Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution [Paperback]

The French Revolution is one of the decisive landmarks in human history. Though feudalism was long past much of it's vestiges (social, political and economic) remained in some form or other in Western Europe. By the end of Napolean's reign it had all been swept away. Even Metternich couldn't put Europe back together again.

For better or for worst the French Revolution set the tone for much of what would follow in Europe. At its worst the Terror was a glimpse into the horrors of the Nazi's and Stalin's great purges. At its best the ideals of the revolution set the tone for free elections, representative government and constitutional law. For revisionist historians it's the former that is the great legacy while for those of the old school it is the latter that is the primary message.

Schama's "Citizens" is above all a great narrative history well documented and thought out. Like most who lean toward the revisionist side he is somewhat sympathetic to the regime and the nobility. That information should certainly aid the reader while navigating this well written work.

You can't help but admire the combination of writing and research that marks this great book. One note, Schama's area of expertise was not originally the French Revolution but rather the Dutch trading empire and it's aftermath. The strengths of Citizens is non stop chronicle of the actions and interactions of the key members of the revolution's story, from Louis the XVI's incompetence to Robspierre's chilling demeaner.

This is an almost epic narrative of the age. It unfortunately, but because of its size, understandably ends far too soon for a complete grasp of the whole era and its aftermath. Definately recommended for students and casual readers of history.

This book, in compelling narrative, makes is clear that the French Revolution actually began not with the clamor of the common people but with the blue-blooded aristocracy and the high clergy of the ancien régime who had been enamored with the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the views of the enlightenment (i.e., convincingly demonstrated in the Assembly of Notables convened in February 1787). Moreover, the revolution spilling into the streets of France began not in Paris but in the streets of Grenoble, the actual cradle of the revolution, with the Day of Tiles (June 10, 1788), and from there eventually spreading to the countryside with the grain riots and finally in March through April of 1789 in the concerted defiance of the hated game laws protecting birds and animals. The mobs learned to command the streets after the Réveillon Riots (April 1789) so that by July 14, 1789, they had had ample practice for the storming of the Bastille.

One gets to know with almost casual familiarity the important personages in the ancien régime, including those working behind the scene. (This has been heretofore usually the case only with the most bloodthirsty revolutionaries like Marat and Robespierre.) Regardless of what you have been led to believe, the earliest revolutionaries were not bourgeoisie, but nobility and high clergy, many of them functionaries in the old regime. Intoxicated by idealism and Rousseau's sublime concepts of virtue, reason, equality, etc., they had set out to correct real or perceived iniquities in France. Louis XVI's ministers saw the dangers lurking ahead, but seemed impotent to effectively protect the monarchy and solve the problems afflicting France, particularly the looming, serious financial problems and the threat of national bankruptcy. Nevertheless, these old regime functionaries, for the first time, are seen by the author as people of flesh and blood, although with all the frailties of ordinary men when all too often in times of crises - unlike other books in which they are portrayed almost anonymously as faceless aristocrats imbued not in human virtue, but only suffused of arrogance and other vices of idle and luxuriant living.

This book argues persuasively that the old regime was of itself undergoing changes of modernity in trade, technology, and laissez faire capitalism influenced by the teachings of the physiocrats, and these changes, rather than being openly welcomed by the people because of the advent of greater economic freedom, were actually decried and resented because these changes brought them insecurity and incertitude. The common people wanted cheap bread and regimentation whereas the lesser nobility wanted to hold onto the only thing left to them - their titles of nobility and what remained of their ancient land privileges, poor as most of them had become. It wasn't the lesser nobility or the bourgeoisie who led in the revolution.

From the outset of the revolution, for the most part, the liberal elite coming from the upper crust of the high nobility and clergy pushed for progressive change from above (operating in the voice of Mirabeau, Siéyès, Tallyrand, etc.) leading, whereas the poor and displaced persons militated from below. The destructive winter of 1788-1789 had forced the destitute and other disaffected elements of society to tread in the path of the revolution. The bitter harvest of 1787, the scarcities that followed, and the concomitant high prices for grain, bread, and other commodities did not help the looming economic and financial crisis. Mr. Schama certainly provides good evidence and persuasive arguments that those men of the nobility and clergy who were making war against their own classes set the revolution in motion - a tumbling, violent cascade that later they were unable to control.

One must visualize the French Revolution from its inception in 1789 to the end of the Terror on 9 Thermidor as a speeding log moving from left to right representing first the alleged enemies of the people, the aristocrats, the refractory priests, then the constitutional monarchists and foreigners, then the Feuillants, Girondins, Dantonists (and the Cordeliers), Hébertists, even more moderate or inconvenient Jacobins, and finally the Robespierrists - devoured by their own revolution. This log is ever being mounted by fresh radicals on the left while it continuously moves and is turned into lumber on the right by the circular saw of the revolution. (Only the Hébertists were out of sequence in the political spectrum only because the dictatorship of Robespierre outflanked them in the struggle for power.)

In the end, if the aristocratic leaders didn't escape as émigrés from the flames of the revolution they had created - almost uniformly, they, like reluctant ordinary Frenchmen, paid the ultimate price in the guillotine.

Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Sentinel of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) and author of Vandals at the Gates of Medicine (1995) and Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine (1997).

This is a popular work of history, and it is easy to see why. 1) Schama has a wonderful eye for anecdote, starting with the tale of the plaster elephant at the site of the Bastille, to how Talleyrand could not conduct a proper mass to save his life, to how Lafayette tried to escape from the Austrians and all too typically failed. 2) The book is lavishly illustrated with many compelling contemporary images. Not only do we see the passion for science in chandeliers resembling Montgolfier balloons, but we see the patriotic enthusiasm in revolutionary coffee cups and the revolutionary calendar. We are also blessed with Schama's skill as an art historian. Everyone recognizes David's The Oath of the Horatii, but how many now the bloodthirsty conclusion to the tale? Schama does, and this helps his point about the sanguinary and murderous side with the obsession with classical virtue. 3) Schama is a very effective writer, and few will be able to read his accounts of the September Massacres or the suppression of the Vendee or the execution of the Malesherbes family during the terror without a shudder of revulsion. Moreover he is capable of discussing a wide variety of topics, whether it is the nature of the fiscal crisis of the Bourbon monarchy or the cultural construction of the citizen. 4) In contrast to Richard Pipes' The Russian Revolution, Schama is able to consult the most recent literature to support his attack on the French revolution. He cites Chaussinand-Nogaret on the progressive, entrepreneurial and capitalist nature of the aristocracy. He builds on Darnton to emphasize the pornographic libels against Marie Antoinette. He builds on the Anglo-American empiricists like Behrens and Doyle to attack the idea of a bourgeois revolution, and the ideological emphasis of Furet and Baker to argue that 1789 was merely the Terror with a lower death count. 5) The result is a work with a compelling thesis, that the Ancien Regime was in many ways a progressive regime, advancing towards capitalism, abolishing torture and increasing toleration for Protestants. Unfortunately bad luck and ideological fanaticism caused the revolution to go wildly off course, ending in a disaster of massacre, bloodshed and ruin.

So what's wrong with the book? 1) Well, anecdote can be misleading. At one point in order to emphasize the Convention's proto-totalitarian nature he points to their discussion of a deputy's plans to take children away from their parents so that they could be educated by the state. But Isser Woloch and Jean-Pierre Gross have shown that this particular discussion was more an act of respect to the deputy, who had recently been assassinated, than a serious proposal. Their actual plans for public education were far more moderate and liberal. And while readers may agree with Schama that it is of great symbolic importance that the great painter Delacroix was fathered by Talleyrand, Delacroix's most recent biographer, Barthelmy Jobert strongly argues that it didn't happen. 2) Schama's emphasis on culture and ideology as the winds that smashed the revolution against the rocks are full of problems. American revolutionaries also cited classical antiquity with apparently no ill effects. The two most famous sayings of the American Revolution, "Give me liberty or give me death," "I regret that I only have one life to give to my country," both come from Addison's Cato. Can it really be said that everyone lost their heads over Rousseau, when his admirers, like the Masons and the quasi-Protestant Jansenists, split both ways when the revolution came? 3) It is one thing to quote recent scholarship. But other recent scholarship strongly points out the problems with Schama's account. Gwynne Lewis has pointed out that the nobility cannot really be said to be as capitalist and entrepreneurial as Schama believes. Timothy Tackett has pointed out that the revolutionary deputies were not so besotted with abstract ideology as revisionists believe, while the nobility's deputies were richer, of older lineage, and more Catholic and less liberal than Schama would lead us to believe. Alan Spitzer has pointed out that the evidence of a fundamental fiscal crisis cannot be so easily disposed with. He also points out that one reason why foreign trade collapsed so heavily in the 1790s was because so much of it depended on slavery, which the Convention abolished. Barry Shapiro has pointed out that counter-revolutionary plots were not a paranoid delusion, and that the revolutionary government in its first years had a moderate and responsible attitude towards them. Paul Spagnoli has pointed out that the revolutionary decades saw a clear increase in life expectancy which was not matched in the rest of Europe. Allan Kulikoff has pointed out that the American republic took decades to recover from its own brutal war of American independence. 4) Schama's basic position is elitist and shallow. He equates progress with unregulated markets, views popular movements for democracy with contempt and suspicion and enthuses over a forward looking bureaucracy/elite which could have solved France's problems if political discussion had not gotten in the way. One should point out that Spain, Italy, Germany and Japan have tried this path to the modern state, and they ended up with fascism. Russia tried this path and the State collapsed so badly that only Lenin's Bolsheviks could pick up the pieces. If we are to praise this neo-Burkean vision of the Revolution, we should remember that shortly after Burke's own death 50,000 Irish would be slaughtered by the forces of Order, leaving a legacy of rancid sectarianism for future centuries.