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Title: The Days of the French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert ISBN: 0-688-16978-3 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 07 July, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (18 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A lucid narrative of the French Revolution
Comment: The Days of the French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert is another excellent tome on the bloody Reign of Terror of the French Revolution.
The book is meticulously researched and, although the author describes it as a "readable introduction" to other historians' works to which he is indebted, the book contains a fountain of information and should also be helpful to students on the subject and other aficionados on the French Revolution.
The book has an excellent index (done by the author's wife) and excellent appendices both for the glossary of terms (Appendix I) and on "the fate of characters where end is not recorded in the text" (Appendix II). After having read a number of tomes on the French Revolution, it was only after consulting Appendix II in this book that I, for example, found out the fate of Charles Barbaroux, one of the last great Girondins. It was a great disappointment to at last discover that after having evaded his Jacobin tormentors for exactly one year, he too fell to the blade of the Guillotine, only one month before Robespierre himself, the man most responsible for the Reign of Terror, would fall on 9 Thermidor.
This is another volume of the French Revolution worthy of shelf space in your library and worth careful reading....
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).
Rating: 4
Summary: A Turbulent Period of History
Comment: "The Days Of The French Revolution" tells the story of this turbulent period of French History. Reading like a novel, Hibbert imparts information while holding our interest. Here we meet the leading figures of the Revolution, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, Napoleon and many others. While reading, we agonize over the fateful decision of the Royal Family to flee Paris and to seek rescue from foreign powers and cringe at the tragic descent into the Terror. We read narratives, speeches, letters and diaries of those who made and lived through the Revolution. From the reading of this book I have a much better understanding of the course of the Revolution and an appreciation for the forces which impelled it as well as the tragic and seemingly irrational paths which it followed. If there is any shortfall it is the concentration on events in Paris to the virtual exclusion of events in the rest of the country. I am glad that I read this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Well Written and Concise Read of a Cyclic Violent Revolution
Comment: Well written and concise history of the French Revolution that is equipped with appendices that includes a summary of the individuals that have roles in the revolution, definitions of key French terminology predominately political and a time chart that outlines the revolution's history.
Quite a fascinating story of the rise of the third estate against the monarchy, the nobles and clergy which had its roots in the downward turn of the economy (partly due to the cost of the war against England during America's war of independence) and the burden of the poor to pay most of the taxes while owning little land. The sheer violence and grotesqueness of the revolution is astonishing as political groups seem to rise and fall not only against the monarchists but continuously over the lengthy period of the revolution with and against various feuding political parties. There seems to be endless purges oddly each supported enthusiastically by the masses in the streets. At times the fear of death is attached to everyone as political shifts occur at astonishing speed over the possible return of the monarchists and outside military powers, which causes extraordinary panic, and just through political differences among the leadership. The deaths of the poorly leadership equipped Louis XVI and his Queen Antoinette are well described and almost symbolic of the many individuals executed for political reasons and the many innocents who were simply accused without regard to a fair trial. Amazing how so called patriots could be aligned to organize a new constitution only to later compete for power at the expense of the life of their former colleagues.
The revolution according to the author seems to cycle into periodic periods of controlled political organization then to despotic periods of terror that seems to reach its peak with the politically self consumed and self important Robespierre whose insensitive annihilation of his political competition back fires when his own out of control ego and vague threats to the assembly make every man feel threatened hastening his own rapid and violent demise with a trip to the guillotine.
This exhaustive cycle of control supplanted by terror opens the door for a strong willed military despot as the author's final two chapters cover the entrance of Napoleon into the national spotlight. One can see that the general population would welcome any sustained order.
I only wish the author spent a little more time explaining how the political mobs could be so violent to literally tear people apart, purposely soak themselves in the blood of their victims and readily kill anyone violently just by mere association. Understanding that lacking the means to eat was certainly part of it plus the heavy tax burden on the poor, but the extent of the violence is shocking as well as the continuous applause of the crowds as the various losers of political power take their trips in carts to the guillotine.
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Title: Citizens : A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama ISBN: 0679726101 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 17 March, 1990 List Price(USD): $28.00 |
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Title: The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (VERY SHORT INTRODUCTIONS) by William Doyle ISBN: 0192853961 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Twelve Who Ruled by Robert Roswell Palmer ISBN: 0691007616 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 September, 1970 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Napoleon by Frank McLynn ISBN: 1559706317 Publisher: Arcade Books Pub. Date: 10 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
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Title: The Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle ISBN: 0192852213 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 1990 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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