The Revolution - I

Volume number two of Taine’s Origins of Contemporary France deals with the first phase of the French Revolution, from its immediate prelude, the winter of 1788, until just before the Terror. Taine details the dire economic and administrative conditions that led to the convocation of the States-General, the psychological transformation of the populace as it became aware of its squalid condition, and the intervention of ruffians and vagabonds, who sowed discord with rhetoric based on the ‘new ideas’. From there he traces the slow descent into anarchy, aided by feeble and ineffective measures of repression while the popular mob grew into a political force. He analyses various factors influencing the formation, composition, and operation the Constituent Assembly; the crumbling and destruction of the old order; and the shambolic and chaotic attempts to build a new one as unrestrained passions, supported by ideology and expressed through violence, gained sovereignty. Outrages, illegality, popular outbreaks, and military insubordination set the stage for the final descent into outright terror.