Distorting the French Revolution:
GERSHOY, LEO
Distorting the French Revolution The French Revolution. By Georges Pernoud and Sabine Flaissier. Putnam. 350 pp. $5.00. Reviewed by Leo Gershoy Professor of history, New York...
...Much that could suggest the depth and range of the great upheaval and present it in balance is unfortunately omitted...
...Its omissions and conscious or unconscious social bias can only confuse or offend serious readers...
...What is given is a highly refracted image which places an immensely broad and complex movement completely out of focus...
...Reviewed by Leo Gershoy Professor of history, New York University Georges Pernoud and Sabine Flaissier, a French journalist and working historian, respectively, have written a history of the French Revolution based on eye-witness accounts "constructed from reportage...
...The emigres, given two sections of the book, are represented by a marquis, a marchioness and a count, giving the reader the impression that there were only aristocrats in the emigration...
...In the preface to this book (which is volume one of the history and is subtitled "History in the Making"), Andre Maurois describes the work as a "credible image of the French Revolution" made up of "a multitude of obscure witnesses...
...Robespierre's lucid definition of the Terror—an event which evoked a distinct reaction—is not given...
...the voting of the law of wage and price controls is absent...
...Maurois' claim that the book represents points of view "from every point of the compass" is belied by the relative allotment of space to the various social groups...
...Who are the eyewitnesses cited by Pernoud and Flaissier in their account of the storming of the Bastille, the march on Versailles, the overthrow of Robespierre in Thermidor and other well-known and frequently documented events...
...Was it only the social scum who took part in the Terror and made up the crowds (usually designated as "mobs") which took the Bastille by storm, attacked the Tuileries and signed the petition for the dethronement of Louis XVI...
...Judging from the text, the listed sources and the index, the "obscure" witnesses are the Royal family and its servitors, plus a motley group of marquises, marchionesses, counts and dukes, army officers, disillusioned Deputies, and ladies and gentlemen of the lesser nobility or the upper bourgeoisie...
...In the generally accepted statistical breakdown of the emigres' social composition, the commoners accounted for more than 50 per cent of the whole, and the peasantry itself was a good deal more numerous than the nobility...
...Absent from this potpourri are the peasantry and the lower-class people of the cities and towns, who constituted about 80 per cent of the French population at the time...
...or the enunciation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was a major influence in Europe during the following century...
...As a comprehensive picture, this work does not come within hailing distance of a credible image...
...As a historical interpretation, it is 165 years behind the times...
...or the Fete de la Federation of July 14, 1790, which vividly exemplifies the faith in the regeneration of France through revolution...
...the voting of the levy-in-mass is by-passed...
...The hard core of those crowds, the decent artisans and craftsmen, the petty merchants and the small shopkeepers, are ignored by the authors...
...Roughly one-third of this history deals directly or indirectly with the Royal family and Royal personages...
...There is no repart of the night session of August 4, 1789, when the manorial regime was decreed out of existence, for example...
...In the pages given to "The Terror," two lawyers, one condemned prisoner, one ecclesiastic and a public executioner are the eyewitnesses, and the accent in the accounts falls heavily on killers, bullies and brutes...
Vol. 44 • June 1961 • No. 24
