Robespierre: Or, The tyranny of the majority

by Jean Matrat

Book by Matrat, Jean This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684140551
• ISBN13: 9780684140551
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: Scribner
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.74 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Clear Explanation of Robespierre and the Revolution

I am fascinated by the fiasco that is the French Revolution, especially the bespectacled lawyer Robespierre. How did this man wind up at the center of power? Here Matrat answers the questions with minimal commentary but essential and pithy quotations from the leading observers and pamphlets of the day. So much of the revolution was avoidable, but became awful because, as the book shows, intellectuals like Mirabeau and Robespierre thought they could manage people's economies and culture, yet preserve their liberty. We are given a vicious picture of the mob, but the blame really falls back on the failed leadership of the Jacobins and Girondists. Throughout the book a new picture emerges of Robespierre: visionary bureaucrat. Like Lenin, the other great revolutionary lawyer in history, Maximillien thought that if enough people died, or if enough orders were signed, that results would just magically happen. If the square pegs don't fit into round holes, just hit harder. Robespierre fell to the Directorate, they fell to Napoleon, and he fell to the Bourbons. All this because a generation of Frenchmen failed to understand that people matter more than ideas. I believe that this is the clearest book yet written on the French Revolution. For two other books that round out my top three, check out "Fiat Money Inflation in France" by White, and Schom's "Napoleon: A Biography", for less well-known aspects of the revolution. (These books just tell it like it is and don't indulge in the useless sentimentalism of Carlyle or Schama.)

Accurate account of Robespierre and the "Terror"

Jean Matrat's book is a must for any student of the French Revolution, particularly if one is interested in the Committee for Public Safety that ruled France briefly from 1793-1794. The book contains pamphlets and newspaper articles of this turbulent era which gives the reader a firm sense of the dread and misery that accompanied one of history's most infamous chapters. Matrat's book describes, in depth, the causes of the Thermidorian revolt of July 1794 and its aftereffect. The subtitle "Tyranny of the Majority" is an apt description of what transpires within these pages, for without the people's consent, the Revolution never would have turned into the barbarism which it is now mostly noted for. Although Robespierre and his cronies are the most culpable of villians, the complicity of the masses certainly kept them on their pedestals. Their fall and justified horrible ending is well-chronicled here with no punches pulled. This is an important historical work with an attention to detail sorely lacking in other related histories.