Volume 12, Number 4 · February 27, 1969
Spirit of the Terror
By C.B.A. Behrens
La 1ère République
by Albert Soboul
Calmann-Lévy, 365 pp., $19.90 francs
Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française
Société des Etudes Robespierristes, 6 francs
English Historians on the French Revolution
by Hedva Ben-Israel
Cambridge, 311 pp., $11.50
Saint-Just, the collaborator of Robespierre and one of the moving spirits of the Terror, was born in 1768. His bi-centenary last year was the occasion of tributes to his memory and to the regime in which he played one of the principal roles. The Annales devoted to him the whole of its January-March issue. Professor Soboul brought out his 1ère République in which, as has long been fashionable, the period of the Terror is portrayed as the heroic period of the Revolution. As the jacket to this work informs us, though the first republic endured until Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor in 1804, the events after Thermidor (July 27, 1794), when Robespierre and Saint-Just were executed, have been eclipsed by 'the tragic grandeur of the year II. In the eyes of history the first republic remains that of 1793.'
Review, 3349 words
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