170 162
171 163
172 164
173 165
174 166
175 167
176 168
177 169
178 170
179 171
180 172
181 173
182 174
183 175
184 176
185 177
186 178
187 179
188 180
189 181
190 182
191 183
192 184
193 185
194 186
195 187
196 188
197 189
198 229
199 230
200 231
201 232
202 233
203 234
204 235
205 236
206 237
207 238
208 239
209 240
210 241
211 242
Terror
The French Revolution and Its Demons
Michel Biard and Marisa Linton
With a Foreword by Timothy Tackett
polity
Originally published in French as Terreur! La Révolution française face à ses demons. By Michel Biard & Marisa Linton © Armand Colin 2020, Malakoff. Armand Colin is a trademark of DUNOD Editeur, 11, rue Paul Bert, 92240 Malakoff
This English edition © Polity Press, 2021
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
101 Station Landing
Suite 300
Medford, MA 02155, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4837-8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website:
Dedication
In memory of Michel Vovelle (1933–2018)
Note on the Text
This is a shortened and revised version of the original French language editon: Terreur! La Révolution française face à ses démons, Armand Colin, 2020, Malakoff, a trademark of Dunod Editeur.
Acknowledgements
Chapters 1, 4, 5 and 8 were originally translated by Élise Trogrlic, with the support of the GRHis University of Rouen, Normandy. All other translations and the rewriting for this edition were by Marisa Linton.
Our grateful thanks to those who generously gave their time to read the original draft of the French edition and gave us invaluable advice and further suggestions (Françoise Brunel, Carla Hesse, Hervé Leuwers and, especially, Timothy Tackett).
Foreword
We can only applaud this cross-channel collaboration between two of the most distinguished and prolific scholars of the French Revolution, the French historian Michel Biard and his British counterpart Marisa Linton. They bring together some of the most recent Revolutionary studies in both English and French for a rich and creative new synthesis. Although their study touches on aspects of the entire period from the late Old Regime through the Napoleonic period, the primary focus is on the phenomena of ‘terror’ and stateimposed violence in the years 1793 to 1794: the origins, the ongoing dynamic, the broad impact on French society and the prolonged challenge – longer than is often realized – of bringing such ‘terror’ to a close. The book also presents valuable reflections on the lengthy and contentious historiography of the phenomena in question, on debates whose origins can be traced to the writings of contemporaries of the Revolution itself and that have continued unabated into the twenty-first century.
Few periods in French history have been so afflicted by misinterpretation, deformation and facile oversimplification. The array of explanations for the phenomenon of Revolutionary ‘terror’, proposed by historians, social scientists, philosophers, literary scholars and novelists is impressive indeed. In their great majority, however, such writers had very little understanding of the actual historical reality of the events they claimed to describe and explain. The majority based their interpretations on a veritable myth concerning the years 1793–4, a myth that originated in the efforts of the post-Thermidorian Conventionnels to distance and exculpate themselves from