problem with Schama is that he doesn't critically analyse it. He just displays it, in all its gruesomeness (my opening quote about the storming of the Tuilerie palace is one of his typical retelling...). As a result, here's a tale of gore, blood, lust, and pride, where violence is seen as a tool for fanatics groups after fanatics groups to topple each others in a self-interested power struggle. Revolutionary leaders don't care about the people but themselves, and the Revolution was nothing but a brutal bloodbath not even that necessary (again, his argument that French society didn't change that much after it all...). Is Simon Schama a modern-day Edmund Burke? It's far-fetched, but his portrayal of bloodthirsty mobs going berserk stands in sharp contrast to his depiction of a dignified royal family, whose fate especially in the prison Temple and at their trial visibly moved him more than the fate of the people under an absolutist regime... I have nothing against a revisionist approach, far from that! But, being French, I found his English cynicism quite over the top. In fact, he can't restreint himself, even when dealing with overlooked topic deserving more attention, like the civil war that had engulfed the Vendée. One third of the entire population of the region was indeed put to death, and, if a raging debate still goes on about the fate of such a turn of events in there (was it a genocide?) Schama just dumps his simple view:

'[Vendée was] the logical outcome of an ideology that progressively dehumanised its adversaries and that had become incapable of seeing any middle ground between total triumph and utter eclipse.'

He is referring to the Jacobins of the Terror, but, in light of the whole book, he might as well be referring to the whole Revolution itself; to him no doubt more of an 'utter eclipse' than a triumph. The fact he ends it all with the death of Robespierre is itself telling of his views. What about the more peaceful Directory? What about the rise to power of Bonaparte - maybe where the Revolution actually ends? Ha! But, again, as a Frenchman I don't see Bonaparte merely as an evil and bloodthirsty tyrant, whereas him, as an Englishman... But I digress!

'Citizen' is a massive opus, so big in fact that it at times lose itself into painful details and boring asides. That's its own downfall. The focus on violence is an angle that deserves to be analysed, but this book doesn't do that. It just thrusts violence at your face for the sake of thrusting violence at your face. Entertaining perhaps, but not that much serious. If you want a clear overview of the French Revolution, well, I am sure there are other books out there way shorter and more critical! For a revisionist approach, William Doyle is another English historian coming to mind... Personally, I would recommend this one only if you are well-interested in the topic to start with.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an impressive read. Schama surely succeeded in telling a detailed and suspenseful story of the French Revolution. See my review in my Senes-of-History account: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Nelson Zagalo]

A Revolução Francesa (RF) é um dos eventos mais marcantes da História da Europa, em grande parte responsável pelo desenho societal que ainda hoje vigora no continente. Por isso, e porque tenho vindo a ler cada vez mais ficção histórica, foi com alguma pena que percebi que os livros passados na RF não são tantos como se esperaria. Ainda assim, tendo encontrado uma obra escrita pela notável Hilary Mantel — "A Place of Greater Safety" (1992) — fez-me acreditar que o assunto estava resolvido. Mas não estava. Pouco depois de o começar, sentindo a falta de contexto, acabei por ir atrás de suporte, acabando a ler simultaneamente "A Revolução Francesa 1789-1799" (1992) de Michel Vovelle, "Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution" (1989) de Simon Schama, e ainda o mais recente, "A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution" (2019) de Jeremy D. Popkin.

continuar a ler:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

[Jaime Carbajal · Rating 3 out of 5]

La obra de Simon Schama no puede leerse como un ensayo histórico, el autor nos advierte en las primeras páginas de que no trata de hacer "ciencia", el título tampoco miente "crónica de la revolución francesa". El lector que tenga expectativas de encontrarse ante una obra puramente histórica saldrá decepcionado. Esto fue lo que me sucedió a mi en las primeras páginas. Se lee mejor como una novela, abundan los psicologismos, tiene un toque literario muy acusado y el autor juega a meterse en la cabeza de los personajes para desvelar sus pensamientos y sentimientos. No vemos análisis económicos ni ningún tipo de tabla con datos, tampoco hay citas. Sin embargo, hay una tesis principal que muestra una postura claramente conservadora: la revolución francesa fue un error innecesario unos exaltados pasionales y sedientos de sangre.

El relato comienza con Talleyrand visitando a un Voltaire muy anciano y cierra con el mismo personaje en una América que el autor nos presenta como el paraíso en contraposición a la barbarie francesa. A mi que me expliqué Schama porque hubo una revolución francesa si todo estaba tan bien, si el reformismo de Luis XVI era una sociedad dinámica que conducía hacia un cambio social. El autor pretende sostener esta tesis a partir del análisis de personajes individuales, todos relacionados con las élites francesas, ni una sola mención a la gente corriente. Uno acaba la lectura, he de reconocer que ensimismado por la magnífica prosa y el desfile de personalidades, y no puede evitar pararse a valorar estos vacíos. Ni una sola descripción sobre la estructura, eso sí, abundantes lavados de imagen de la "puta austriaca" y Luis Capeto, todo ello a base de sentimentalismos. Schama dice que no pretende hacer un ensayo, pero aprovecha continuamente para meter pullas a la magnífica obra de Soboul, calificándola literalmente de "pastiche marxista", en base a que según él justifica el asesinato de girondinos, y hasta ahí su crítica. También señala que la revolución francesa era anticapitalista en función de que la mayoría de ejecutados en Lyon pertenecían a la gran burguesía comercial, ya claro, pero porque eran realistas y federalistas, digo yo. A este análisis moralista hay que responderle con la frase de madame Roland: "Il faut du sang pour cimenter la revolution". Simon Schama es un tory inglés incapaz de comprender a las multitudes y las dinámicas de las revoluciones.

Analizándolo exclusivamente como un relato con muchas licencias, la perspectiva mejora. De todas maneras, el libro se hace muy pesado hasta que llegamos a los jacobinos (creo recordar unas 700 páginas), sólo en este punto disfrute verdaderamente de su lectura. Los saltos continuo y la gran variedad de personajes hacen que pueda perderse el hilo con facilidad.

[Jerome Otte · Rating 3 out of 5]

A broad and detailed history of the revolution.

The narrative is very readable, and Schama does a good job balancing the human drama with analysis of the Revolution’s history. He ably brings the era to life, and argues that violence was a key element of the revolution, rather than some kind of accident or unfortunate side-effect. He also contends that the revolution started with the nobility and that the “bourgeois” were not as central. Schama also ably covers the competing factions, and how international wars affected the course of the revolution.

A few figures don’t get as much coverage as some readers might expect (Danton, for example), and the narrative ends in 1794, so there is nothing on the rest of the Directory’s time, or on the rise of Napoleon. The number of names can get a little overwhelming at times, and the detail can be tedious at times. Some more detail on the revolutionary wars would still have helped. He also freely compares so-and-so to the Bolsheviks or the Nazis, which can feel lazy at times.

A well-written work overall.

[Melissa Berninger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this years ago but have been thinking about it a lot lately. It's a good corrective to the received wisdom that the French Revolution was a smashing success and one that should be used as a model for the present. He argues that the "terror" wasn't an anomaly--violence fueled the Revolution from the outset. From the New York Times review: "Mr. Schama is at his most powerful when denouncing the central truth of the Revolution: its dependence on organized (and disorganized) killing to attain political ends. However virtuous were the principles of the revolutionaries, he reminds us that their power depended on intimidation: the spectacle of death. Violence was no aberration, no unexpected skid off the highway of revolution: it was the Revolution - its motor and, for a while, its end." I hope the folks at the protests with the "liberty, equality, fraternity" signs understand that what they're saying isn't just a cool slogan. But I doubt it.

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simon Schama's Citizens offers a massive, engaging narrative of the French Revolution from its earliest stirrings in the 1770s through Robespierre's execution in 1794. As Scharma is primarily a cultural historian, he focuses heavily on French aristocracy, art and life prior to the Revolution, yet manages to do so in a crisp, clear-minded and readable way. He shows how poorly the French aristocracy recognized, let alone adopted to the changing winds of republicanism; how subversive art and literature (not least pornographic satires of Marie Antoinette and other aristocrats) undermined confidence in the Bourbons; the belated, half efforts at compromise which only exacerbated tensions; the infighting among the Revolutionary factions and the bloody conflicts in the Vendee and against Europe's reactionary powers. Endlessly engrossing, richly detailed and compulsively readable, making a massive, daunting subject accessible even for beginners.

[Philip Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am grateful to Simon Schama for writing this scholarly account of the personnel in the French Revolution. Had I not found it in the Oxfam bookshop (hardback £2.99), I might never have got round to plugging this enormous great gap in my knowledge of essential history. At school I studied Europe from the Treaty of Utrecht to 1789, and Britain from 1815 to to the outbreak of The Great War, neatly incising the Revolution itself from cause and result (I take Napoleon, whom Simon barely mentions, to be just as much a product of the Ancien Regime as Marat, Danton and Robespierre). Of course, I've always had the basic highlights: the fates of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the tale of Charlotte Corday (she was on Blue Peter, wasn’t she?), The Terror. As far as fiction goes (and history is at least 50% fiction, isn’t it?), A Tale Of Two Cities has always struck me as a somewhat flawed novel, not because of any lack of scholarly insight on Dickens' part, but because for me his repertory is inappropriately employed here (Hard Times suffers a similar miscasting). The Scarlet Pimpernel I’ve always taken to be at least 50% claptrap, though not on any authority. What I really lacked was an objective walkthrough of the facts; Simon Schama's take is not very detached – but his distinctive right wing (Thatcherite, Reaganomic) viewpoint only partially detracts from this account, while colouring it with the enthusiasm of a credible historian.
As an amateur academic, I had often wondered what the working class people of France ever saw in Jean Jacques Rousseau’s insistence on getting back to nature, which seemed as irrelevant to their hungry, downtrodden lives as Marie Antoinette's obsession with the peasant lifestyle. Voltaire’s championship of justice, though intellectually exclusive, was less difficult to brook. His view of Rousseau as a simpleton (ie Candide) is not all tongue in cheek, though I wonder how many starving farmworkers could have named any herbs beyond those they could eat? But I also wonder what on earth those two permanent occupants of the revolutionary Pantheon would have made of The Terror? Simon Schama does not take us there, but his portrait of Malesherbes – an amateur botanist – is one of the many semi-rounded walk-ons that make his book so readable. He conducts us through the revolution from the point of view of its main actors, pausing as each one comes into focus to give us their take on the situation thus far. In doing so, he rather assumes a working knowledge of the events and institutions on his readers' parts. This character based approach, as he warns us in the introduction, is a throwback to 19th century history writing; but he avoids stereotype in favour of something like investigative journalism. Rousseau and Voltaire were safely out of the way before 1789, so they’re left pretty flat; whereas Mirabeau and Malesherbes, who were old hands but still very much around, are treated to the full relief.
That a great many of these lives ended in bloody queues to the steps of the guillotine seems all too inevitable. But you can’t write that horrid invention out of history. In fact, Simon Schama tops and tails his book with portraits of a handful of men (and even one woman) who came before and after the 26 year interruption of Bourbon rule. Individuals are swept along by the tide, and yet movement in politics is made up of people, and real people are indeed individuals. Just as the innocent were butchered along with the guilty, so were a few of the principals wily or lucky enough to escape.
Not having read other books on the subject, I can't really comment on the idea that the origins of the French Revolution were in France's military failures in the Seven Years' War, though I've long held the proxy view that it must have stemmed in part from the French interference in the American Revolution (a view shared by a Frenchwoman of my acquaintance). However, I do know something of that earlier conflict (see below, my review of Montcalm and Wolfe). Known to Americans as The French And Indian War, it has long seemed ironic to me how the Yanks first used the British to get rid of the French, and then the French to do the same for the Brits. In this context, what happened in France was payback. Is bloodshed ever good? Schama doesn't bother to tackle such a horrid question; but he does speculate on whether Louis, for example, could have avoided the outcome.
A left wing analysis would probably take a more balanced view of The Terror. Like Stalin’s purges, the Killing Fields of Pol Pot or the Cultural Revolution in China, most revolutions seem programmed to undergo such brutal efforts at self purification: with the sheer logic of ideology inexorably leading to the proverbial fate of rats in a sack, Schama quietly tut-tuts over successive waves of revolutionaries bumping each other off. He all but avoids farce. More or less concluding with Robespierre, he sets the stage for Napoleon, then reaches out to catch that boomerang package of survivors he launched in the opening chapters.
Pity is reserved not so much for the king and his family, but for the likes of the Malesherbes clan. With the treachery of the Duc d'Orléans condemning his own cousin to the guillotine, and an unromanticised dismissal of Marie Antoinette, the royals are tellingly dispatched. Only Louis' untreated toothache seems to mitigate his fate, and the denial of the royal coach to his Queen, who has to endure the tumbril ride. While the Malesherbes are portrayed queueing at the foot of the scaffold, the old man having to wait till last as his daughter and granddaughter are decapitated before him, their blood spattering his shirt. Though the author doesn’t exactly rub their noses in it, it is a crime the whole French national are forever diminished by, at least in this reader’s eyes.
But a point I was curious Simon Schama didn’t make was how the revolutionaries failed to take Malesherbes' support for Rousseau into account. Surely anyone who had helped save their greatest hero was worthy of a kinder fate? Perhaps he reasoned the barbarity of The Terror needed no further highlighting, or that its illogicality was already sufficiently proved? He might also have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of atrocity. He does mention that many other whole families were wiped out on similarly absurd or trumped up charges.
The logic of the revolution was that a man should lose his head for being unaware how many eggs were needed to make an omelette. In other words, one absurdity deserves another. Private scores were settled in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity, while a huge bunch of more or less eloquent rogues gradually ate themselves up before the reins of power were seized by a tyrant no one could murder – Napoleon. Why on earth the successors of the revolution didn't heed its obvious message – that Terror would become necessary, and then destroy any good work the revolution had done – is beyond the scope of Citizens. But that’s the main weakness of a book written from a reactionary point of view.
Meantime, I am most grateful to Simon Schama for reinforcing the terms ci-dessou and sans-culottes, which have now permanently entered my vocabulary, waiting to take their turns at suitable moments.

[CD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did the great French Revolution begin on a nasty rumor? Who really was imprisoned and when in the Bastille? Finally and the denouement to the whole nastiness of about ten years, why was there a lion locked up in the Bastille?

The story of the French Revolution is told in a series of interconnected personal histories, anecdotes, and from a historical viewpoint in this work by Simon Schama. Schama eschews the political science timeline and gets to the heart of the matter in a detailed account of the background and actual precipitating events of the beginning, middle and end of the Terror.

Schama does not rely on the tired old sources (as of the date of publication) for information regarding, among other events, the downfall of the reputation of Marie Antoinette. Yes she became known as the German whore but she and her husband Louis the XVI were a scant three years before their trials very popular. So how do you go from being the toast of your country to having your head removed by scientific (well for the time anyway) instrument? The conventional wisdom has long held that it was all about money, debt, taxes, and their undesirable end result.

Au contraire mon citoyen! Author Schama investigates the debt of France to comparable countries in Europe at the time and finds the monetary and tax situation no worse than other countries. The bottom up theory of revolution from the underclass is not supported by the evidence in the case of France, certainly initially. The violence that would erupt did come from factional turmoil and in-fighting. The beginning though is rooted elsewhere.

Modernity is the reason that Schama proposes from all most the very beginning of his work as the root cause of the French Revolution. A 'schism among the elite' concerning the future of France and how it was to be governed is Schama's prime reason for the events that would follow and lead to Napoleon. Coupled with what today we'd call bad press, poor PR management, and circumstances beyond anyone's control including the weather, a volatile and deadly situation arose. France would never be the same and the subjects would become citizens in what would be the greatest contribution of the Revolution.

So how about that gossip that did in Marie? Well, let's just say that in trying to get back in favor by doing a favor, Louis, Cardinal Rohan, did himself a disservice and wound up under the thumb of the commander of the Bastille prison. Not in the prison. His house arrest erroneously has been reported over the years as the torturous dank and gloomy condition that the confines of the old fort offered. It was a far cry from the terms of most of his confinement. Schama's research is incredible to the detail he pulls from the vast array of sources consulted. If Marie had only stuck to her guns and sold the diamond reverie and passed out food, she might have survived. O.K. probably not. The conditions of various prisoners and notables has long been reported based on assumptions and not letters, documents, and facts. Some were even more vilely treated than has been generally assumed.

The detail and information in the work are worth more than three stars but the book suffers from tangents that should have been simpler, shorter, and thus better illustrations. The author switches back and forth to French in places without translation or context that will be confusing to those not somewhat (or a great a deal in two or three sections) familiar with the French language. The book does bring to life many details including some regarding the Terror that are surprising and a note for Europe today. Those who ignore the history of that time are already repeating parts of it. Scapegoating and holding the purse strings against one's opponents doesn't work in the long run.

Simon Schama's ebullient and irrepressible personality come through in full force in this work. If you have seen one of his many made for BBC programs or have heard him speak/lecture, then you will hear Simon over and over in this book In a good way for the most part. The long winded explanations in places of all but unimportant details, to the Revolution as whole, are unneeded distractions. There are a few rather strange grammatical constructs in the book. The latter I put off to reading and researching in languages side by side with other than the one in which the book is written.

Schama strikes me as the kind of person I'd enjoy standing in Montmartre at the appointed hour on July 14 and singing La Marseillaise. The rest of the work and its discoveries I will leave to you!

PS

The Lion? Well he may have come out better than everyone else.

[Spike Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Citizens” really isn't a book for the hardcore cliometrician, nor for the historian with a bent for social theory. It's a book that mostly concerns itself with a historical narrative told by the people who lived through it. That's not to say there isn't historical data here, or a lack of argument, but it's all secondary to crafting the story of the French Revolution at its most dramatic. It has both to its strengths and weaknesses as an approach. For one, it makes for a gripping read and a deep and multilayered understanding of the historical individuals involved, some of which was rather surprising to me, having only a shallow understanding of the historical events beforehand. On the negative side, I don't think I really understand any better than before why the French went batshit crazy between 1792 and 1794 to the point where they chose what was essentially a benign military dictatorship that bankrupted the country worse than the Bourbons, conducted endless wars that killed over half a million Frenchmen, and yet it seemed like the far saner alternative than any of the others previously given.

Simon Schama likes to tell a story, and he certainly does have favorite characters in it that he grants more depth of character to by discussion. He spends more time writing about the relative unknown Malesherbs than Robespierre, but as a reader I can understand his choices. People like the flawed and compromised yet brilliant and charismatic Mirabeau make for better reading than the priggish Robespierre who seemed to have no personal life outside of his political interests. What is surprising to me is that some of the most gleefully sadistic extremists of the Revolution survived the Thermidorean reaction and became notable functionaries in the Napoleonic and even the Bourbon regimes, working along those whose throats they would have publicly slit just a few years before.

Louis the XVI comes across as one of the more tragic figures in the whole drama. The man was hardly some sort of reactionary monster starving the peasants while wallowing in crapulence. He comes across as a largely apolitical and mildly autistic man who was more interested in tinkering on locks, spending time with his family in the countryside or funding naval expeditions across the Pacific than in the practical business of statecraft. When the shit finally hit the fan, he seemed more than willing to become a constitutional monarch, which might have worked out if he wasn't made to be the “damned if you do, damned if you don't” whipping boy of the economic failures he wasn't really responsible for. That and his complete and utter political tone-deafness ruined him... and the lives of thousands of others.

The man with the most coverage, however, is Talleyrand, whom I also came away with quite a different view of. Rather than the “silk stocking filled with shit” that Napoleon deemed his own chief diplomat, Talleyrand was indeed cynical and an epicure, but hardly without ideals or patriotism. Indeed, he seems to have taken a lesson from the extremism that surrounded his early political career and subsequent exile and attempted in his own manner to moderate the excesses of the tempestuous personalities and times out of a sensation of preservation not only for himself, but of the nation France, which he would want to succeed no matter what regime was in charge of it.

If I spend so much time talking about the historical figures in the book, it is because it is in people and drama that this book really shines. Just as much time is spent discussing economic policy, but the results there aren't really that surprising, namely that in attempting to be a military hegemon on land and sea, France slowly took on a massive debt that grew to the point where only painful economic measures could be taken to have a chance at fixing the monetary crisis and preventing societal collapse. This is a story we've seen many times in history, from Rome to the Soviet Union, and now perhaps the United States itself (god forbid). These attempts failed. Pretty much all the attempts failed. France didn't regain the domestic economic productivity of the 1780s until the *1820s*.

As for the big question, namely why France suddenly went nuts in the 1790s for a couple of years, Schama does the academic equivalent of a shrug as an argument. I can't fault him, though, as we're no closer to figuring out when and why nations lose their shit. Why the 1790s and not the 1830s in France? Why the 1920s and not the 1990s in Russia? Why the 1930s and not the 1870s in Germany? Who knows?

Four out of Five stars.