Book Review - The French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert

 The French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert

London: Penguin Books, 1982 (1988 reprint, first published 1980)  ISBN 0140049452

While I have read a lot of modern history, the French Revolution is a definite gap in my knowledge. While I knew some of the what, I didn't know much at all of the how or the why. Christopher Hibbert's book has filled in some of the answers I was seeking, but added to my sense that the French Revolution was more confusion than clarity, and that whatever the revolutionists were aiming for in terms of a new society, they missed the mark.

Hibbert has set out his book in a series of chapters named after specific days in the "life" of the Revolution, such as "The Day of the Tennis-Court Oath", "The Days of the Tuileries", "The Days of the Terror" and so on. He uses these events to build the narrative of the Revolution, using apt quotes from observers to fill out a story of violence, confusion, high-hopes, and cruel realities.

The cruel reality that could be said to be the source of the Revolution was that France was broke. Years of unchecked and poorly monitored spending had left the exchequer bare, and a fiscal crisis loomed. So at the beginning, like most Revolutions it was about tax. Louis XVI was indecisive, not too bright, and poorly advised (or rather often took bad advice). His calling of the Estates General was not the best idea, especially given that many of the more radical people were led to believe that the parlement would do much more than approve new taxes. As we have seen throughout history, it's very dangerous to give people with no say a sniff of freedom. The Estates General soon got out of hand, driven by radicals in Paris, as well as the genuine needs of the poorest in society.

The French Revolution seemed to lurch from mob rule to factionalism and back again. The mob burnt down the Bastille, and attacked the Tuileries, while factionalism led to the takeover of government by the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre, and eventually to Napoleon ("Don't you know he is one of those Corsicans? They are all on the make.").

Overall, the Revolution was a sad and bloody affair - thousands were needlessly killed, the country fell into ruin and war, and the final act of the time was to re-instate a dictatorship which in some ways was worse than the monarchy. One gets the sense reading Hibbert's book, that if Louis was a bit smarter, and had a court with a bit more intelligence, there was a pathway for France to transition to the kind of Constitutional Monarchy that England was beginning to enjoy. Unfortunately Louis could not walk that path, and many of his court held the lower classes in too much contempt to ever deal with them.

If you want a vigorously written account of what happened between 1789 and 1799 (there is not much preliminary scene-setting and the narrative ends with Napoleon's coup), there is a lot to like in this book. Recommended.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell