4,113 words
In summer 1789, King Louis XVI of France summoned the Estates General to Versailles in order to solve France’s deepening financial crisis. The Estates General consisted of the First Estate representing the clergy, the Second Estate representing the nobility, and the Third Estate representing everyone else. (more…)
4,989 words
Marcel Gauchet
Robespierre: The Man Who Divides Us the Most
Princeton University Press, 2024
This 191-page study of Robespierre’s revolutionary career is not a biography in the usual sense. Such works have already patiently collected everything that can be known about the man’s life before the French Revolution, but the main lesson to be drawn from them is that nothing from Robespierre’s formative years is of much use for explaining his political behavior. (more…)
“Those who oppose Chairman Mao: We will crush their doghead.”–Red Guards poster
“Those who oppose Chairman Mao: We will crush their doghead.”–Red Guards poster
2,580 words
In our country we wish to substitute morality for egotism, probity for honour, principles for conventions, duties for etiquette, the empire of reason for the tyranny of customs, contempt for vice for contempt for misfortune, pride for insolence, the love of honour for the love of money… that is to say, all the virtues and miracles of the Republic, for all the vices and snobbishness of the monarchy. — Maximilien Robespierre, “On Virtue and Terror” (1794) (more…)
2,682 words
Introduction here, Chapter 11 Part 4 here
Translated by F. Roger Devlin
As is well-known, the republican slogan “Liberty — Equality — Fraternity” was first invoked during the French Revolution.[1] At that time it was merely one slogan among many others. Falling into disuse under the Empire, and frequently called into question thereafter, it reappeared during the Revolution of 1848 when it was inscribed as a “principle” of the Republic in the Constitution of February 27, 1848. (more…)
