thomas carlyle

The French Revolution: A History

First published 1837
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contents

Part I. The Bastille

i
Book I. Death of Louis XV.
President Henault, remarking on royal Surnames of Honour how difficult it often is to ascertain not only why, but even when, they were…
ii
Book II. The Paper Age.
A paradoxical philosopher, carrying to the uttermost length that aphorism of Montesquieu's, 'Happy the people whose annals are tiresome,'…
iii
Book III. The Parlement of Paris
While the unspeakable confusion is everywhere weltering within, and through so many cracks in the surface sulphur-smoke is issuing, the…
iv
Book IV. States-General
The universal prayer, therefore, is to be fulfilled! Always in days of national perplexity, when wrong abounded and help was not, this…
v
Book V. The Third Esta
That exasperated France, in this same National Assembly of hers, has got something, nay something great, momentous, indispensable, cannot…
vi
Book VI. Consolidation.
Here perhaps is the place to fix, a little more precisely, what these two words, French Revolution, shall mean; for, strictly considered,…
vii
Book VII. The Insurrection of Women.
No, Friends, this Revolution is not of the consolidating kind. Do not fires, fevers, sown seeds, chemical mixtures, men, events; all…

Part II. The Constitution

viii
Book I. The Feast of Pikes.
The victim having once got his stroke-of-grace, the catastrophe can be considered as almost come. There is small interest now in watching…
ix
Book II. Nanci.
Dimly visible, at Metz on the North-Eastern frontier, a certain brave Bouille, last refuge of Royalty in all straits and meditations of…
x
Book III. The Tuileries.
How true that there is nothing dead in this Universe; that what we call dead is only changed, its forces working in inverse order! 'The…
xi
Book IV. Varennes.
The French Monarchy may now therefore be considered as, in all human probability, lost; as struggling henceforth in blindness as well as…
xii
Book V. Parliament First.
In the last nights of September, when the autumnal equinox is past, and grey September fades into brown October, why are the Champs Elysees…
xiii
Book VI. The Marseillese.
How could your paralytic National Executive be put 'in action,' in any measure, by such a Twentieth of June as this? Quite contrariwise: a…

Part III. The Guillotine

xiv
Book I. September.
Ye have roused her, then, ye Emigrants and Despots of the world; France is roused; long have ye been lecturing and tutoring this poor…
xv
Book II. Regicide.
France therefore has done two things very completely: she has hurled back her Cimmerian Invaders far over the marches; and likewise she has…
xvi
Book III. The Girondins.
This huge Insurrectionary Movement, which we liken to a breaking out of Tophet and the Abyss, has swept away Royalty, Aristocracy, and a…
xvii
Book IV. Terror.
In the leafy months of June and July, several French Departments germinate a set of rebellious paper-leaves, named Proclamations,…
xviii
Book V. Terror the Order of the Day.
We are now, therefore, got to that black precipitous Abyss; whither all things have long been tending; where, having now arrived on the…
xix
Book VI. Thermidor.
What then is this Thing, called La Revolution, which, like an Angel of Death, hangs over France, noyading, fusillading, fighting,…
xx
Book VII. Vendemiaire.
How little did any one suppose that here was the end not of Robespierre only, but of the Revolution System itself! Least of all did the…