Histoire de la Révolution française : Tome 1, volume 2

Histoire de la Révolution française #2

by Jules Michelet, Gérard Walter

Ah ! pauvre Révolution, si confiante à ton premier jour, tu avais convié le monde à l'amour et à la paix.Mais ils ne l'ont pas voulu.Et lors même qu'ils sont venus pour la frapper par surprise, l'épée que la France a tirée, ce fut l'épée de la paix. C'est pour délivrer les peuples, pour leur donner la vraie paix, la Liberté, qu'elle frappa les tyrans.Les efforts violents, terribles, qu'elle fut obligée de faire, pour ne pas périr, contre le monde conjuré, une génération oublieuse les a pris pour la Révolution elle-même.Et de cette confusion il est résulté un mal grave, profond, très difficile à guérir chez ce peuple : l'adoration de la force.J. M.

1530 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press. A place was offered him in the imperial printing office, but his father was able to send him to the famous Collège or Lycée Charlemagne, where he distinguished himself. He passed the university examination in 1821, and was soon appointed to a professorship of history in the Collège Rollin.

Soon after this, in 1824, he married. This was one of the most favourable periods ever for scholars and men of letters in France, and Michelet had powerful patrons in Abel-François Villemain and Victor Cousin, among others. Although he was an ardent politician (having from his childhood embraced republicanism and a peculiar variety of romantic free-thought), he was above all a man of letters and an inquirer into the history of the past. His earliest works were school textbooks. Between 1825 and 1827 he produced diverse sketches, chronological tables, etc, of modern history. His précis of the subject, published in 1827, is a sound and careful book, far better than anything that had appeared before it, and written in a sober yet interesting style. In the same year he was appointed maître de conferences at the École normale supérieure. Four years later, in 1831, the Introduction à l'histoire universelle showed a very different style, exhibiting the idiosyncrasy and literary power of the writer to greater advantage, but also displaying, in the words of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, "the peculiar visionary qualities which made Michelet the most stimulating, but the most untrustworthy (not in facts, which he never consciously falsifies, but in suggestion) of all historians."

Reviews

[Yann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Madame Veto avait promis (bis)
De faire égorger tout Paris (bis)
Mais son coup a manqué
Grâce à nos canonniers.

Dansons la carmagnole
Vive le son
Vive le son
Dansons la carmagnole
Vive le son
Du canon !

Monsieur Veto avait promis (bis)
D'être fidèle à sa patrie (bis)
Mais il y a manqué
Ne faisons plus quartier

Dansons la carmagnole
Vive le son
Vive le son
Dansons la carmagnole
Vive le son
Du canon !

Antoinette avait résolu... (bis)
De nous faire tomber sur cul. (bis)
Mais son coup est manqué
Elle a le nez cassé.

Dansons la carmagnole
Vive le son
Vive le son
Dansons la carmagnole
Vive le son
Du canon !

Oui nous nous souviendrons toujours. (bis)
Des sans-culottes des faubourgs. (bis)
A leur santé buvons
Vivent ces bons lurons.

Dansons la carmagnole
Vive le son
Vive le son
Dansons la carmagnole
Vive le son
Du canon !