The end of an élite Book

Hibbert covers the French Revolution from the meeting of the Estates General to the emergence of Napoleon. This is roughly ten years of a country's journey from negotiable concern to rampant homicidal psychosis. Because the author chooses to concentrate exclusively on the character of the major players and the tenor of the events they wrought - eschewing ideals and philosophies - that madness is granted center stage. Remove the over-arching political, financial and cultural rationales (all intellect, in essence) from the revolutionary equation and what we're left with are men (and a very few women) struggling with the Oedipal dilemma writ large. I don't imagine for a moment this was Hibbert's intention - yet it is where the work takes us.

The narrative teases the reader into an analysis of the psychology of the uprising; the tremendous guilt and fear that accompanied the imprisonment of the father-figure of a monarch, and the manner in which this elicited massive, violent communal reactions of displacement and projection. The spasming emotional component of the mob (whom Hibbert refers to as the enrages) is tracked as it attempts first to assist the befuddled yet beneficent King, and then to supplant him entirely - taking on his function as lawgiver and disciplinarian. The full constellation of adolescent rage, resentment and despair is on display in the larger rebellions of the Bastille, the storming of the Tuileries, and the September Massacres. It is so much easier to see here, truly, how the guillotine was a civilizing measure and, in many ways, the reintroduction of a modifying element of compassion. That's how insane the times had become.

Always on the hunt for an evocative image, I found one here in the midst of the royal family's attempt to flee the country. Their carriage had been caught and surrounded at Varennes. Lafayette dispatched a contingent of National Guard to escort them back to Paris - a return made dreadful by the vast crowds who gathered to jeer and curse them all along the way. When they passed through Sainte-Menehould, the carriage was halted as its mayor made a speech "of admonition and rebuke."

Later, an old quixotic nobleman, who rode up with the cross of St. Louis on his breast to make the King an elaborate salute, was shot in the back as he rode away.

Tempts my every fascination, that ancient warrior does.