The Days of the French Revolution

"Their combined wisdom and their desperate efforts to create a nobler man with greater dignity...have come to naught.  From all their attempts, only freaks have resulted."  Fyodor Dostoevsky.

The Days of the French Revolution, Christopher Hibbert

Hobbes, in his defense of an ordered state with powerful monarch, described what life would be like where such an order did not exist:  "Nasty, brutish and short."  Prior to the 18th century, the concept of a state without a king was uncharted territory.  For the French, they would throw off the fetters of monarchy, clergy and nobility in their attempt to enter the brave new world of equality and liberty.  In the end, however, the system that they would create would be a terror that would drive them willingly into the open arms of a powerful dictator, Napoleon.

Higgins creates a clear and terrible vision of life during the years of upheaval during the French Revolution.  He expertly gives great biographical depictions of the many principle participants and forces in this awful story:  From a nation in turmoil and financial ruin; an ineffective, indecisive and ultimately impotent king; ambitious and unscrupulous politicians;  the impoverished crowds screaming for bread and justice; clergy divided against itself and nobles at their height of indifference; to the men (and women) with guns and steel in and out of uniform tearing each other apart.  All would create the monster of the Revolution.  A machine that once set in motion, could not be stopped.  "The firebrands becoming the firemen..." becoming the fodder for the guillotine.  All consumed.  All destroyed.  All for naught.  Futile.

The procession of participants who follow one after the other into the guillotine are an unending stream of unhappy victims, nearly all undeserving of this horrible, unending purge.  The sole exception, perhaps only Robespierre, leader of the Committee of Public Safety (this is prior to Orwell, mind you) whose head falls as the machine turns on him, too.  Perhaps most disturbing of this period, is that the executions took on a nearly religious tone.  The "red mass" performed on the "great altar of the holy guillotine."  Robespierre seemed to relish the role.  At the height of his power, he felt his greatest gift to the people was the creation of a celebration day of the Supreme Being.  It was his greatest honor to have lead this ceremony.  This was, for me, perhaps the most disturbing part about Robespierre.  Robespierre by all accounts was absolutely convinced that he was a savior of France.  To the last he remained convinced of his purity, while the bodies and atrocities spread.

"The time has come which was foretold when people would ask for bread and be given corpses."  Madame Roland.