The French Revolution - Volume 2 Book Reviews

The French Revolution - Volume 2 by Hippolyte Taine Book Summary

While the translator's conceit that Lenin used this book for a blueprint for his revolution is difficult to believe, this is a classic history of the French Revolution by a famous 19th century French historian.

At first I found him hard to take. A typical argument goes like this: first there's 20 pages or so on the skill and virtuousness of the French army officers. Then there's accounts of the many massacres of the officers by their own men after the Revolution. Then there's another 20 pages on the depravity and baseness of the French army soldiers.

However, if you read between the lines a bit, you do learn a lot about why the officers were massacred. The officers had custody of all the money the government paid for the company, which they used to live lives of luxury, while their men were often not given enough food to live on. And the men had no chance of advancement. To the author's credit he does write about the legitimate grievances of the soldiers.

The author's goal, as he explains in the third volume, is to study the French revolutionaries in an objective manner, as if they were a strange new animal. Of course, he is unsuccessful in being objective, but his prejudices are so 19th century, and so transparent to us, with our much different prejudices, that he is ultimately successful in giving us an greater understanding of the people and events that determined the world's politics for centuries to come.

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