The Terror The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France

by Andress, David

• ISBN13: 9780374530730
• ISBN10: 0374530734
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-12-26
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Summary

For two hundred years, the Terror has haunted the imagination of the West. The descent of the French Revolution from rapturous liberation into an orgy of apparently pointless bloodletting has been the focus of countless reflections on the often malignant nature of humanity and the folly of revolution. David Andress, a leading historian of the French Revolution, presents a radically different account of the Terror. In a remarkably vivid and page-turning work of history, he transports the reader from the pitched battles on the streets of Paris to the royal family's escape through secret passageways in the Tuileries palace, and across the landscape of the tragic last years of the Revolution. The violence, he shows, was a result of dogmatic and fundamentalist thinking: dreadful decisions were made by groups of people who believed they were still fighting for freedom but whose survival was threatened by famine, external war, and counter-revolutionaries within the fledging new state. Urgent questions emerge from Andress's trenchant reassessment: When is it right to arbitrarily detain those suspected of subversion? When does an earnest patriotism become the rationale for slaughter? Combining startling narrative power and bold insight,The Terroris written with verve and exceptional pace-it is a superb popular debut from an enormously talented historian. David Andress, a leading historian of the French Revolution, is Reader in Modern European History at the University of Portsmouth and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. For two hundred years, the Terror has haunted the imagination of the West. The descent of the French Revolution from rapturous liberation into an orgy of apparently pointless bloodletting has been the focus of countless reflections on the often malignant nature of humanity and the folly of revolution. David Andress presents a different account of the Terror, transporting the reader from the pitched battles on the streets of Paris to the royal family's escape through secret passageways in the Tuileries palace, and across the landscape of the tragic last years of the Revolution. The violence, he shows, was a result of dogmatic and fundamentalist thinking: dreadful decisions were made by groups of people who believe they were still fighting for freedom but whose survival was threatened by famine, external war, and counter-revolutionaries within the fledgling new state. Urgent questions emerge from Andress's trenchant reassessment: When is it right to arbitrarily detain those suspected of subversion? When does an earnest patriotism become the rationale for slaughter? "Andress writes as crisp and up-to-date an account of the Revolution's origins as I have read."Adams Gopnik,The New Yorker "Andress writes as crisp and up-to-date an account of the Revolution's origins as I have read."Adam Gopnik,The New Yorker "A vivid and powerful narrative of the years 1789-95 . . . The narrative is . . . fast-moving, from the storming of the Bastille to the execution of King Louis XVI to the paranoid politics of the National Convention."David Gilmour,The New York Times Book Review "If you want to learn where the paranoid element in French politics comes from, read David Andress'sThe Terror. Its cascade of intrigues and counterintrigues, purges, plots and counterplotsplus notable imaginary plotsprovides the answer . . . He has written a readable, informative, depressing bookthe former characteristics making the latter more palatable. He has turned a grim and intricate narrative of crime and foul play into a cautionary tale and an exciting adventure story that bears out the most famous line of Sa

Author Biography

David Andress, a leading historian of the French Revolution, is Principal Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Portsmouth, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. The Terror is his first book for a general readership.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Maps	viii
Introduction	1
1 Night Flight	9
2 Hankering After Destruction	38
3 The Fall	71
4 The September Massacres	93
5 Dawn of a New Age	116
6 Things Fall Apart	149
7 Holding the Centre	178
8 Saturnalia	210
9 Faction and Conspiracy	244
10 Glaciation	277
11 Triumph and Collapse	312
12 Terror Against Terror	345
Conclusion	371
Timeline of the French Revolution to 1795	379
Glossary	385
Cast of Characters	391
Notes	403
Index	429

Excerpts

In the brief midsummer darkness of 20-21 June 1791, Louis XVI, King of the French, fled his capital and his people. Using secret passageways in the Tuileries palace, the royal family were spirited away by a small band of loyal followers, leaving central Paris in a hired hackney carriage driven by Axel von Fersen, a dashing young Swedish knight, and rumoured lover of Queen Marie-Antoinette. Outside the city walls Fersen left them to make his own escape, and the party embarked in a second-hand berline, a bulky coach pulled by a team of six horses. Louis had spurned the chance to flee in anything lighter and faster, because it would have meant traveling apart from his wife and their two children. Together, he reasoned, they were safer, but as the coach creaked and groaned eastwards towards the frontier fortress of Montmedy, laden down with the family, their attendants, bodyguards and luggage, it would prove a fatefully unwise choice.

The fugitives’ schedule had been carefully plotted, and relays of cavalry were to see them to safety, once they had passed into the jurisdiction of the marquis de Bouille, loyal governor of the frontier region. The departure had been delayed by several hours, however, by last-minute hesitations and confusions, and the berline was too slow to make up the time. The duc de Choiseul, commander of the first relay of horsemen, presumed the escape postponed (as it had been once already, after repeated earlier reschedulings), and ordered his men to withdraw to barracks, concerned that their presence was alarming the locals. He passed the same instruction to all the later relays. Ignorant of this critical decision, the royal party proceeded towards the first rendezvous. Escorted by only two horsemen, the berline meandered on across the rolling landscape of Champagne as morning turned to afternoon—twice the king ordered a rest-stop, and, casting aside all effort at concealment, chatted with passers-by as if nothing unusual was occurring.

Yet what was happening was amazing and traumatic. Not since the religious and political strife of the early seventeenth century had a king of France had to flee his people, and never had one made so brazenly—or so desperately—for the frontiers. This episode had been brought about by upheavals which were unprecedented in European history, with a long and tortured trail of antecedents reaching across Louis’ reign into that of his predecessor. If the king and his companions regarded their move with insouciance, this was a symptom of the wider delusions that the entire court laboured under, long after events had first decisively challenged their right to rule France as they saw fit…

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Excerpted from The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France by David Andress
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