A Companion to the French Revolution

摘要

As the blurb says, the French Revolution is one of the great turning-points in modern history. But even that statement is something of a misconception in so far as it implies that the Revolution was a single event. Of course, there is one event inevitably linked to it, the fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. But there then followed ten years of dramatic events, including the executions of a king and queen, wars internal and external, the Terror, the White Terror, political changes with four constitutions, and finally Napoleon's coup d'etat in 1799. Hardly any aspect of these ten years is uncontroversial and not been picked over by historians.