Frontmatter

Titlepage

The Great French
Revolution
1789-1793

by
P. A. Kropotkin

Author of "Mutual Aid" etc.

Translated from the French by
N. F. Dryhurst

London: William Heinemann
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons
1909

Contents

      Preface
    Chapter 1: The Two Great Currents of the Revolution
    Chapter 2: The Idea
    Chapter 3: Action
    Chapter 4: The People Before the Revolution
    Chapter 5: The Spirit of Revolt: the Riots
    Chapter 6: The Convocation of the States General Becomes Necessary
    Chapter 7: The Rising of the Country Districts During the Opening Months of 1789
    Chapter 8: Riots in Paris and Its Environs
    Chapter 9: The States-General
    Chapter 10: Preparations for the Coup d’État
    Chapter 11: Paris on the Eve of the Fourteenth
    Chapter 12: The Taking of the Bastille
    Chapter 13: The Consequences of July 14 at Versailles
    Chapter 14: The Popular Risings
    Chapter 15: The Towns
    Chapter 16: The Peasant Rising
    Chapter 17: August 4 and Its Consequences
    Chapter 18: The Feudal Rights Remain
    Chapter 19: Declaration of the Rights of Man
    Chapter 20: The Fifth and Sixth of October 1789
    Chapter 21: Fears of the Middle Classes — The New Municipal Organisation
    Chapter 22: Financial Difficulties — Sale of Church Property
    Chapter 23: The Fête of the Federation
    Chapter 24: The “Districts” and the “Sections” of Paris
    Chapter 25: The Sections of Paris Under the New Municipal Law
    Chapter 26: Delays in the Abolition of the Feudal Rights
    Chapter 27: Feudal Legislation in 1790
    Chapter 28: Arrest of the Revolution in 1790
    Chapter 29: The Flight of the King — Reaction — End of the Constituent Assembly
    Chapter 30: The Legislative Assembly — Reaction in 1791–1792
    Chapter 31: The Counter-Revolution in the South of France
    Chapter 32: The Twentieth of June 1792
    Chapter 33: The Tenth Of August: Its Immediate Consequences
    Chapter 34: The Interregnum — The Betrayals
    Chapter 35: The September Days
    Chapter 36: The Convention — The Commune — The Jacobins
    Chapter 37: The Government — Conflicts With the Convention — The War
    Chapter 38: The Trial of the King
    Chapter 39: The “Mountain” and The Gironde
    Chapter 40: Attempts of the Girondins to Stop the Revolution
    Chapter 41: The “Anarchists”
    Chapter 42: Causes of the Rising on May 31
    Chapter 43: Social Demands — State of Feeling In Paris — Lyons
    Chapter 44: The War — The Rising in La Vendee — Treachery of Dumouriez
    Chapter 45: A New Rising Rendered Inevitable
    Chapter 46: The Insurrection of May 31 and June 2
    Chapter 47: The Popular Revolution — Arbitrary Taxation
    Chapter 48: The Legislative Assembly and the Communal Lands
    Chapter 49: The Lands Restored to the Communes
    Chapter 50: Final Abolition of the Feudal Rights
    Chapter 51: The National Estates
    Chapter 52: The Struggle Against Famine — The Maximum — Paper-Money
    Chapter 53: Counter-Revolution In Brittany — Assassination of Marat
    Chapter 54: The Vendee — Lyons — The Risings in Southern France
    Chapter 55: The War — The Invasion Beaten Back
    Chapter 56: The Constitution — The Revolutionary Movement
    Chapter 57: The Exhaustion of the Revolutionary Spirit
    Chapter 58: The Communist Movement
    Chapter 59: Schemes for the Socialisation of Land, Industries, Means of Subsistence and Exchange
    Chapter 60: The End of the Communist Movement
    Chapter 61: The Constitution of the Central Government — Reprisals
    Chapter 62: Education — The Metric System — The New Calendar — Anti-Religious Movement
    Chapter 63: The Suppression of the Sections
    Chapter 64: Struggle Against the Hebertists
    Chapter 65: Fall of the Hebertists — Danton Executed
    Chapter 66: Robespierre and His Group
    Chapter 67: The Terror
    Chapter 68: The 9th Thermidor — Triumph of Reaction
    Chapter 69: Conclusion

Preface

The more one studies the French Revolution the clearer it is how incomplete is the history of that great epoch, how many gaps in it remain to be filled, how many points demand elucidation. How could it be otherwise? The Great Revolution, that set all Europe astir, that overthrew everything, and began the task of universal reconstruction in the course of a few years, was the working of cosmic forces dissolving and recreating a world. And if in the writings of the historians who deal with that period and especially of Michelet, we admire the immense work they have accomplished in disentangling and co-ordinating the innumerable facts of the various parallel movements that made up the Revolution, we realise at the same time the vastness of the work which still remains to be done.

The investigations made during the past thirty years by the school of historical research represented by M. Aulard and the Société de la Revolution française, have certainly furnished most valuable material. They have shed a flood of light upon the acts of the Revolution, on its political aspects, and on the struggles for supremacy that took place between the various parties. But the study of the economic side of the Revolution is still before us, and this study, as M. Aulard rightly says, demands an entire lifetime. Yet without this study the history of the period remains incomplete and in many points wholly incomprehensible. In fact, a long series of totally new problems presents itself to the historian as soon as he turns his attention to the economic side of the revolutionary upheaval.

It was with the intention of throwing some light upon these economic problems that I began in 1886 to make separate studies of the earliest revolutionary stirrings among the peasants; the peasant risings in 1789; the struggles for and against the feudal laws; the real causes of the movement of May 31, and so on. Unfortunately I was not able to make any researches in the National Archives of France, and my studies have, therefore, been confined to the collections of printed matter in the British Museum, which are, however, in themselves exceedingly rich.

Believing that it would not be easy for the reader to appreciate the bearing of separate studied of this kind without a general view of the whole development of the Revolution understood in the light of these studies, I soon found it necessary to write a more or less consecutive account of the chief events of the Revolution. In this account I have not dwelt upon the dramatic side of the episodes of these disturbed years, which have been so often described, but I have made it my chief object to utilise modern research so as to reveal the intimate connection and interdependence of the various events which combined to produce the climax of the eighteenth century’s epic.

This method of studying separately the various parts of the work accomplished by the Revolution has necessarily its own drawbacks: it sometimes entails repetition. I have preferred, however, to take the risk or reproach for this fault in the hope of impressing more clearly upon the reader’s mind the mighty currents of thought and action that came into conflict during the French Revolution — currents so intimately blended with the very essence of human nature that they must inevitably reappear in the historic events of the future.

All who know the history of the Revolution will understand how difficult it is to avoid errors in facts when one tries to trace the development of its impassioned struggles. I shall, therefore, be extremely grateful to those who will be good enough to point out any mistakes I may have made. And I wish to express here my sincerest gratitude to my friends, James Guillaume and Ernest Nys, who have had the kindness to read my manuscript and help me in this work with their knowledge and their criticisms.

Peter Kropotkin