ABSTRACT
Toward the end of the semester, I like to give the students in my course on the French Revolution an exercise: if they had to teach the French Revolution but could only include five events, which five would they choose? The exercise is not easy, given the many worthy possibilities. Among the
more famous events of the Revolution, the storming of the Bastille in July 1789 is a strong choice; the king’s execution in January 1793 is another. But many events that are less well known today had a major impact at the time. The passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man changed the legal framework of the kingdom; the revolt of August 10, 1792 abolished the monarchy. Then there was the start of the war against Austria, or of the civil war in western France, and the key French victories in those wars that saved the Revolution: at Valmy or Fleurus, at Nantes or Cholet. Students more focused on biographical explanations look to the different leaders of the Revolution: the rise and fall of the Girondins or of Robespierre; the assassination of Marat, stabbed as he sat in his bathtub; even the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte – these events, too, deserve consideration, given the impact that those men had on their world. All of which is to say that “not easy” is an understatement. Even limiting the timeframe from the start of the Revolution in 1789 until the end of the Reign of Terror in 1794, “impossible” is more like it. Even if there is no perfect five, as an intellectual endeavor, the exercise
does much good. It lets students shape their own stories of the Revolution, while giving attention to some old-fashioned chronology. It makes students weigh the relative importance of chance in historical events (they often ask, “What if such-and-such had not happened?”). And, as they approach the end of the course, it lets students take stock of the huge amount they have learned. The French Revolution was a complicated, even bewildering event for the people who lived through it. Teaching it today is a balancing act – you never want to confuse your students, nor your readers. But you do not want to make things seem simple if they were not. During the years that make up the subject matter of this book, things were not simple at all.
