Reviews for Revolutionary France

The average rating for Revolutionary France based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-12-30 00:00:00 robert grounds This was really interesting to read. I am french, but I don't know all that much about the revolution, and especially Bonaparte's reign. By the way Bonaparte was a dick, he believed women should not be sent to school, since they are just "machines to produced children". Excuse me? No, we don't do that here. He might have been a great leader, but I grew up with a general dispise for any royal figures, so little emporor over here can go. It is an important part of history, but I think people need to be educated on all sides of a conflict. Anyways, this textbook is well made, I just wish more of the impact on the people was explored, like how much the terror affected the average citizens of France. Also I hoped to see more of the leading figures of the revolution. From Voltaire to Lafayette, passing by Olympes de Gouges.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-04-13 00:00:00 Patrick Lee A book both wonderful and frustrating. This book offers a glimpse into a world of remarkable and, to me, utterly unknown history. In the years following the depths of the revolutions Terror, France was wracked with crime and violent reactions to the actions of the "government" in Paris, the so called "White Terror," much of it centered around Lyon, a city that had suffered terribly under the Republic. This is also my introduction to the work of Richard Cobb, whose approach to history here is to focus on the effect of events on the individual, to dissect the generalities of tradition into its parts and to try and understand the currents that escape the common stream. Unfortunately, much of the original material -- criminal court records and related documents; the meat of the story -- is not translated so that pages of detail are only printed in French. The other frustration is that this era of French history is almost undocumented in easily accessible English texts so that a reader wanting more is left with, at best, a difficult quest. Still, I'm delighted to have read what's here, to have had even this little peak at an astonishing time and place and I'll try to use the frustration to encourage me to improve my French reading skills in the new year.