The Terror

I would rank this among the best of the latest titles on the French Revolution. Andress covers the so-called radical phase of the revolution with great skill and detail. A revisionist text, The Terror is freed from the old right-left dogmas that haunted the writers of earlier histories of the French Revolution even as late as the cold war era. Andress is not without sympathy for the leading actors, but neither is he willing to excuse them their crimes. He does make it clear however that they were driven by a so-called "Concert of Europe" which sought to stamp out liberty and democracy in its cradle. In the process he does a solid job of the task to explaining how a Revolution born in the ideals of universal rights could descend into such bloodletting. Perhaps one of the author's most inciteful, disturbing and likely controversial conclusions is to find parallels between the political and religious fundementalisms of 1789-1795 and today; between the Terror and the War on Terror; between the era of Robespierre and the rise of the national security state. While the book is great in detail and an excellent choice for those familiar with the events of the French Revolution, I probably wouldn't recommend it as a first choice to a casual reader. One thing I might add for certain. The Terror: Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France proves that the euphoric proclamation by some that we had somehow reached "the end of history" now seems naively premature.

Some months ago I saw a notice of this book in the NYTBR and marched out to buy it. Either I was distracted or couldn't find it, because I brought home quite another book by the same author, The French Revolution and the People (see my review). This latter volume was the sort of thing the history professor puts on Overnight Reserve in the library--a dense, badly written collection of anecdotes strung loosely together in a forced narrative, with the bad writing you expect in a history PhD dissertation (which this was not, by the way). But for all the crap of its poor construction and atrocious editing, it was full of telling details I hadn't seen before. Some agent or publisher's editor must have felt the same way about the book, and urged Andress to write a pop history of the French Revolution, using the same sources but putting it all into a tighter and more cinematic narrative. Here Andress gives us a vivid picture of French politics (mostly in Paris and Lyons) during the period, with particular attention to the successive fall of Danton and Robespierre and to the manias of the popular press (particularly the Pere Duchesne). Without appearing too biased, he presents the case against the King and Queen--and it is a compelling one. Louis XVI swore fealty to the Republic while plotting against it every day, and hiding his secret correspondence in a private wall safe at the Tuileries--something seldom emphasized in other histories. He lied, and lied and lied again, and this is why he lost his head. The Queen's trial revolved around the accusation that she had sexually abused her son, the Dauphin. Usually this is glossed over with outrage, but Andress presents the arguments of both sides without bias. Nearly every other nation in Europe was arrayed against the new government of the Republic--invading, bribing, spying, and spreading the most grotesque misinformation about conditions in the new nation. France was like a person who is attacked on all sides, by family and former friends, and flails about in insane defensiveness in order to keep alive. This is a brilliant description of a national trauma from which the nation never recovered.

This is a very concise history of the French Revolution, with emplasis on the period which was called "The Terror". That was the time when the most executions occurred, including the king and queen, and also members of the revolutionary councils, etc.. It seems that, at that time, anyone with a grievance could "finger" someone as a counter-revolutionary, and that was basicaly a death sentence. It's a gruesome work, but it tells a cautionary tale of a revolt gone out of control, even of those who initiated it. This is this author's first book for a general readership, and his lack of being able to comunicate his thoughts in a easily readable format is quite apparent. On the whole, it was a good book to read.

I have to take issue with the previous reviewer who disliked Andress's 'politicising'. I found this book to be both a stimulating and intense narrative, and a thought-provoking evaluation of the possible parallels between the 1790s and our own age. It seems to me that if history writing, and reading, is ever anything more than just a pastime, it has to ask these kinds of questions, and it may as well do it in a provocative fashion. What Andress has done is strip away a lot of the mythology that separates an episode like the Terror from the "normal" course of history, and shows instead that it was caused by people who, with some spectacular exceptions, were pretty average. It is a story about how ordinary lives can become extraordinary. If we had been there, it could have been us, and so it's fair to ask the question, in the age of the "War on Terror", what are we doing that's so different from the French back then? Andress isn't accusing anyone of anything, but the question bears thinking about.

I'm very glad David Andress wrote this book. It covers a subject sadly overlooked by our popular culture. The author's narration is quite thorough and enjoyable. Unlike some of the other works on the subject, Mr. Andress does not shy away from detailing the most gruesome elements of the Terror. Although not pleasant, the specifics tell us much about the psychology of the time and the mindset of the principals. In particular, this volume gave me a better picture of St. Just than I had previously and portrayed him in totality not only as a radical. Another highly enlightening aspect of the work is the fact that not only political ideals but party programs are elucidated. We find that Heberte and Robespierre, along with the Girondists, knew frighteningly little about how the state functioned at all. These were not detail oriented people and results of their decisions often showcased just how naive they were. While the book is easy to recommend I cannot give it all five stars because I disliked some of the politicizing Andress engaged in both in the introduction and the conclusion. I found his allusions to the War on Terror to be obtuse and unsubstantiated. Of course, this is my personal taste as, with history, I only want the facts from a historian. I'll take objectivity over color whenever possible. I grant that there is no such thing as 100 percent objectivity, but I want to draw conclusions on my own.