1. "Mars Unshackled" is a phrase borrowed from Martin van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 96. This article originated as a keynote address, "Reconsidering the French Revolution in World-Historical Perspective," delivered by Theda Skocpol at the Eighteenth Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, 1750-1850, held in Birmingham, Alabama, 25-27 February 1988. That address was subsequently published in pp. 3-22 of the 1988 Consortium's Proceedings (Athens: Department of History, University of Georgia, 1988); and a slightly expanded version appeared in Social Research 56, 1 (Spring 1989): 53-70. Meyer Kestnbaum has contributed further research on changes in the French military to this substantially revised version of the essay. Changes were also made in response to comments by anonymous reviewers for the University of California Press.

2. Karl Griewank, "Emergence of the Concept of Revolution," in Revolution: A Reader , eds. Bruce Mazlish, Arthur Kaledin, and David B. Ralston (New York: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 13-17; and Arthur Hatto, "'Revolution': An Inquiry into the Usefulness of an Historical Term," Mind 58 (1949): 495-517.

3. François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution , trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pt. 2, sec. 1.

4. Alfred Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968).

5. Richard C. Cobb, The Police and the People: French Popular Protest, 1789-1820 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970).

6. Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966).

7. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968).

8. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

9. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1984), p. 3.

10. Ibid., p. 15.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 235.

13. Ibid., p. 236.

14. Ibid.,p. 16.

9. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1984), p. 3.

10. Ibid., p. 15.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 235.

13. Ibid., p. 236.

14. Ibid.,p. 16.

9. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1984), p. 3.

10. Ibid., p. 15.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 235.

13. Ibid., p. 236.

14. Ibid.,p. 16.

9. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1984), p. 3.

10. Ibid., p. 15.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 235.

13. Ibid., p. 236.

14. Ibid.,p. 16.

9. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1984), p. 3.

10. Ibid., p. 15.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 235.

13. Ibid., p. 236.

14. Ibid.,p. 16.

9. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1984), p. 3.

10. Ibid., p. 15.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 235.

13. Ibid., p. 236.

14. Ibid.,p. 16.

15. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution , trans. Stuart Gilbert (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955; originally 1858).

16. Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class , p. 21.

17. Ibid., emphasis added.

16. Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class , p. 21.

17. Ibid., emphasis added.

18. See George V. Taylor, "Revolutionary and Nonrevolutionary Content in the Cahiers of 1789: An Interim Report," French Historical Studies 7 (1972): 479-502.

19. One of the best overviews of the final decades of the Old Regime, stressing the interaction of geopolitics and domestic politics, remains C. B. A. Behrens, The Ançien Régime (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967). A more recent discussion along the same lines is Bailey Stone, "The Geopolitical Origins of the French Revolution Reconsidered," Proceedings of the 1988 Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, 1750-1850 , ed. David M. Vess (Athens: Department of History, University of Georgia, 1988), pp. 250-262.

20. William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 57.

21. Geoffrey Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870 (Suffolk, England: Fontana Paperbacks, 1982), pp. 50-52; van Creveld, Command in War , pp. 60-62; Peter Paret, "Napoleon and the Revolution in War," in Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Modern Age , ed. Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 127-128; and John R. Elting, Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon's Grand Armée (New York: Free Press, 1988), pp. 6-22.

22. Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York: Knopf, 1989), pp. 61-63. Schama opposes any explanation of the Old Regime's demise which stresses structural contradictions, preferring to highlight instead the policy choices of royal ministers. But this poses a false opposition between structural and policy-based accounts. As Schama himself points out, "the ministers of Louis XVI were painfully impaled on the horns of a dilemma" (p. 62). This is what "structural contradictions" translate into in human terms: constrained choices where no options are really likely to resolve the problems the policies are meant to address.

23. Doyle, Oxford History , pp. 51, 63-65.

24. Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution , p. 52.

25. See Michael L. Kennedy, The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution: The First Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); and Isser Woloch, Jacobin Legacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), chap. 1.

26. Woloch, Jacobin Legacy , p. 6.

27. Ibid., p. 7.

26. Woloch, Jacobin Legacy , p. 6.

27. Ibid., p. 7.

28. See especially Samuel F. Scott, The Response of the Royal Army to the French Revolution: The Role and Development of the Line Army, 1787-93 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); John A. Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791-94 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984); and Gunther Rothenberg, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon (London: B. T. Batsford, 1977), chap. 4; William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), chap. 6, esp. p. 192; and Elting, Swords Around a Throne , chap. 3.

29. McNeill, Pursuit of Power , p. 192; van Creveld, Command in War , chap. 3; and Elting, Swords Around a Throne , chap. 3.

30. Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe , chaps. 4-5; Paret, "Napoleon and Revolution in War," p. 127 and passim.

31. Lynn, Bayonets of the Republic , p. 64.

32. Ibid., pp. 64-65.

31. Lynn, Bayonets of the Republic , p. 64.

32. Ibid., pp. 64-65.

33. Carl von Clausewitz, On War , trans, and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 592. For additional parts of von Clausewitz's analysis of the scale of war during the Revolution, see pp. 585-594 and 609-610.

34. Rothenberg, Art of Warfare , pp. 16-19.

35. Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class , p. 227.

36. Ibid., p. 233.

35. Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class , p. 227.

36. Ibid., p. 233.

37. Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution , pp. 126-127.

38. Van Creveld, Command in War , chap. 3, esp. pp. 96-102; Paret, "Napoleon and Revolution in War," pp. 127-130, 136-138; and Elting, Swords Around a Throne , chaps. 4, 5, and 20.

39. Rothenberg, Art of Warfare , p. 126, and chap. 5. This paragraph also draws on the text and references of Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions , pp. 196-198.

40. Rothenberg, Art of Warfare , p. 132.

41. John Lynn, "A Conflict of Principles: The Army of the Revolution and the Army of the Empire." Proceedings of the 1988 Consortium on Revolutionary Europe, 1750—1850 , ed. David M. Vess (Athens: Department of History, University of Georgia, 1988), pp. 507-519.

42. Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 40-42, 73-74.

43. Ibid., chap. 2; and Elting, Swords Around a Throne , chaps. 27-28.

42. Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 40-42, 73-74.

43. Ibid., chap. 2; and Elting, Swords Around a Throne , chaps. 27-28.

44. Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe , chap. 9; Paret, "Napoleon and Revolution in War," pp. 129-133; Elting, Swords Around a Throne , chap. 26; and Gunther Rothenberg, "The Origins, Causes, and Extension of the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon," The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 28, 4 (1988): 771-793.

45. For discussion of the ways French military innovations compelled competitor nations to implement similar transformations, see Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe , chaps. 5, 10-14; and Paret, "Napoleon and Revolution in War." Thus, revolutionary France not only loosed "democracy" on the modern world, it also launched new modes of warfare that were also imitated and reworked by other nations.

46. Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

47. For further exploration of the Iranian Revolution in comparative perspective, see Theda Skocpol's "Rentier State and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian Revolution," Theory and Society 11 (1982): 265-284; and "Social Revolutions and Mass Military Mobilization," World Politics 40 (1988): 147-168.

1. John Dunn, Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 1-2.

2. Lord Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution (London, 1910), p. 2. The lectures were originally given by him in 1895.

3. I owe this translation of the term dérapage , a key concept in the work of François Furet, to George C. Comninel, Rethinking the French Revolution: Marxism and the Revisionist Challenge (London, 1987), p. 21.

4. J. Holland Rose, A Century of Continental History, 1780-1880 (London, 1895), p. 1.

5. Richard Cobden, 1793 and 1853 in Three Letters (London, 1853), pp. 51-52.

6. H. Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit von 1795 bis 1800 (Duesseldorf, 1870).

7. François Furet and Denis Richet, La Révolution française (Paris, 1965). The British historian Alfred Cobban had launched the first attack in 1955, but Anglo-Saxon skepticism was only discovered in France ex post facto.

8. M. Gauchet, "Les lettres sur l'Histoire de France de Augustin Thierry," in Les Lieux de Mémoire , Vol. II ^* , La Nation , ed. Pierre Nora, p. 271.

9. Dr. Wilhelm Friedrich Volger, Handbuch der allgemeinen Weltgeschichte , II, ii: Neueste Geschichte (Hanover, 1839), p. 240.

10. I cite the translation, presumably by the editor, in Walter Simon, ed., French Liberalism 1789-1848 (New York, 1972), pp. 139-143.

11. Jacques Solé, La révolution en questions (Paris, 1988), p. 337.

12. Alexis de Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime , tr. M. W. Patterson (Oxford, 1947), p. 217.

13. Gauchet, "Les lettres," p. 273.

14. The greater radicalism of the French Revolution, compared to the English, he ascribed to the fact that the Normans, faced with Anglo-Saxon resistance on the basis of their own institutions, enjoyed a less absolute domination than the Frankish conquerors. Thus one might say that British compromise was to prevail because structured resistance to "the Norman Yoke" had never ceased.

15. Simon, ed., French Liberalism , p. 108.

16. Ibid., pp. 140-141.

15. Simon, ed., French Liberalism , p. 108.

16. Ibid., pp. 140-141.

17. Cf. E. J. Hobsbawm, "Revolution in the Theory of Karl Marx," in Bernard Chavance, ed., Marx en perspective (Paris, 1985), pp. 557-570.

18. Guizot in Simon, ed., French Liberalism , pp. 110, 112-113.

19. Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Révolution Française (Paris, 1847), 1: 121.

20. "Pierre Chaunu, a conservative historian, a decade ago denounced the Terror as 'a French-French genocide' that anticipated the mass killings of the 20th century."

New York Times , 15 September 1988, p. A4: "For Lovers of Turmoil, Here Comes 1789 Again."

21. De Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime , trans. M. W. Patterson (Oxford, 1947), p. 176.

22. Goldwin Smith, "The Invitation to Celebrate the French Revolution," The Living Age 178 (1888): 602-612.

23. De Tocqueville, Recollections , ed. J. P. Mayer (New York, 1949), p. 2. The author's phrase is "la classe moyenne."

24. "Dass ein grosses Volk bei seinem Durchbruch zu selbständigen politischen Leben, zu Freiheit und Macht, notwendig die Krise der Revolution durchzumachen habe, ist durch das doppelte Beispiel von England und Frankreich . . . ungemein nahegelegt." Cited by R. KoseUeck, "Revolution," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Stuttgart, 1984), 5: 747.

25. John Clapham, Economic History of Modern Britain , vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1926).

26. F. A. Mignet, Histoire de la Révolution Française , vol. 1, 18th ed. (Paris, 1898), p. 2.

27. Colin Lucas, "Nobles, Bourgeois and the French Revolution," in French Society and the Revolution , ed. D. Johnson (Cambridge, 1976), p. 1. Lucas is among the rare specialists who sees clearly that the problem of "bourgeois revolution" does not go away when we have shown that there were no distinct and antagonistic classes of bourgeois and nobles in 1789. For "in that case we have to decide why, in 1788-9, groups which can be identified as non-noble combatted and defeated groups which can be identified as noble, thereby laying the foundations of the political system of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie; and why they attacked and destroyed privilege in 1789, thereby destroying the formal organization of eighteenth-century French society and thereby preparing a structure within which the socioeconomic developments of the nineteenth century might blossom'' (p. 90).

28. Simon, ed., French Liberalism , p. 142.

29. Where such a stratum consisted of foreigners or strangers, its relation to the indigenous social structure was much more complicated, as nineteenth-century Jews discovered in Central and Eastern Europe.

30. The implicit link between such a civil society and bourgeois society is clear, for linguistic reasons, in German, where both are "buergerliche Gesellschaft." Even here we must not read the meanings of the nineteenth century into the words of the eighteenth.

31. Rudolf Vierhaus, "Gegenstand nachtrauernder Erinnerung: Ueber das bürgerliche Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich," Süddeutsche Zeitung , 5 October 1988. This is a review of Jürgen Kocka, ed., Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert. Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich , 3 vols. (Munich, 1988), which contains the best discussion of these topics.

32. Solé, La Révolution , pp. 273, 275.

33. Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections , p. 2.

34. This seems to be the line taken by the antirevolutionary historian Cochin, whose views have been rediscovered and taken up by the head of the "revisionist" school, François Furet. The argument fitted in well with the fashion for analyzing changes in discourse as autonomous events in history, not requiring any further explanation. Cf. François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1981).

35. "Nobles, Bourgeois and the French Revolution," p. 123.

36. Lorenz Stein, Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreich: Ein Beitrag zur Zeitgeschichte , 2d ed. (Leipzig, 1848) pp. 126-131.

37. Victor Cousin, Cours de Philosophie: Introduction à l'Histoire de la Philosophie (Paris, 1828), Première Leçou, p. 12.

38. W. G. Runciman, "Unnecessary Revolution: The Case of France," European Journal of Sociology 23 (1982): 318.

39. Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime , p. 23.

1. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Régime and the French Revolution (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1955), p. 60.

2. Michel Antoine, Le Conseil du Roi sous le règne de Louis XV (Geneva: Droz, 1970); Douglas Clark Baxter, Servants of the Sword: Intendants of the Army, 1630-70 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976); William H. Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Julian Dent, Crisis in Finance: Crown, Financiers, and Society in Seventeenth-Century France (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1973); Daniel Dessert, Argent, pouvoir, et société au Grand Siècle

(Paris: Fayard, 1984); Robert R. Harding, Anatomy of a Power Elite: The Provincial Governors of Early Modern France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978); A. Lloyd Moote, The Revolt of the Judges: The Parlement of Paris and the Fronde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971); Sharon Kettering, Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Century France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

3. For the uneven geographical distribution of royal institutions of control, see Bernard Lepetit, "Fonction administrative et armature urbaine: Remarques sur la distribution des chefs-lieux de subdélégation en France à la fin de l'Ancien Régime," Institut d'Histoire Economique et Sociale de l'Université de Paris I, Recherches et Travaux , 11 (1982): 19-34. For the crucial place of corporate institutions in royal relations with localities, and their transformation during the Revolution, see Gail Bossenga, "City and State: An Urban Perspective on the Origins of the French Revolution," in Keith Michael Baker, ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture . 1: The Political Culture of the Old Regime (Oxford: Pergamon, 1988); and Bossenga, "La Révolution française et les corporations: Trois exemples lillois,'' Annales; Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 43 (1988): 405-426.

4. Bossenga, "La Révolution française," 405-426; Bossenga, "City and State," pp. 115-140.

5. Gunnar Artéus, Till Militärstatens Förhistoria. Krig, professionalisering och social förändering under Vasasönernas regering (Stockholm: Probus, 1986); Peter Burke, "CityStates," in John A. Hall, ed., States in History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986); Eric J. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783-1870 (London: Longman, 1983); Marjolein 't Hart, "Taxation and the Formation of the Dutch State, 17th Century," paper presented to the Vlaams-Nederlandse Sociologendagen, Amsterdam, 1986; Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); Leon Jespersen, "The Machtstaat in Seventeenth-Century Denmark," Scandinavian Journal of History 10 (1985): 271-304; Sven A. Nilsson, "Imperial Sweden: Nation-Building, War and Social Change,'' in Sven A. Nilsson, ed., The Age of New Sweden (Stockholm: Livrustkammaren, 1988); Ervin Pamlényi, ed., A History of Hungary (London: Collet's, 1975); Traian Stoianovich, "Model and Mirror of the Premodern Balkan City," Studia Balcanica . III: La Ville Balkanique XVe-XIXe siècle (1970): 83-110; Ernst Werner, Die Geburt einer Grossmacht—die Osmanen (1300-1481) (Vienna: Böhlhaus, 1985); Andrzej Wyczanski, "La frontière de l'unité européenne au XVIème siècle: Liens—cadres—contenu," in Actes du Colloque FrancoPolonais d'Histoire (Nice: Laboratoire d'Histoire Quantitative, Université de Nice, 1981).

6. Raymond Grew, "The Nineteenth-Century European State," in Charles Bright and Susan Harding, eds., Statemaking and Social Movements (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984); Arno Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime (New York: Pantheon, 1981).

7. M. S. Anderson, War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime 1619-1789 (London: Fontana, 1988); Gunnar Artéus, Krigsmakt och Samhälle i Frihetstidens Sverige (Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget, 1982); Richard Bean, "War and the Birth of the Nation State," Journal of Economic History 33 (1973): 203-221; Geoffrey Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870 (London: Fontana, 1982); Klaus-Richard Böhme, "Schwedische Finanzbürokratie und Kriegführung 1611 bis 1721," in Goran

Rystad, ed., Europe and Scandinvia: Aspects of the Process of Integration in the 17th Century (Lund: Esselte Studium, 1983); Otto Busch, Militarsystem und Sozialleben im alten Preussen 1713-1807: Die Anfänge der sozialen Militarisierung der preussisch-deutschen Gesellschaft (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1962); Sir George Clark, "The Social Foundations of States," in F. L. Carsten, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History . 5: The Ascendancy of France, 1648-88 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); James B. Collins, Fiscal Limits of Absolutism: Direction Taxation in Early Seventeenth-Century France (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1988); Brian M. Downing, "Constitutionalism, Warfare, and Political Change in Early Modern Europe," Theory and Society 17 (1988): 7-56; Michael Duffy, ed., The Military Revolution and the State, 1500-1800 (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1980; Exeter Studies in History, 1); Samuel E. Finer, "State- and Nation-Building in Europe: The Role of the Military," in Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Westerm Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Jean-Philippe Genet and Michel Le Mené, eds., Genèse de l'Etat moderne. Prélèvement et Redistribution (Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1987); Alain Guillerm, La pierre et le vent. Fortifications et marine en Occident (Paris: Arthuad, 1985); J. R. Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620 (New York: St. Martin's, 1985); Jan Lindegren, ''The Swedish 'Military State,' 1560-1720," Scandinavian Journal of History 10 (1985): 305-336; William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Josef V. Polisensky, War and Society in Europe, 1618-1648 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Simon Schama, "The Exigencies of War and the Politics of Taxation in the Netherlands 1795-1810," in J. M. Winter, ed., War and Economic Development: Essays in Memory of David Joslin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

8. J. E. D. Binney, British Public Finance and Administration 1774-92 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958); Norman Chester, The British Administrative System, 1780-1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); Emmeline W. Cohen, The Growth of the British Civil Service 1780-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965); Eric J. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783-1870 (London: Longman, 1983); William Kennedy, English Taxation 1640-1799 (New York: Augustus Kelley, 1964; first published in 1913); Peter Mathias and Patrick O'Brien, "Taxation in Britain and France, 1715-1810: A Comparison of the Social and Economic Incidence of Taxes Collected for the Central Governments," Journal of European Economic History 5 (1976): 601-650.

9. George C. Comninel, Rethinking the French Revolution: Marxism and the Revisionist Challenge (London: Verso, 1987); William Doyle, The Ancien Régime (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1986); Jean Egret, La préRévolution française (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962); Georges Frêche, Toulouse et la région Pyrénées au siècle des Lumières (vers 1670-1789) (Paris: Cujas, 1974); Bailey Stone, The Parlement of Paris, 1774-1789 (Chapel Hilt: University of North Carolina Press, 1981).

10. For surveys of popular collective action during the early Revolution, see Richard Cobb, The Police and the People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); Colin Lucas, "The Crowd and Politics between Ancien Régime and Revolution in France,"

Journal of Modern History 60 (1988): 421-457; John Markoff, "Contexts and Forms of Rural Revolt: France in 1789," Journal of Conflict Resolution 30 (1986): 253-289; Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).

11. John Markoff, "The Social Geography of Rural Revolt at the Beginning of the French Revolution," American Sociological Review 50 (1985): 761-781; Markoff, "Contexts and Forms of Rural Revolt," 253-289.

12. For the telling contrast between members of parlements, who came overwhelmingly from noble families and who generally lined up against the Revolution, and provincial magistrates, largely bourgeois and at least passive supporters of the Revolution, see Philip Dawson, Provincial Magistrates and Revolutionary Politics in France, 1789-1795 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), esp. chap. 8.

13. Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1984), p. 155; for detailed studies of provincial bourgeois in the Revolution, see Michel Vovelle, ed., Bourgeoisies de province et Révolution (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1987).

14. Lynn Hunt, Revolution and Urban Politics in Provincial France: Troyes and Reims, 1786-1790 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978).

15. Harriet G. Rosenberg, A Negotiated World: Three Centuries of Change in a French Alpine Community (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 72-89.

16. Ted Margadant, "Towns, Taxes, and State-Formation in the French Revolution," paper presented to the Irvine Seminar on Social History and Theory, April 1988; Ted Margadant, "Politics, Class, and Community in the French Revolution: An Urban Perspective," paper presented to Conference on Revolutions in Comparison, University of California, Los Angeles, 1988; Marie-Vic Ozouf-Marignier, ''De l'universalisme constituant aux intérêts locaux: Le débat sur la formation des départements en France (1789-1790), Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations 41 (1986): 1193-1214; Patrick Schultz, La décentralisation administrative dans le département du Nord (1790-1793) (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1982).

17. Clive H. Church, Revolution and Red Tape: The French Ministerial Bureaucracy 1770-1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), chap. 3. In response to the financial crisis, Minister Loménie de Brienne had already established a national treasury in 1788; the revolutionaries then consolidated the organization, expanded its scope, and nationalized the debt: J. F. Bosher, French Finances, 1770-1795: From Business to Bureaucracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), chaps. 11 to 15.

18. Jacques Aubert and Raphaël Petit, La police en France: Service public (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1981), p. 84; Jacques Aubert et al., L'Etat et sa police en France (1789-1914) (Geneva: Droz, 1979); Iain A. Cameron, "The Police of Eighteenth-Century France," European Studies Review 7 (1977): 47-75; Robert M. Schwartz, Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).

19. Owen Connelly, Napoleon's Satellite Kingdoms (New York: Free Pess, 1965).

20. Jean-Pierre Jessenne, Pouvoir au village et Révolution: Artois 1760-1848 (Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille, 1987).

21. Colin Lucas, The Structure of the Terror: The Example of Claude Javogues and the Loire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973).

22. "The Bull Who Bearded the Terrible Twelve," Times Literary Supplement , 26 October 1973, p. 1320.

23. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

24. Quick reviews of resistance to the Revolution and its conquests both inside and outside of France appear in François Lebrun and Roger Dupuy, eds., Les résistances à la Révolution (Paris: Imago, 1987). In Jean Nicolas, ed., Mouvements populaires et conscience sociale, XVIe-XIXe siècles (Paris: Maloine, 1985), see especially Alan Forrest, "Les soulèvements populaires contre le service militaire, 1793-1814"; and Colin Lucas, "Résistances populaires à la Révolution dans le sud-est," in Gwynne Lewis and Colin Lucas, eds., Beyond the Terror: Essays in French Regional and Social History , 1794-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)—see especially Colin Lucas, "Themes in Southern Violence after 9 Thermidor," and Gwynne Lewis, "Political Brigandage and Popular Disaffection in the South-East of France 1795-1804."

25. Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), p. 147.

26. Alan Forest, Society and Politics in Revolutionary Bordeaux (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), chap. 5; James N. Hood, "Protestant-Catholic Relations and the Roots of the First Popular Counterrevolutionary Movement in France," Journal of Modern History 43 (1971): 245-275; James N. Hood, "Revival and Mutation of Old Rivalries in Revolutionary France," Past and Present 82 (1979): 82-115; Gwynne Lewis, The Second Vendée: The Continuity of Counter-Revolution in the Department of the Gard, 1789-1815 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978); Martyn Lyons, Révolution et Terreur à Toulouse (Toulouse: Privat, 1980); William Scott, Terror and Repression in Revolutionary Marseilles (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1973); Michel Vovelle, "Massacreurs et massacrés. Aspects sociaux de la Révolution en Provence, après Thermidor," in Lebrun and Dupuy, eds., Les résistances à la Révolution .

27. Paul Bois, "Aperçu sur les causes des insurrections de l'Ouest à l'époque révolutionnaire," in J.-C. Martin, ed., Vendée-Chouannerie (Nantes: Reflets du Passé, 1981); T. J. A. Le Goff and D. M. G. Sutherland, "Religion and Rural Revolt in the French Revolution: An Overview," in János M. Bak and Gerhard Benecke, eds., Religion and Rural Revolt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984); Clément Martin, La Vendée et la France (Paris: Le Seuil, 1987).

28. Alphonse Aulard, The French Revolution (London: Unwin, 1910), 2:306-307.

29. Reynald Secher, Le génocide français. La VendéeVengé (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986).

30. Laurent Ladouce, "Was France the Fatherland of Genocide?" The World and I , January 1988, p. 686.

31. Ibid., p. 687.

30. Laurent Ladouce, "Was France the Fatherland of Genocide?" The World and I , January 1988, p. 686.

31. Ibid., p. 687.

32. Michel Vovelle, "L'Historiographie de la Révolution française à la veille du Bicentenaire," Annales Historiques de la Révolution française 272 (1988): 119.

33. The truncated published version appeared as La Chapelle-Basse-Mer, village vendéen. Révolution et révolution (Paris: Perrin, 1986).

34. Charles Tilly, "Civil Constitution and Counter-Revolution in Southern Anjou," French Historical Studies 1 (1959): 172-199; "Local Conflicts in the Vendée Before the Rebellion of 1793," French Historical Studies 2 (1961): 209-231; "Some Problems in the History of the Vendée," American Historical Review 67 (1961): 19-33; "Rivalités de bourgs et conflits de partis dans les Mauges," Revue du Bas-Poitou et des Provinces de

l'Ouest no. 4 (July-August 1962): 3-15. La Vendée. Révolution et révolution (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1970); Claude Petitfrère, Blancs et bleus d'Anjou (1789-1793 , 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1979). For reservations as to the generality of the rural-urban split in all the West's counterrevolutionary regions, see T. J. A. Le Goff and D. M. G. Sutherland, "The Revolution and the Rural Community in Eighteenth-Century Brittany," Past and Present 62 (1974): 96-119; T. J. A. Le Goff and D. M. G. Sutherland, "The Social Origins of Counter-Revolution in Western France," Past and Present 99 (1983): 65-87; Donald Sutherland, The Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770-1796 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982); and Roger Dupuy, De la Révolution à la Chouannerie. Paysans en Bretagne 1788-1794 (Paris: Flammarion, 1988).

35. Compare the descriptions of events in La Séguinière, Saint-Lambert-duLattay, and Saint-Luigné in Secher, Génocide , pp. 88-89, with accounts of the same events in Tilly, Vendée , pp. 254-255.

36. Secher, Chapelle-Basse-Mer , pp. 154-155. Actually the series begins with 115, 139, 102, and 127 births in 1789-1792 and ends with 74, 120, 105, and 77 births in 1797-1800, whose variability provides little evidence—logical or statistical—of any trend whatsoever. For cautions concerning any computations of revolutionary population losses in the Vendée, see François Lebrun, "Les conséquences démographiques de la Guerre de Vendée: L'exemple des Mauges," in Lebrun and Dupuy, eds., Les résistances à la Révolution .

37. Secher, Génocide , p. 265.

38. Yves Blayo, "Mouvement naturel de la population française de 1740 à 1829," Population 30 (Special Number, 1975): 15-64; David R. Weir, "Life Under Pressure: France and England, 1670-1870," Journal of Economic History 44 (1984): 27-47.

39. Etienne van de Walle, The Female Population of France: A Reconstruction of 82 Départements (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 125, 349, 364, 435, 453. The figures are female crude birth rates, which provide a good approximation of total crude birth rates and an excellent indication of trends and differences. According to these figures, the proper multiplier for Inférieure around 1803 was 34; by 1808 it was 37.

40. Secher, Génocide , p. 253.

41. Pierre Chaunu, "Avant-propos," in Secher, Génocide , pp. 23, 24.

42. René Sédillot, Le coût de la Révolution française (Paris: Perrin, 1987), p. 28.

43. Donald Greer, The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), p. 38.

44. Alphonse Aulard, ed., Recueil des actes du Comité de Salut Public (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1895) 8: 505.

1. Delamare, Traité de Police , vol. 1., chap. 12, "Des Confrairies" (Amsterdam, 1729).

Man is so obviously born for social life, that he makes of it his favored concern and his principal satisfaction. Hence his search for narrower associations in the natural order of things: not content with the first link which make of humankind one vast and single society, he has avidly sought other and more narrow unions, from which emerged in time families, Cities, and even greater States; and, in each one of those States, even more intimate societies, through particular professions and employments.

2. See my Class, Ideology, and the Rights of Nobles During the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).

3. Cited by Dominique Godineau, Citoyennes tricoteuses (Alinéa, 1988), p. 15.

4. On this score, see the illuminating introduction by Elizabeth Badinter in Paroles d'hommes (1790-1793) (Paris: P.O.L., 1989), p. 34.

5. Thus, in the royalist newspaper Journal de la ville et de la cour , 16 May 1792: "Puisqu'il est impossible de trouver des hommes capables d'occuper longtemps la place de ministre, pourquoi ne pas recourir à Mmes Condorcet et Théroigne? Elles ont assez de talent pour être femmes publiques."

6. Butterfield, Lyman Henry, ed., The Adams Family Correspondence , letter to R. H. Lee (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 4:172.

7. Dominique Godineau, Citoyennes Tricoteuses , p. 213.

8. Sentiments sur quelques ouvrages de peinture, sculpture et gravure, écrits à un particulier en province (Paris, 1754), pp. 91-92.

9. See "The Rose-Girl of Salency: Representations of Virtue in Prerevolutionary France," in Eighteenth-Century Studies (Spring 1989): 395-412.

10. José Ortega y Gasset, "Mirabeau el Politico" (1927) in Obras Completas (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1987), 3: 608.

11. Rumors of Chaumette's homosexual past were widely known.

12. See Anthoine Léonard Thomas, Diderot, Madame d'Epinay, Qu'est-ce qu'une femme? with a preface by Elizabeth Badinter (Paris: P.O.L., 1989).

13. See Lynn Hunt's review of the Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich 1680-1720 in Journal of Modern History 60, 2 (June 1980): 387.

14. See Lucien Jeaume, Le Discours Jacobin et la démocratie (Paris: Fayard, 1988), and my review of this important book in Commentaire (Fall 1989).

15. Louis Sébastien Mercier, Le Nouveau Paris , ed. Fuchs, Pougens, et Crémer (Paris, 1798), 2: 100-101.

. . . is precisely an anti-federalist work, in that it strives to bring back all the parts of a state to a unicity of government, to that very unicity which Brissot wanted, as we all did, we who signed a proclamation to the departments on behalf of the exterior safety of France and of her internal union.

16. "I dared to conceive," wrote Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau (a noble-born Jacobin) of a school designed to train revolutionary male elites, "of an inspiration more vast than that of mere instruction. Having considered the extent to which the human species has been corrupted by the vice of our former social system, I became convinced of the need to operate a complete regeneration and, if I dare to speak in this manner, of the need to create a new people."

17. As Romme wrote, "time opens up a new book in the history of man; and in its new and majestic march, as simple as equality, time needs to engrave anew the annals of regenerated France. The former era was a time of cruelty and mendacity, of perfidy and slavery. It ended with the monarchy, source of all our misery."

18. Cited in P. Barret and Jean Noêl Gurgand, Ils Voyagaient la France: Vie et traditions des compagnons du tour de France au 19e siècle (1980), p. 93.

19. Cited in Elizabeth Badinter, Paroles d'hommes (1790-1793) (Paris: P.O.L., 1989), P. 33.

20. François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution , trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 74.

21. Bonnie Smith's Ladies of the Leisure Class (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981) gives an unrivaled description of that process, but her interpretation of women's reaction to this change seems to us highly problematic.

22. This comparison is developed in Patrice Higonnet's Sister Republics: The Origins of French and American Republicanism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).

Funds for researching and writing the essay on which this chapter is based were generously provided by the Faculty Development Committee of Trinity University. I would like to thank John Martin, Judi Lipsett, and Char Miller for their valuable suggestions.

1. David Feuerwerker, L'Emancipation des juifs en France de l'Ancien Régime à la fin du Second Empire (Paris, 1976), pp. 429-441. The account from Bischheim-au-Saum also comes from this source.

2. Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).

3. Ibid., p. 7.

2. Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968).

3. Ibid., p. 7.

4. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1973 [1951]), p. 7. Hertzberg comments on Arendt in The French Enlightenment , pp. 6-7.

5. See Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York, 1963).

6. J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York, 1970 [1952]), p. 250.

7. For Arendt see Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, For the Love of the World: A Biography of Hannah Arendt (New Haven, 1982). Given Talmon's commitment to Zionism and his interest in Jewish history, it is curious that he was silent about Jewish Emancipation. This omission has caused some confusion among his colleagues. On the one hand, Yehoshua Arieli insists that Talmon "perceived the 'Jewish problem' of modern Europe and the modern world as the touchstone, the main indicator and precipitate, of the major trends and problems of modern times, indicating the degree of virulence of the collective neuroses as well as accelerating them." But British political theorist John Dunn is probably closer to the truth when he claims that Talmon's most basic problem was not the Jewish question but rather: "Why exactly is the political character of Communist regimes such an unremitting disaster?" See the articles by Arieli and Dunn in Totalitarian Democrary and After: International Colloquium in Memory o f Jacob L. Talmon (Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 25, 42. For Talmon's interest in Jewish history and politics see his The Unique and the Universal (New York, 1965), and Israel Among the Nations (New York, 1970).

8. Selected Essays of Ahad Ha'Am , trans. Leon Simon (New York, 1970 [1912]), pp. 177, 184. For Hertzberg on Ahad Ha'am see The Zionist Idea , ed. Arthur Hertz-

berg (New York, 1981 [1959]), pp. 248-277; and Arthur Hertzberg, Being Jewish in America: The Modern Experience (New York, 1979), p. xiii.

9. Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment , p. 363.

10. On the tendency to reduce the French Revolution to the Terror alone, see Ferenc Fehér, The Frozen Revolution: An Essay on Jacobinism (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 1-30.

11. Eugen Weber, ''Reflections on the Jews in France," in Frances Malino and Bernard Wasserstein eds., The Jews in Modern France (Hanover and London, 1985), p. 17.

12. Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860. Recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des chambres françaises. Première série (1787 à 1799) , 88 vols. to date (Paris, 1867-) (hereafter cited as AP), 11: 710.

13. On Paris see S. Lacroix, "Ce qu'on pensait des juifs à Paris en 1790," Revolution française 30 (1898): 91-112.

14. Salo W. Baron, "Ghetto and Emancipation: Shall We Revise the Traditional View?" The Menorah Journal 14 (June 1928): 517; Salo W. Baron, "Newer Approaches to Jewish Emancipation," Diogenes 29 (Spring 1960): 56-81. For a more general survey see also Feuerwerker, L'émancipation des juifs , pp. 3-48.

15. AP , 9: 201.

16. Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment , p. 339.

17. AP , 10: 782.

18. AP , 10: 757.

19. AP , 11: 364.

20. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, What Is the Third Estate? , trans. M. Blondel (London, 1963), pp. 121-122.

21. AP , 10: 754.

22. Patriote français , 24 December 1789, p. 2.

23. Quoted in Keith Michael Baker, "Representation," in Baker, ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture . 1: The Political Culture of the Old Regime (Oxford, 1987), p. 488.

24. AP , 31: 372.

1. Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System , III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730-1840s . (San Diego: Academic Press, 1989).

1. All the references in this article refer to this edition: Antoine de Saint-Just, De la nature . . ., in Frammenti sulli Istituzioni repubblicane seguito da testi inediti (Torino: Einaudi, 1952).

2. J.-P. Gross, "Essai de bibliographie critique," in Actes du Colloque Saint-Just (Paris: PUF, 1968), pp. 343-463.

3. De la nature . . ., p. 135.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

3. De la nature . . ., p. 135.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

3. De la nature . . ., p. 135.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. The same passive meaning is found on p. 142, where Saint-Just writes: "The natural pact excludes any particular force that is independent of the sovereign." This should read, "with regard to the sovereign."

7. De la nature . . ., p. 156.

8. Ibid., p. 157.

9. Ibid., p. 175.

10. Ibid., p. 143.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 148.

7. De la nature . . ., p. 156.

8. Ibid., p. 157.

9. Ibid., p. 175.

10. Ibid., p. 143.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 148.

7. De la nature . . ., p. 156.

8. Ibid., p. 157.

9. Ibid., p. 175.

10. Ibid., p. 143.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 148.

7. De la nature . . ., p. 156.

8. Ibid., p. 157.

9. Ibid., p. 175.

10. Ibid., p. 143.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 148.

7. De la nature . . ., p. 156.

8. Ibid., p. 157.

9. Ibid., p. 175.

10. Ibid., p. 143.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 148.

7. De la nature . . ., p. 156.

8. Ibid., p. 157.

9. Ibid., p. 175.

10. Ibid., p. 143.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 148.

13. George Gurvitch, L'Idée du droit social (Paris: PUF, 1932), p. 15.

14. De la nature . . ., p. 158.

15. Ibid., p. 152.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., p. 146.

14. De la nature . . ., p. 158.

15. Ibid., p. 152.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., p. 146.

14. De la nature . . ., p. 158.

15. Ibid., p. 152.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., p. 146.

14. De la nature . . ., p. 158.

15. Ibid., p. 152.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid., p. 146.

18. Jean Richer, ''Charles Nodier de la Révolution française," in Philosophies de la Révolution (Paris: Vrin, 1984).

19. M.J. Lasky, Utopia and Revolution (Chicago, 1976), pp. 239-259.

20. De la nature . . ., p. 161.

21. Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints (New York, 1976).

22. De la nature . . ., p. 155.

23. Frammenti , p. 49.

24. Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone , 1793.

25. Miguel Abensour, "La théorie des institutions et les relations du législateur et du peuple selon Saint-Just," in Actes du Colloque Saint-Just (Paris: PUF, 1968), pp. 239-290.

26. Frammenti , p. 47.

27. Jules Michelet, Histoire de la Révolution française , vol. 2 (Paris: La Pleiade, 1952), P. 79.

28. Ibid., p. 73.

27. Jules Michelet, Histoire de la Révolution française , vol. 2 (Paris: La Pleiade, 1952), P. 79.

28. Ibid., p. 73.

29. Saint-Just, Discours et Rapports (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1957), pp. 63, 65, 67.

30. Saint-Just, Oeuvres (Paris: Vellay, 1908), 1:398.

31. Michael Walzer, Regicide and Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1974.

32. Discours , pp. 186-187.

33. Frammenti , p. 52.

34. Hölderlin, Hymns, Elegies and Other Poems (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), Introduction, p. 8.

35. Discours , p. 196.

36. Ibid., p. 183.

35. Discours , p. 196.

36. Ibid., p. 183.

37. Claude Lefort, L'invention démocratique (Paris: Fayard, 1981).

38. Paul Celan, Le méridien (Mercure de France, 1971).

1. Hannah Arendt, "On Violence," in Crisis of the Republic (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), p. 106.

2. As a morality of the means it would bracket the question of ends, or at least of ultimate ends, whether stemming from universal values, or the more particular values of the analyst. And yet, almost inevitably, the latter return, unannounced and unquestioned. For the question of the actor's "rationality" tends to be subject to the analyst's social prejudices; whereas that of the "rationality" of the actor's motives tends to be prey to the author's moral prejudices.

3. "Michelet's use of le peuple corresponds, of course, far more closely to the facts . . ." George Rudé, The Crowd and the French Revolution (London: Oxford, 1967), p. 232.

4. From Reflections on the Revolution in France , cited in ibid., p. 2.

5. Indeed Professor Rudé is able, by virtue of his archival searches, to pinpoint for each of the journées révolutionnaires , which categories of sans-culottes were present, and from which sectors of Paris they came, thus shedding considerable light on the individual character of each of the events.

6. Rudé, The Crowd and the French Revolution , pp. 192-196.

7. Ibid., pp. 219-221.

8. Ibid., p. 199.

9. Ibid., p. 225.

6. Rudé, The Crowd and the French Revolution , pp. 192-196.

7. Ibid., pp. 219-221.

8. Ibid., p. 199.

9. Ibid., p. 225.

6. Rudé, The Crowd and the French Revolution , pp. 192-196.

7. Ibid., pp. 219-221.

8. Ibid., p. 199.

9. Ibid., p. 225.

6. Rudé, The Crowd and the French Revolution , pp. 192-196.

7. Ibid., pp. 219-221.

8. Ibid., p. 199.

9. Ibid., p. 225.

10. Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978), pp. 145-149.

11. In truth, the book is not entirely consistent in this regard. The "rationality" of a "defensive reaction" cannot but be "bounded" by its failure to adapt to history and its ''innovations." In a later book, Ideology and Popular Protest (New York: Pantheon, 1980), even the rationality of "proactive struggles" (those of unions, for example) will be considered limited, and limiting. Rationality here—and it is truly a revolutionary ''rationality"—would consist not in adapting to history but in mastering it. However, notes George Rudé, echoing Lenin if not Lukács, those subject to history (i.e., the popular classes) are of themselves in no position to become subjects of history.

12. Richard Cobb's work in particular is invaluable for charting the social and geographical topography of these rumors and fears.

13. The term septembriseur was not the least of the epithets used to discredit one's opponents in the factional infighting that was to consume the revolutionary camp. An excellent essay on the "difficulties" in using the archival evidence to study the journées révolutionnaires is the first piece in Richard Cobb's The Police and the People. French Popular Protest 1789-1820 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 3-48.

14. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution , p. 111.

15. Ibid., p. 110. On these events one should consult the classic work of Pierre Caron, Les Massacres de septembre (Paris: Maison du Livre Français, 1935); and the more recent piece by Frédéric Bluche, Septembre 1792. Logiques d'un massacre (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1986).

14. Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution , p. 111.

15. Ibid., p. 110. On these events one should consult the classic work of Pierre Caron, Les Massacres de septembre (Paris: Maison du Livre Français, 1935); and the more recent piece by Frédéric Bluche, Septembre 1792. Logiques d'un massacre (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1986).

16. There is some evidence, however, that the rumor only developed after the massacres had begun. See Bluche, September 1792 , pp. 29-30.

17. " Surprisingly , only one quarter of the prisoners were priests, nobles, or 'politicals' . . ." Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution , p. 150 (my emphasis).

18. Ibid., p. 112.

17. " Surprisingly , only one quarter of the prisoners were priests, nobles, or 'politicals' . . ." Rudé, The Crowd in the French Revolution , p. 150 (my emphasis).

18. Ibid., p. 112.

19. Though in truth, he does speak much later in the book of the massacres as a consequence of "mass hysteria." Ibid., p. 225.

20. Others have sought to place the "rationality" of the septembriseurs ' actions within the internal struggles of the revolutionary camp, their real purpose being, it is claimed, to terrorize the more moderate elements. Now although there is some evidence that certain elements were willing to use the massacres to advance their interests in the factional struggles, such maneuvers appear as a sideshow to the main event. Nor did any moderate die in the violence. Nor, generally speaking, were the moderates (i.e., the Girondins), as judged by their press, any more or less critical of the events, as they were taking place, than their more radical counterparts. It was only later, after public opinion had turned against the massacres, that the Girondins

sought to distance themselves from the events, while portraying their more radical enemies as morally compromised. See Bluche, Septembre 1792 , pp. 73-76, 201-205.

21. Ibid., pp. 22-23.

20. Others have sought to place the "rationality" of the septembriseurs ' actions within the internal struggles of the revolutionary camp, their real purpose being, it is claimed, to terrorize the more moderate elements. Now although there is some evidence that certain elements were willing to use the massacres to advance their interests in the factional struggles, such maneuvers appear as a sideshow to the main event. Nor did any moderate die in the violence. Nor, generally speaking, were the moderates (i.e., the Girondins), as judged by their press, any more or less critical of the events, as they were taking place, than their more radical counterparts. It was only later, after public opinion had turned against the massacres, that the Girondins

sought to distance themselves from the events, while portraying their more radical enemies as morally compromised. See Bluche, Septembre 1792 , pp. 73-76, 201-205.

21. Ibid., pp. 22-23.

22. One might wish to date the beginnings of the construction of this apparatus with the formation of the Committees of Public Safety and General Security in February of 1793, though one could also date these same beginnings in August of 1792—that is, just prior to the September Massacres—when the first hesitant steps were taken in the establishment of the guillotine permanente , the revolutionary tribunals, and the committees of surveillance.

23. What follows is indebted to Bernard Conein, "Le tribunal et la terreur du 14 juillet 1789 aux 'massacres de septembre.'" Les révoltes logiques , no. 11 (Winter 1979-1980): 2-24.

24. Though the attitude of the municipal authorities, in particular was rather ambiguous and has become the object of some controversy. See Bluche, Septembre 1792 , pp. 151-183.

25. Conein, "Le tribunal et la terreur," pp. 18-19.

26. Ibid., pp. 10-11.

25. Conein, "Le tribunal et la terreur," pp. 18-19.

26. Ibid., pp. 10-11.

27. Already in the month prior to the September Massacres, the Commune of Paris was petitioning the National Assembly for the authority to establish a special tribunal that would be responsible for judging and punishing political crimes. This tribunal was to be composed of citizen-judges elected by the sectional assemblies, the idea being to place all public executions under the authority of the Commune, while simultaneously associating the sans-culottes, or at least their politicized elements, with the new reorganization of the judicial apparatus. And in fact, on August 17, the National Assembly did agree to the formation of a new tribunal, though one composed of judges elected not by the sectional assemblies, but by special electoral bodies and on the basis of professional criteria. Ibid., pp. 16-17.

28. Indeed those radicals who sought to justify, or at least excuse, the events of September argued that because the people had organized themselves into tribunals (though the evidence suggests that the "people" did not organize the tribunals, but simply recognized tribunals organized "from without") these events were not to be represented as "massacres,'' but as an act of justice, of people's justice, the just punishment of the Revolution's opponents.

29. Conein, "Le tribunal et la terreur," p. 23.

30. In truth, there was one last outbreak of popular violence—after the fall of the Jacobins. On the first of Prairial (May 20, 1795), during the last desperate "revolt" of the sans-culottes, the deputy Fréraud was killed and his head paraded on a pike.

31. These claims apply only to Paris. In the provinces, the "echoes" (and they were rather faint) of the September Massacres still involved the mutilation and display of corpses. See Bluche, September 1792, pp. 103-121.

32. Ibid., pp. 75-76.

31. These claims apply only to Paris. In the provinces, the "echoes" (and they were rather faint) of the September Massacres still involved the mutilation and display of corpses. See Bluche, September 1792, pp. 103-121.

32. Ibid., pp. 75-76.

33. Here a certain caution has to be added to Natalie Zemon Davis's claim that the "rites of violence," particularly in their more carnivalesque forms, serve to produce the "conditions for guilt-free massacre." Although they may help the killers to "forget that their victims are human beings,'' in the French Revolution at least, the real massacres occurred outside the framework of such rites. "The Rites of Violence,"

Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), p. 181.

34. Although the observation of movements of the face and body after decapitation led to a lively debate as to whether the guillotine actually delivered its promise of instant death. See "Notice historique et philosophique sur la vie, les travaux et les doctrines de Cabanis," which introduces P.-J.-G. Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1980), pp. XXI-XXII.

35. Cobb, The Police and the People , pp. 87-88. Cannibalistic imagery in popular revolts has a longer history. See for example Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Les paysans de Languedoc (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1966), pp. 398-399; and Carnival in Romans (New York: George Braziller, 1979), PP. 179-180.

36. See Brian Singer, Society, Theory and the French Revolution (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), pp. 46-47; Jean Starobinski, 1789: Les emblêmes de la raison (Paris: Flammarion, 1979), pp. 31-37; and Mona Ozouf, La fête révolutionnaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), p. 119.

37. Singer, Society, Theory and the French Revolution , pp. 47 and 193; Michel Foucault, "The Eye of Power," reprinted in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writing 1972-77 (New York: Pantheon, 1980), p. 153.

38. Since writing this essay, I have been asked to say something about violence from the "right." In this regard, an exceptional article by Colin Lucas on the "White Terror" ("Themes in Southern Violence After 9 Thermidor,'' in Gwynne Lewis and Colin Lucas, eds., Beyond the Terror: Essays in French Regional and Social History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983]) can provide a few comparisons. The popular culture of the southeast was not that of Paris, and the violence in the former was rooted in (the decomposition of?) youth organizations and charivaris which had long disappeared in Paris. Moreover the counterrevolutionary communal violence had an intensely local character (it being, apparently, a tacit rule that the victims and their tormentors had to know each other) that did not obtain in Parisian conditions. However, the violence was public: if the crowds did not participate in the killings, as in Paris, they were always there as witnesses; and bodies were mutilated, though curiously not by the killers but by the crowds after the event (though mutilation did not have the obligatory character it did in Paris—indeed, the victims were not always killed, but subjected to traditional forms of humiliation or restitution). What about the relation to the law? Obviously, such violence took place outside the framework of the law and its forms. Colin Lucas does not tell us if the representatives of the law remonstrated before the crowds, only to be explicitly rejected. But in another sense, he does suggest that it was the (former) representatives of the law, those who had upheld it the most rigorously, who were the "privileged" targets of the violence. For those murdered during the White Terror were not simply Jacobins, but those Jacobins who had applied the revolutionary laws the most inflexibly, who had thus, in the name of a larger collective entity and more general norms, ignored the community and its more traditional, tractable ways of settling conflicts and easing tensions. These were truly the ''reactive struggles" mentioned earlier, pitting the community against the external, encroaching, and innovative powers of the nation, with its legal universalism, and the state, with its military, fiscal, and legal centralization.

39. One usually understands this egalitarianism as "equality before the law"; but

it also encompasses an "equality behind the law," whereby everyone participates, in principle equally, in the formulation and carrying out of the law. It is the very meaning of popular sovereignty.

40. Admittedly, during the religious strife of the sixteenth century, the crowds often claimed for themselves the role of the magistrate (and cleric). But beyond the fact that the religious and political authorities often participated in the crowd's actions, and were almost always willing to justify them, the crowds were, by acting in the name of the sacred, presumably approaching the transcendence of the law. Perhaps in a hierarchical society, the explicit rejection of the law and its forms only occurs when it is the hierarchy itself that is being attacked. See Davis, "The Rites of Violence," pp. 164-169.

41. Incomprehension, if not always disgust, almost always suggests the copresence of two incommensurable cultures. Too often historians have searched for the existence of a separate popular culture in what turns out to be the fragments of an earlier elite culture, reworked for consumption by the lower strata. Such seems to have been the fate of the research into the bibliothèque bleue —a fate that was not entirely unpredictable, given that, by definition, a bibliothèque of whatever color will be tied, however tenuously, to the world and culture of the literate. See Robert Mandrou, De la Culture populaire aux XVII et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Stock, 1964); and Geneviève Bollème, La Bibliothèque bleue (Paris: Julliard, 1971).

42. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968), pp. 9-11.

43. Ibid., p. 197. See also pp. 192-194 and 207.

44. Ibid., p. 29.

42. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968), pp. 9-11.

43. Ibid., p. 197. See also pp. 192-194 and 207.

44. Ibid., p. 29.

42. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968), pp. 9-11.

43. Ibid., p. 197. See also pp. 192-194 and 207.

44. Ibid., p. 29.

45. In a sense, the Revolution will mark the displacement of the social body by society. For once the former is no longer tied to the image of the individual body of the monarch, collective existence can no longer be represented quite so easily in corporeal (if not necessarily, organic) terms.

46. For purposes of clarity I am exaggerating here: the absolutist regime sought a certain, partial consolidation of its territory, and of the law enacted therein.

47. The expression is taken from Natalie Davis, "The Reasons of Misrule," in Society and Culture in Early Modern France , p. 120.

48. At least not without being internalized, and thus losing its character as "law." Singer, Society, Theory and the French Revolution , pp. 110-123.

49. In truth, one should add that this search is complicated by the existence of another, parallel search. For the society, born of the continuous reversibility of is and ought, is held to exist not just as an object to be investigated in its deep structures, but as a subject to be constantly interrogated as regards the surface movements of will formation, public opinion, and fashion.

50. Singer, Society, Theory and the French Revolution , pp. 86-87.

51. And what about antistate violence? Terrorism is spectacle or it is nothing, without, however, being popular. Generalizations are dangerous, but an extraordinary example of truly popular violence has recently been provided by the overthrow of the Duvalier regime in Haiti. Here the populace took to the streets in a festival atmosphere to search out ex-members of the paralegal police force of the ancien régime, the tonton macoutes. Macoutes who were found were executed, and, as in the French

Revolution, their dismembered bodies were borne in triumph by the crowds. Moreover, the events were filmed, presumably by participants, and video cassettes were distributed underground throughout Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. However, unlike the French Revolution, the crowd violence was not limited to a few "symbolic" victims. But then a "revolution" had not really occurred; and once, under the pressure of "liberal" allies, the killings stopped, momentum was lost and forces of the old regime were able to reassert themselves. I owe this information to a personal communication by Nina Schiller.

52. Paul Virilio/Sylvere Lotringer, Pure War [New York: Semiotext(e), 1983], pp. 88-89.

1. See Augustin de Barruel, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du jacobinisme , on the influence attributed to philosophers, freemasons, and to the illuminati, on the revolution of France. Facsimile edition, trans. J. Walker (New York: Delmat, Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1974).

2. Pierre de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse de la Révolution Française (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1919).

3. The classic version of the republican story has been recounted by Jules Michelet, Histoire de la Révolution Française , (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1978), 1: 308. Hamel, the paradigmatic Robespierrist of historiography, is much less generous to the antagonists of his idol.

4. See Jean Jaurès, Histoire socialiste de la Révolution Française , ed. Albert Soboul (Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1969); vol. 1, La Constituante , particularly the chapters on the confiscation of the land of the church and the Civil Constitution.

5. Good examples are John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1969); and Timothy Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Cultures in Eighteenth-Century France (The Ecclesiastical Oath of 1791) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Jaurès, McManners, and Tackett are included here in the same group only by virtue of their similarly atomistic readings of the church policies of the Revolution which, according to all three of them, contained some sound ideas as well as enormous blunders or injustices. Neither of these chronicles represents a holistic narrative of the conflict of the church and the Revolution.

6. Edgar Quinet, Le christianisme et la Révolution Française (Paris: Fayard, 1984).

7. An interesting characterization of Le cercle social can be found in Hans Maier, Revolution und Kirche—Studien zur Frühgeschichte der christlichen Demokratie (1789-1901) (Freiburg in Breisgau: Verlag Rombach, 1979), pp. 130-137.

8. Alphonse Aulard, Le culte de la Raison et le culte de L'Être Suprème (1793-1794), Essai Historique (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1904), p. vi. In fact, Quinet made the explicit statement ( Le christianisme , p. 173) that he was not a Protestant nor did he believe that France would or should become Protestant. However, one representative contemporary commentator, Novalis, indeed experimented with the equation of the radical climax of the Revolution with Protestantism: "Soll die Revolution die französische bleiben, wie die Reformation die lutherische war? Soll der Protestantismus abermals widernatürlicherweise als revolutionäre Regierung fixiert werden? . . . Historisch merkwürdig bleibt der Versuch jener grossen eisernen Maske, die unter dem Namen Robespierre in der

Religion den Mittelpunkt und die Kraft der Republik suchte" (emphasis added). "Die Christenheit oder Europa," in Novalis, Werke , ed. Ernesto Grassi (Munich: Rowohlts Klassiker, 1961), p. 47.

9. Quinet, Le christianisme , pp. 66-67, 71, 86.

10. Ibid., p. 102.

11. Ibid., pp. 103-106.

12. Ibid., pp. 230-231.

9. Quinet, Le christianisme , pp. 66-67, 71, 86.

10. Ibid., p. 102.

11. Ibid., pp. 103-106.

12. Ibid., pp. 230-231.

9. Quinet, Le christianisme , pp. 66-67, 71, 86.

10. Ibid., p. 102.

11. Ibid., pp. 103-106.

12. Ibid., pp. 230-231.

9. Quinet, Le christianisme , pp. 66-67, 71, 86.

10. Ibid., p. 102.

11. Ibid., pp. 103-106.

12. Ibid., pp. 230-231.

13. Maier, Revolution und Kirche , p. 124.

14. The major documents of this controversy are Aulard, Le culte de la Raison et le culte de L'Étre Suprème ; Alphonse Aulard, Christianity and the French Revolution , trans. Lady Frazer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1927); and the famous essay by Albert Mathiez on the Cult of the Supreme Being in The Fall of Robespierre and Other Essays (New York: Knopf, 1927). See also Albert Mathiez, "L'Église et la Révolution Française," Revue des Cours et Conferences 33, no. 1 (Paris, 1931-1932); and his L'origine des cultes révolutionnaires (Paris, 1904). A most recent work of questionable value, Pierre Pierrard, L'Église et la Révolution (Paris: Nouvelle Cité, 1988) takes sides against Mathiez and the later Aulard and, with an unsubstantiated reference to Solé's opinion, denies that the process of dechristianization had indeed the backing of wider strata of the populace; P. 97.

15. The most important modern research on rituals and ceremonies in the Revolution can be found in Mona Ozouf, La fête révolutionnaire, 1789-1799 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976); and Jean Starobinski, 1789: Les emblêmes de la raison (Paris: Flammarion, 1973). The paradigmatic work of historical sociology on the issue of the conflict of Revolution and Church is Charles Tilly, The Vendée (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964). After his enormous research, the multidimensionality of the rebellion of Vendée can no longer be denied. But I still remain unconvinced by the main thesis that questions the centrality of the religious issue in the movement and reduces its role to that of an independent variable. The thesis could only be maintained if the analyst secured a "metaposition" for himself from which he could dismiss the explicitly stated central intent of the actors as "ideology" or self-delusion. But such a position is hermeneutically impossible.

16. A good example of the more recently prevailing lack of interest in the merit of this issue can be found in François Furet and Mona Ozouf, Dictionnaire critique de la Révolution Française (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), chap. "Dechristianisation."

17. Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Cultures , pp. 7-8.

18. The complexity of the situation of the church on the eve of the Revolution is lucidly presented by Louis S. Greenbaum's unpretentious and important book: Talleyrand, Statesman-Priest: The Agent-General of the Clergy and the Church of France at the End of the Old Regime (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1970).

19. The argument of the royal power, used as a threat rather than a blueprint for action, has been described by Greenbaum, Talleyrand , pp. 83, 88. The argument of the revolutionaries was summed up succinctly by Maier, Revolution und Kirche , p. 106.

20. The problem of appel comme d'abus is a widely discussed issue. A good description of the meaning and function of this legal term can be found in Robert Genestal, Les origines de l'appel comme d'abus (Paris, 1951).

21. For the key category of the necessary holiness (and duality) of the royal person,

see E. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). Quinet, Le christianisme , pp. 214-216, and Maier, Revolution und Kirche , p. 80, add important considerations to the discussion of the issue.

22. The peculiarity of the team of revolutionary experts has been persistently emphasized in the literature. Already Michelet stressed the Jansenist convictions of Camus, La Révolution Française , 1: 311; de la Gorce made the allegation that Barnave's preeminent role as one of the first advocates for the confiscation of the wealth of the church had been motivated by his Protestantism, de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse , 1: 142-143; both de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse , 1: 201, and Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Culture , p. 17, remark that Durand de Maillane, an expert on canon law, as well as Treilhard were, as leading members of the Ecclesiastic Committee of the Constituent Assembly, epitomes of the old tradition of légistes , the legal experts of court or parlements, who were traditional enemies of the church. The role played by Mirabeau, a professed libertine, and Talleyrand, a renegade, are common knowledge. Yet the problem was not their bias but their unique brand of reason.

23. My description of the situation of the church, concerning both its "parliamentarianism" and well-organized bureauracy as well as its internal problems, relies on Greenbaum, Talleyrand , pp. 2, 3, 26, 27, 38, 58, 59.

24. An almost identical description, albeit a different characterization, of the Civil Constitution of the church, can be found in Tackett, Religion, Revolution and Regional Culture , pp. 8-16, and in de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse , 1: 197-199.

25. Tackett, the most conscientious scholar of the church-related issues in the cahiers de doléances , gives an extremely illuminating statistical sample of 202 cahiers of the Third Estate, Religion, Revolution and Regional Cultures , p. 13. It is perfectly clear from this representative sample that the major grievances about the situation of the clergy felt by the members of the Third Estate were the issues of the tithes (47 percent demanded their total or partial abolition); the wish to acquire at least part of the church land (27 percent); the demand for the abolition of the casuel (47 percent); the demand for social mobility within the church, i.e., the opening of clerical posts to talent (44 percent); and the requirement that prelates fulfill their "social function" (40 percent). Although this was indeed strong support for the work of reform, it was at the same time no encouragement for extreme radicalism. In analyzing this problem, the methodological warning of the eminent historian, Henri Sée, about the "source value" of the cahiers of the clergy, "La rédaction et la valeur des cahiers de paroisse," Revue Historique 103 (1910): 292-306, should be heeded.

26. The statement is quoted in Michelet, La Révolution Française , vol. 1, 311.

27. The most detailed description of the naive proposal by Dom Gerle in the Constituent Assembly to declare Catholicism the national religion is to be found in de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse , 1: 159-162.

28. On the question of "popular sovereignty" see K. D. Erdmann, Volkssouverenität und Kirche. Studien über das Verhältnis von Staat und Religion in Frankreich vom der Generalstände bis zum Schisma (Cologne, 1949).

29. For Arendt's remark, see On Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1952), pp. 112-114.

30. Tony Judt analyzed more recently the change of the Catholic vote in Le Marxisme et la gauche française (Paris: Hachette, 1986), pp. 274-278.

31. John L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Secker and Warburg, 1952), p. 21 and passim.

32. Treilhard's dictum is quoted in de la Gorce, Histoire réligieuse , 1: 224.

33. Ferenc Fehér, The Frozen Revolution (An Essay on Jacobinism) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 74.

34. See Ozouf, La fête révolutionnaire ; and Starobinsky, 1789 .

35. Anne Louise Germaine Staël-Holstein, Des Circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la Révolution et des principes qui doivent fonder la République en France (Geneva: Droz, 1979), p. 227.

36. Ibid., 236-237.

35. Anne Louise Germaine Staël-Holstein, Des Circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la Révolution et des principes qui doivent fonder la République en France (Geneva: Droz, 1979), p. 227.

36. Ibid., 236-237.

37. Robespierre's words are quoted in Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," in The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 100-101.

38. See the analysis of the allegedly aristocratic character of eighteenth-century materialism and atheism versus the "plebeian" idealism and moralization coupled with terrorism in Georg Lukács, "Der faschistisch verfälschte und der wahre Georg Büchner," in Deutsche Realisten, Gesammelte Werke , vol. 6 (Neuwied/Berlin: Luchterhand Verlag, 1968).

39. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 86-89.

40. Robespierre's invective against Diderot quoted in Aulard, Le culte , p. 273.

41. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," The Fall of Robespierre .

42. Ibid., p. 89.

41. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," The Fall of Robespierre .

42. Ibid., p. 89.

43. See Payan's extremely interesting interpretation in Aulard, Le culte , pp. 282-88.

44. François Furet has been emphasizing, both throughout his crucial Thinking the French Revolution , and more recently in a seminar given at New York University, 12 October 1988, this new attitude that he, rightly, attributes not to the Jacobins alone but to the Revolution as a whole.

45. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 88-89, emphasis added.

46. The problem of freedom and happiness (rather: freedom versus happiness) has been recently analyzed by Agnes Heller in "Freedom and Happiness in Kant's Political Philosophy," in manuscript.

47. I have analyzed in The Frozen Revolution , pp. 61-62, the strangely mixed character of the draft of the (never-enacted) Constitution of 1793, which was a supreme law, that is, a legal document, and a binding oath in front of the Creator, that is, an irrevocable religious commitment, at the same time.

48. Quoted in Aulard, Le culte , p. 273.

49. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," in The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 100-101, emphasis added.

50. Ibid., p. 96.

51. Ibid., pp. 97-98. Reinhart Koselleck bases his theory—in Futures Past ( On the Semantics of Historical Time ) (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 49-50—that every revolution carries the germs of world revolution in itself, despite its eventual nationalistic self-limitation, on precisely this speech of Robespierre.

49. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," in The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 100-101, emphasis added.

50. Ibid., p. 96.

51. Ibid., pp. 97-98. Reinhart Koselleck bases his theory—in Futures Past ( On the Semantics of Historical Time ) (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 49-50—that every revolution carries the germs of world revolution in itself, despite its eventual nationalistic self-limitation, on precisely this speech of Robespierre.

49. Mathiez, "The Cult of the Supreme Being," in The Fall of Robespierre , pp. 100-101, emphasis added.

50. Ibid., p. 96.

51. Ibid., pp. 97-98. Reinhart Koselleck bases his theory—in Futures Past ( On the Semantics of Historical Time ) (Cambridge, Mass., and London: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 49-50—that every revolution carries the germs of world revolution in itself, despite its eventual nationalistic self-limitation, on precisely this speech of Robespierre.

1. Heinrich Heine, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland , in Sämtliche Schriften (München: Piper, 1971), 3:594-596.

2. Karl Marx, "Das philosophische Manifest der historischen Rechtsschule," in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz-Verlag, 1958), 1: 80.

3. The best philological treatment of Kant's influence in France so far can be found in Maximilien Vallois, La formation de l'influence Kantienne en France (Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1932). More can be found on this issue (but without a systematic historical analysis of Kant's impact on "the French ideology") in the following works: La philosophie politique de Kant (Paris: PUF, 1962); A. Philonenko, Théorie et praxis dans la pensée morale de Kant et de Fichte (Paris: Vrin, 1968); G. Vlachos, La philosophie politique de Kant (Paris: PUF, 1962).

4. Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy , ed. Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). The analysis of Kant as a "spectator" can be found on pp. 44-45. I am in perfect agreement with Arendt's dictum: "[T]he French Revolution had awakened him . . . from his political slumber (as Hume had awakened him in his youth from dogmatic slumber, and Rousseau had roused him in his manhood from moral slumber)" (p. 17). However, as will become clear from what follows,

I decidedly disagree with Arendt's opinion that "there is" a political philosophy in Kant, yet one which "does not exist" (i.e., has remained unwritten) (p. 31).

5. The reference to Grégoire's correspondence with Philippe-Jacob Müller, a professor at the University of Strassburg, is found in Vallois, Formation , p. 34. Kant's position on the crucial and hotly debated issue of the revolutionary reform of the church can be summed up in the following terms. The church has no right to complain about the confiscation of its wealth. This wealth had been based on "popular opinion" ( Volksmeinung ) which has now evidently changed. Corporations anyhow have no raison d'être in a republic (this argument was identical with the position of Sieyès): Metaphysik der Sitten. Rechtslehre , in Immanuel Kant, Werke in Zwölf Bänden (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1956), 8: 444-445. Kant even went further. In the spirit of his own distinction between church ( Kirchenwesen ) and religion, the latter being a purely internal issue of the citizen, he recognized the state's legitimacy in reforming the organization of the church. However, he declared every intervention into religious beliefs by the state as negative acts "beneath the dignity of the state" (Kant, in Werke , 8: 447-448). So far, Grégoire would have enthusiastically subscribed to Kant's philosophy of religion. What he, a partisan of Catholic democracy, would not have been able to accept in Kant's position was the philosopher's very active hostility to the minimum institutionalization of religion and the "invisible church," the ethical community of believers. In Die Religion innerhalb der blossen Vernunft , in Werke , 8: 852-853, Kant declared, certainly not without a certain degree of Protestant bias, that every form of the organization of the church (papal absolutism and Catholic democracy alike ) are forms of the same fetishistic religion, and, despite the name, forms of the same despotic rule. This was, by the way, in perfect harmony with Kant's general conception of democracy as an imperfect realization of res publica noumenon , about which I will say more later.

6. For the reference to the enthusiastic review of Moniteur as well as to Sieyès's interest in Kant's philosophy, see Arsenij Gulyga, Immanuel Kant (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983), p. 280.

7. For Kant's rejoinder to Constant's critique of his position in Constant's Des réactions politiques (Paris, 1797), see Über ein vermeintes Recht aus Menschenliebe zu lügen , in Werke , vol. 8.

8. On Napoleon's "encounter" with Kant and the unsuccessful attempt of the first French Kant expert, Charles Villers, to convert the first consul to Kant's philosophy, see Gulyga, Immanuel Kant , pp. 280-281. Vallois, Formation . pp. 51-124, gives a detailed characterization of Villers's interpretation of Kant. He briefly mentions Villers's "report" for Bonaparte titled "Philosophie de Kant, aperçu rapide des bases et de la direction de cette philosophie" (Paris, Fructidor An IX, 1801), in Formation , p. 57.

9. In Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis , in Werke , 11: 159. Presumably, Kant polemicizes here against Danton in his capacity as minister of justice in the fall of 1792, and Danton's much too summary declaration of civil rights and properties as null and void in an emergency situation and in the absence of a factual contract.

10. More recently, André Tosel made efforts in his Kant révolutionnaire (Droit et politique) (Paris: PUF, 1988), to characterize Kant's political philosophy as a reaction to

the Revolution. Although I appreciate this methodological approach to the problem, I cannot accept Tosel's consistent attempts to "homogenize" Kant's political philosophy in the sign of Jacobinism.

11. "Dass Könige philosophieren, oder Philosophen Könige würden, ist nicht zu erwarten, aber auch nicht zu wünschen" ( Zum ewigen Frieden, Anhang , in Werke , 11: 228).

12. See the characterization of Robespierre's unique position in Ferenc Fehér, The Frozen Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 107.

13. The state of rebellion is characterized by Kant as "Zustand einer völligen Gesetzlosigkeit (status naturalis), wo alles Recht aufhört, wenigstens Effekt zu haben," Über den Gemeinspruch , in Werke , 11: 158.

14. Der Streit der Fakultäten , in Werke , 11: 356-358.

15. Kant makes an explicit reference to the existence of "the drive of freedom" in his Anthropologie , in Werke , 12: 604.

16. Here are a few typical examples of Kant's categorical rejection of a "right to revolution" or rebellion: Über den Gemeinspruch , in Werke , 11: 154, 156, 158-159 (here Kant characterizes the leaders of the revolutions of Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England as Staatsverbrecher , "criminals against the state"); Zum ewigen Frieden , in Werke , 11: 245, 246; Der Streit der Fakultäten , in Werke , 11: 360 (fn.); Metaphysik der Sitten. Rechtslehre, in Werke , 8: 437, 438, 439.

17. Über den Gemeinspruch , in Werke, 11: 160.

18. Metaphysik der Sitten. Rechtslehre , in Werke , 8: 442.

19. A whole book has been dedicated to this not particularly convincing explanatory principle by D. Losurdo, Autocensura e compromesso nel pensiero politico di Kant (Naples, 1985).

20. Anthropologie , in Werke , 12: 686.

21. A detailed analysis of Kant's position concerning happiness is given in Agnes Heller's "Freedom and Happiness in Kant's Political Philosophy," manuscript.

22. The celebrated statement in Der Streit der Fakultäten , to which I have already referred ( Werke , 11: 358), explicitly predicts the possibility of the collapse of the Revolution under the burden of its own crimes . At the same time, it considers the serious possibility of its resuming its work in a better "second edition."

23. Friedrich Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man , trans. Reginald Snell (New York: F. Ungar, 1965), pp. 34-35, 40-41.

24. Fehér, Frozen Revolution , pp. 97-112, "Revolutionary Justice." For Michael Walzer's rejoinder to my criticism, see his "The King's Trial and the Political Culture of the Revolution," in The Political Culture of the French Revolution , ed. Colin Lucas, vol. 2 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988).

25. Kant's vacillation can be seen in the contradiction between his two major statements on the issue. In Zum ewigen Frieden, Anhang, in Werke, 11: 246, his position is the following: After the victory and the consolidation of a revolution, which had been by definition the violation of the (former) law but which in turn became legal authority, the monarch is bereft of the right (together with all other citizens) to rebel against the new authority because it has now become law . But it goes without saying that he cannot be punished now for his past reign because he then had been law . In Metaphysik der Sitten. Rechtslehre , in Werke , 8: 442-443, Kant's argument is more complex. The

logical and moral impossibility of punishing the former monarch for the past reign is of course further maintained. But at this point, Kant has doubts whether the exmonarch has the right to rebel against those who had unlawfully overthrown his rule. Naturally, this is the ideal quotation for those who subscribe to the thesis of Kant's self-censorship. I am, however, convinced that the structure of the argument suggests even here that Kant was exclusively preoccupied with justice.

26. In Metaphysik der Sitten. Rechtslehre , in Werke , 8: 465, Kant for once spoke directly (and not only indirectly and hypothetically) about the French Revolution and (without mentioning his name) Louis XVI. He regarded Louis's concessions, which finally led to the fusion of the "sovereign" (the supreme executive) with the legislative power, as the king's tragic mistake. The (historically correct) description leaves no doubt as to Kant's understanding: the sub rosa unification of executive and legislative power in the hands of the Constituent Assembly was usurpation and despotic rule.

27. Kant's most comprehensive statement is the long footnote in Metaphysik der Sitten. Rechtslehre , in Werke , 8: 440-441, on the trials of Charles I and Louis XVI. It is worth mentioning that here Kant almost anticipated an argument more recently represented by Walzer, one of "political justice" in defense of the trials. In this regard, Walzer's new argument, as it appears in his paper published in The Political Culture of the Revolution , can be rendered, with a certain simplification, in the following way: They would have killed him anyway; therefore , it is better that they gave to the act the `'form of law," which made it "political justice." Kant's sharp answer to this anticipated train of thought was that the legal form had made the sham trial worse. Notrecht (emergency law or political justice) is a presumed, not a real principle of justice. Necessitas non habet legem ( Metaphysik der Sitten. Rechtslehre , in Werke , 8: 343). Kant's major concern here and elsewhere was the protection of the purity of the maxim of action , which he regarded as the sole guarantee of a future return to republican legality.

28. For the principle of the obligatory public character of the maxim of politics, see Zum ewigen Frieden, Anhang , in Werke , 11: 244, 245. The principle which cannot be made public is described in Der Streit der Fakultäten , in Werke , 11: 359 (fn.).

29. The principle of res publica noumenon is formulated most unambiguously in Der Streit der Fakultäten , in Werke , 11: 364.

30. His aversion to the (potentially or actually) despotic character of the ancient city republics was expressed in the most explicit fashion in Zum ewigen Frieden , in Werke , 11: 206-208.

31. Ibid.

30. His aversion to the (potentially or actually) despotic character of the ancient city republics was expressed in the most explicit fashion in Zum ewigen Frieden , in Werke , 11: 206-208.

31. Ibid.

32. The terms are either Form der Beherrschung versus Form der Regierung or Staatsform versus Regierungsart ( Zum ewigen Frieden , in Werke , 11: 206, 208). In both cases, the first term refers to the technical appellation of the state, the "form of government." The second term refers to the distribution of powers , the crucial ways in which power is exercised either despotically or in a republican manner.

33. Über den Gemeinspruch , in Werke , 11: 149 (fn.). Here Kant termed the head of the state ( Oberhaupt der Staatsverwaltung ) "the personified law." He emphasizes that the "sovereign" (the head of the state) is not an agent of the state. But in Metaphysik der Sitten. Rechtslehre , in Werke , 8: 435, Kant described the "regent" or the "prince," that is, the supreme executive power, as an agent of the state .

34. The three evil maxims are (1) fac et excusa (act and find excuses); (2) si fecisti

nega (if you did it, deny it); (3) divide et impera: Zum ewigen Frieden, Anhang , in Werke , 11: 236.

35. Ibid., p. 240.

36. Ibid., p. 234.

34. The three evil maxims are (1) fac et excusa (act and find excuses); (2) si fecisti

nega (if you did it, deny it); (3) divide et impera: Zum ewigen Frieden, Anhang , in Werke , 11: 236.

35. Ibid., p. 240.

36. Ibid., p. 234.

34. The three evil maxims are (1) fac et excusa (act and find excuses); (2) si fecisti

nega (if you did it, deny it); (3) divide et impera: Zum ewigen Frieden, Anhang , in Werke , 11: 236.

35. Ibid., p. 240.

36. Ibid., p. 234.

37. Anthropologie , in Werke , 12: 485.

38. Metaphysik der Sitten. Tugendlehre , in Werke , 8: 591.

1. For some works in the comparative study of revolution, see Crane Brinton, Anatomy of Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1965); Isaac Deutscher, "The French Revolution and the Russian Revolution: Some Suggestive Analogies," World Politics 4 (1952): 493-514; Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of

France, Russia, China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). For a withering attack on the French-Russian analogy, see François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution , trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), chap. 1 entitled "The Revolution Is Over."

2. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), p. 153.

3. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution , trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Doubleday, 1955), p. 20.

4. The best study of Tocqueville's history, to my knowledge, is Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution , pp. 132-163; see also Melvin Richter, "Tocqueville's Contributions to the Theory of Revolution," Revolution , ed. C. J. Friedrich (New York: Atherton, 1966), pp. 75-121.

5. See Steven B. Smith, Hegel's Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

6. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History , trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 446.

7. Reinhart Koselleck, "Historical Criteria of the Modern Concept of Revolution," Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time , trans. Keith Tribe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), p. 42; Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1965), pp. 35-36.

8. See Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, eds., Real-Encyclopedie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzlersche, 1932), 30: 1313-1316.

9. Plato, Republic , 8: 544c; Aristotle, Politics 5: 1316a 1 ff.

10. Aristotle, Politics 7:1329b 25-30.

11. Polybius, Histories 6: 7-12; for a useful discussion see Robert D. Cumming, Human Nature and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 1: 95-97, 149-151.

12. Machiavelli, Il Principe e Discorsi (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1983), pp. 379-384.

13. Thomas Hobbes, Behemoth: Or The Long Parliament , ed. F. Tönnies, 2d ed. (London: F. Cass, 1969), p. 204.

14. Peter Burke, "Renaissance, Reformation, Revolution," Niedergang: Studien zu einem geschichtlichen Thema , eds. Reinhart Koselleck and Karlheinz Stierle (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1980), pp. 144-145.

15. R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942), pp. 199-200.

16. M. Diderot and M. d'Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers , 3d ed. (Geneva: J. L. Pellet, 1778-1779), 29: 97.

17. Koselleck, "Historical Criteria of the Modern Concept of Revolution," p. 45.

18. Arendt, On Revolution , p. 39.

19. Collingwood, The New Leviathan , pp. 201-202.

20. See Karl Marx, "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction," in Early Writings , trans. T. B. Bottomore (London: C. A. Watts, 1963), pp. 51-52.

21. Immanuel Kant, "What Is Enlightenment?" in Political Writings , trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 54.

22. Heinrich, Heine, "The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany," in The Romantic School and Other Essays , eds. Jost Hermand and Robert C. Holub (New York: Continuum, 1985), pp. 203-204.

23. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason , trans. Norman K. Smith (New York: Saint Martin's, 1965), p. 9.

24. Kant, "The Contest of Faculties," p. 187.

25. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Justice , trans. John Ladd (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. 112.

26. Kant, "The Contest of Faculties," p. 182.

27. The most useful discussions are Joachim Ritter, Hegel und die Französische Revolution (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1965); Jürgen Habermas, "Hegel's Critique of the French Revolution," in Theory and Practice , trans. John Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974), pp. 121-141; see also Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955); Georg Lukács, The Young Hegel: Studies in the Relations Between Dialectics and Economics , trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1975); see also Smith, Hegel's Critique of Liberalism , pp. 85-97.

28. G. W. F. Hegel, Briefe von und an Hegel , ed. J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: F. Meiner 1952-1954), 1: 24.

29. Hegel, Philosophy of History , p. 447.

30. See J. F. Sutter, "Burke, Hegel, and the French Revolution," in Hegel's Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives , ed. Z. A. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 52-72.

31. Hegel, Philosophy of History , p. 451; see also his essay on "The English Reform Bill," in Political Writings , trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 325-326.

32. Hegel, Philosophy of History , p. 35.

33. For the corporate basis of rights in premodern Europe, see Otto Gierke, Natural Law and the Theory of Society 1500-1800 , trans. Ernest Barker (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).

34. For useful discussions see Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), chaps. 5-6; see also Dieter Henrich, "The Contexts of Autonomy: Some Presuppositions of the Comprehensibility of Human Rights," Daedalus (Fall 1982): 255-277.

35. G. W. F. Hegel, Natural Law , trans. T. M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), p. 70.

36. Ibid., pp. 59 ff.

35. G. W. F. Hegel, Natural Law , trans. T. M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), p. 70.

36. Ibid., pp. 59 ff.

37. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan , ed. Michael Oakeshott (London: Macmillan, 1962), p. 103.

38. Hegel, Natural Law , pp. 70 ff.

39. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), pp. 261-262.

40. Hegel, Natural Law , p. 112.

41. See Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Association , trans. C. Loomis (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1955); Sir Henry Maine, The Ancient Law (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986).

42. See G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right , trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 233, par. 33A: "In speaking of Right [Recht ] . . . we mean not merely what is generally meant by civil law, but also morality, ethical life, and world-history."

43. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History: Introduction , trans.

H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 80.

44. Hegel, Natural Law , p. 128.

45. Ibid., p. 92.

44. Hegel, Natural Law , p. 128.

45. Ibid., p. 92.

46. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind , trans. J. B. Baille (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), pp. 600-601.

47. Hegel, Philosophy of History , p. 442.

48. Hegel, Phenomenology , pp. 602, 604, 605.

49. Hegel, Philosophy of History , pp. 450-451.

50. Arendt, On Revolution , pp. 91-104.

51. Ibid., p. 80.

52. Ibid., p. 85.

50. Arendt, On Revolution , pp. 91-104.

51. Ibid., p. 80.

52. Ibid., p. 85.

50. Arendt, On Revolution , pp. 91-104.

51. Ibid., p. 80.

52. Ibid., p. 85.

53. For some works advocating the revival of republicanism, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Pinceton University Press, 1975); William M. Sullivan, Reconstructing Public Philosophy (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1982); for a relentless critique of the alleged civic republican influences on American politics, see John Diggins, The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

54. Hegel, World History , p. 54: "World history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom."

55. Ibid., p. 89; see also Hegel, Science of Logic , trans. A. V. Miller (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), pp. 746-747.

54. Hegel, World History , p. 54: "World history is the progress of the consciousness of freedom."

55. Ibid., p. 89; see also Hegel, Science of Logic , trans. A. V. Miller (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), pp. 746-747.

56. Hegel, Political Writings , pp. 220, 221, 222-223.

57. G. W. F. Hegel, Jenaer Realphilosophie. Vorlesungsmanuskripte zur Philosophie der Natur und des Geistes von 1805-1806 , ed. J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1969), p. 246.

58. Hegel, Political Writings , p. 241.

59. Hegel, Jenaer Realphilosophie , pp. 247-248.

60. Hegel, World History , p. 85.

61. Shlomo Avineri, Hegel: Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), pp. 60-61.

62. Alexandre Kojève, Introduction à la lecture de Hegel , ed. Raymond Queneau (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), pp. 95, 97, 153-154, 194-195.

63. Hegel, World History , p. 170.

64. For the religious roots of messianism, see Norman Cohen, The Pursuit of the Millenium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971); Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985); for some of the secular uses to which these millenarian ideas have been put see Jacob Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York: Praeger, 1960); Bernard Yack, The Longing for Total Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

65. Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age , trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983); for a comprehensive bibliography of some of the recent work on this debate, see the Annals of Scholarship 5 (1987): 97-106.

1. Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique (Paris, 1951), 1, pt. 1: 13-14/ pt. 1: 17; citations henceforth will appear as DA . The numbers following the slash indicate references to the translation, Democracy in America , 2 vols. (New York: Vintage, 1945). Whenever I believed my translations gave a more accurate rendering of the original text, I have used them. The reference is to the full edition, Oeuvres complètes , J. P. Mayer, ed., Oeuvres, papiers et correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville (Paris: Gallimard, 1951-), hereafter OC .

2. Alexis de Tocqueville, "Réflexions diverses," in L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution (Paris: Gallimard, 1952-1953), 2, pt. 1: 343. Citations henceforth will appear as AR . References to the page numbers in The Old Regime and the French Revolution (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955), trans. Stuart Gilbert, will appear following the slash in the parentheses. I have again altered the translations where I saw fit. Translations from the second volume are my own.

3. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Louis de Kergorlay (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), 13, pt. 2: 229-234.

4. Ibid.

3. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Louis de Kergorlay (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), 13, pt. 2: 229-234.

4. Ibid.

5. Kergorlay to Tocqueville, 6 January 1838, 13, pt. 1: 119-124; Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 6 April 1838, 15 September 1843, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 11: 59, 114-116.

6. Tocqueville to Corcelle, 1 August 1850, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Francisque de Corcelle (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 15, pt. 2: 227-230.

7. Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 15 September 1843, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 11: 114-116.

8. Tocqueville to Henry Reeve, 6 February 1856, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Henry Reeve (Paris, 1954), 6, pt. 1: 160-61.

9. DA , 1, pt. 2: 90-92/90-93.

10. DA , 1, pt. 1: 289, 300/301, 310.

11. AR , 2, pt 1: 199/146. See H. Mitchell, "Political Mirage or Reality? Political Freedom from Old Regime to Revolution," Journal of Modern History 60 (1988): 28-54. Gustave de Beaumont, Tocqueville's friend who was reading the proofs of L'Ancien Régime , pressed him for a fuller explanation, since in all countries, he wrote, writers are often far removed from practical affairs. Tocqueville replied that in France they not only had no practical involvement but had no idea of what actually went on in government. Their ignorance was due to the absence of political liberty; in free countries, by contrast, they somehow have an instinct for it without taking part in it. See Tocqueville to Beaumont, 24 April 1856, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Gustave de Beaumont (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), 8, pt. 3: 395.

12. S , 57/34-35. OC: Souvenirs (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 12, 57/34-35. Citations henceforth will appear as S . Page references following the slash are to The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville , trans. A. T. de Mattos (New York: Meridian Books, 1959).

13. Tocqueville to Ampère, 21 October 1856, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Jean-Jacques Ampère (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 11: 351.

14. S , 84/64.

15. S , 2/87.

16. AR , 1, pt. 1: 74/xii.

17. S , 47/21.

18. DA , 1, pt. 1: 250-251/256-257.

19. S , 104/90.

20. Cf. G. A. Kelly, "Parnassian Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century France: Tocqueville, Renan, Flaubert," History of Political Thought 8 (1987): esp. 479-486.

21. S , 29, 102/1, 87.

22. S , 30/2.

23. S , 74/54.

24. Cf. the richly suggestive essay by I. M. Lotman, "The Decembrist in Daily Life (Everyday Behaviour as a Historical—Psychological Category)," The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History: Essays by I. M. Lotman, L. Ia. Ginsburg and B. A. Uspenskii , eds. A. D. Nahkimovsky and A. S. Nahkimovsky (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 95-149. "The contemporary observer would see the everyday behavior of the Decembrists as theatrical, that is to say, directed toward a spectator . But to say that

behavior is theatrical does not imply that it is insincere or reprehensible in any way" (p. 105).

25. S , 107/87.

26. DA , 1, pt. 1: 90/pt. 2:91.

27. S , 59/37.

28. S , 87/68.

29. Tocqueville to Nassau William Senior, 13 November 1852, Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859 , ed. M. C. M. Simpson, 2 vols. (London, 1872), 2: 31-32.

30. S , 74/54.

31. S , 50/26.

32. AR , 2, pt. 1: 69/vii.

33. AR , 1 (2): 338-342. Tocqueville was reading Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) with marked attention.

34. J. de Maistre's two major works are Considérations sur la France (1797) and Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques et des autres institutions humaines (1809).

35. L. de Bonald's early work (1796) was his Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux . He also wrote Législation primitive (1802), and his Démonstration philosophique du principe constitutif de la société was published in 1830.

36. See Mallet du Pan, Mémoires et correspondance pour servir à l'histoire de la Révolution française , ed. A. Sayous (Paris, 1851).

37. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 16 May 1858, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Louis de Kergorlay (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), 13, pt. 2: 337-338.

38. AR , 2, pt. 1: 247/208.

39. DA , 1, pt. 2: 266, n. 1/274, n. 1.

40. AR , 2, pt. 1: 76/xv.

41. AR , 2, pt. 1: 73/xii.

42. État in AR , 2, pt. 1: 65; cf. AR , 2, pt. 1: 72/10.

43. Tocqueville to Henry Reeve, 5 February 1856, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Henry Reeve (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 6: 161.

44. AR , 2, pt. 1: 73/xii.

45. Tocqueville to Freslon, 20 September 1856, cited in A. Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville 1805-1859 (Paris: Hachette, 1984), p. 486.

46. M. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays , trans. V. W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 126.

47. S , 84/64.

48. S , 85-86/66-67.

49. L. Shiner argues that Tocqueville's carnavelesque treatment of the 1848 revolutionaries and politicians undermines any serious intent he might have had. I would claim that Tocqueville's growing pessimism and relentless attempt to extract answers from a recalcitrant past could be relieved only by the use of irony and of the comic, but he meant those devices to put his serious intentions into bold relief. See Shiner's "Writing and Political Carnival in Tocqueville's Recollections," History and Theory 25 (1986): 17-32.

50. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, December 15, 1850, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Louis de Kergorlay (Paris, 1977), 13, pt. 2: 229.

51. AR , 2, pt. 2: 175-176, 192-193.

52. AR , 2, pt. 1: 73/xii.

53. AR , 2, pt. 2:368-369.

54. For a discussion of some of these problems, see G. Canguilhem, On the Normal and the Pathological , trans. C. R. Fawcett (Dordrecht, Boston, and London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1978), pp. 171-175. Another perspective is to be found in J. Elster's theory that illusions (or imaginaries) occur when "both the external situation and the internal processing . . . come into play . . . . [O]ne could also speculate, though I would be more sceptical as to the value of the outcome, that differences in social origin generate differences in the internal apparatus and thus in the liability to illusions (keeping the external situation constant)." See J. Elster, "Belief, Bias and Ideology," in Relativity and Relativism , eds. M. Hollis and S. Lukes (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982), p. 137.

55. AR , 2, pt. 2: 139-147.

56. I am following the editors of L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution in the OC in the citation of Mounier's work consulted by Tocqueville: M: Mounier, Nouvelles observations sur les Etats généraux de France (1789). This will also be the case for succeeding citations.

57. The editors do not provide a reference to Barnave's brochure. Tocqueville's own notes refer to its title as Contre les édits du 8 mai et le rétablissement des parlements (1788).

58. J.-P. Brissot de Warville, Plan de conduite pour les députés du peuple aux Etats généraux de 1789 (1789).

59. Rabaud-Saint-Etienne, Considération sur les intérêts du tiers état par un propriétaire foncier (1788).

60. Pétion, Avis aux Français sur le salut de la patrie (1788). I have retained the original Orthography for Pétion.

61. AR , 2, pt. 2:75-78, 145.

62. AR , 2, pt. 2: 150-151.

63. AR , 2, pt. 2: 148.

64. AR , 2, pt. 2: 153-154.

65. AR , 2, pt. 2: 155-157; and DA , 1, pt. 1: 208-209/214.

66. AR , 2, pt. 2: 160.

67. AR , 2, pt. 2: 158-163.

68. AR , 2, pt. 2: 168-169.

69. AR , 2, pt. 1: 208/157.

70. AR , 2, pt. 1: 246/206.

71. For a corrective, see K. M. Baker, "On the Problem of the Ideological Origins of the French Revolution," in Modern European Intellectual History , eds. D. LaCapra and S. L. Kaplan (Ithaca, N. Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1982), pp. 197-219.

72. AR , 2, pt. 1: 246/207.

73. DA , 1, pt. 2: 18/11.

74. AR , 2, pt. 1: 246/207.

75. AR , 2, pt. 1: 196/142. If Tocqueville could not formulate the means of tracing the unexpected expressions of revolutionary ideas and practices from their presumed

theoretical foundations expounded by the writers who evoked "uns société imaginaire," Augustin Cochin simply gave body to Tocqueville's general observations but eschewed altogether any consideration of the theory/practice problematic. Cf. F. Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution , trans. E. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 164-204, esp. 203-204. Also note P. Ricoeur's rejection of Furet's idea that we may be led back from Cochin to Tocqueville. Ricoeur writes, "No conceptual reconstruction will ever be able to make the continuity with the ancien régime pass by way of the rise to power of an imaginary order experienced as a break and as an origin." See P. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative , trans. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1: 221-224. On the generation of an expanded public opinion looking for a wider public space before the Revolution, see K. M. Baker, "Politics and Public Opinion Under the Old Regime: Some Reflections," in Press and Politics in Pre-Revolutionary France , eds. J. R. Censer and J. D. Popkin (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 204-246.

76. AR , 2, pt. 2: 188.

77. DA , 1, pt. 2: 338/352.

78. DA , 1, pt. 2: 347/386-387.

79. Tocqueville to Gobineau, 20 December 1853, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et d'Arthut de Gobineau (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), 9: 201-204.

80. Tocqueville to Henry Reeve, 9 January 1852, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Henry Reeve (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 6: 132.

81. AR , 2, pt. 2: 270.

82. AR , 2, pt. 2: 227-228.

83. DA , 1, pt. 1: 89/92.

84. Montesquieu, De l'Esprit des Lois , in Oeuvres complètes , ed. R. Calllois (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), 1: 396-407.

85. AR , 2, pt. 2: 320-322.

86. See A. Kahan, "Tocqueville's Two Revolutions," Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (1985): 585-596 for a consideration of Tocqueville's treatment of the bourgeoisie in his volume of notes.

87. S , 39/13.

88. S , 63, 94/41, 77.

89. S , 36-37/10-11.

90. AR , 2, pt. 1: 213-214/164; pt. 2: 128-129.

91. DA , 1, pt. 2: 268/261.

92. Alexis de Tocqueville, Voyages en Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse et Algérie (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), OC , 5, pt. 2: 90-92.

93. AR , 2, pt. 1: 75/xv.

94. S , 86/88.

95. AR , 2, pt. 2: 132.

96. C. Lefort, "Reversibility," Telos 63 (1985): 116.

1. The most classical analysis can be found in Guizot's lectures given at the Sorbonne in 1828-1829. See François Guizot, Histoire de la Civilisation en Europe (Paris, 1928), partially reprinted in Historical Essays and Lectures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972).

2. François Guizot, Essais sur l'histoire de France , 2d ed. (Paris, 1824), p. 16.

3. F.-A. Mignet, Introduction, Historie de la Révolution française, de 1789 jusqu'en 1814 (Paris, 1824).

4. Joseph de Maistre, Considérations sur la France (1797).

5. I have written at length on this matter in Marx et la Révolution française (Paris: Flammarion, 1986), translated into English as Marx and the French Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

6. One finds the aristocratic class content of the absolutist state scattered throughout twentieth-century Marxist historiography. For example: Boris Porshnev, Les soulèvements populaires en France de 1623 à 1648 (Paris: SEVPEN, 1963), translated from the Russian: Louis Althusser, Montesquieu, la politique et l'histoire (Paris: PUF, 1959); Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: New Left Books, 1974).

7. Alfred Cobban, The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964).

8. For example with Emmanuel Sieyès, Essais sur les privilèges (Fall 1788) and Qu'est-ce qne le Tiers-Etat? (January 1989), or Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (November 1790).

9. I am thinking in particular of the books of Albert Mathiez dedicated to Robespierre and his role in the Terror. For example, Robespierre terroriste (Paris: La renaissance du livre, 1921) or Autour de Robespierre (Paris: Poyot, 1926).

10. Benjamin Constant, De la force du gouvernement actuel et de la nécessité de s'y rallier (Paris, 1795), recently republished with a Preface by P. Raynaud in the Collection Champs (Paris: Flammarion, 1989).

11. Alexis de Tocqueville, L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution (Paris, 1856).