C. France

A. Aulard, The French Revolution: A Political History. English translation. 4 vols., New York, 1910. The best example of official Republican history of the great revolution, by one who was in some ways a spiritual descendant of the Girondins. Leftist and anti-clerical bias.

C. Brinton, A Decade of Revolution, 1789-1799. New York, 1934.

G. Bruun, Europe and the French Imperium, 1799-1814. New York, 1938. This book and the preceding one, volumes 12 and 13 of The Rise of Modern Europe, edited by W. L. Langer, provide a critical bibliographical guide to the period of the French revolution, and incorporate the important modern research in the field.

A. Cochin, Les sociétés de pensée et la démocratie. Paris, 1921. Essential to the study of the work of pressure groups in the preparation of the revolution. Conservative bias.

P. Gaxotte, The French Revolution. English translation, New York, 1932. Perhaps the most sensible of modern works written avowedly from a point of view far to the Right—Royalist, in fact. But since almost all Americans get their knowledge of the French revolution from conventional anti-clerical Republican professors of the Third Republic, Gaxotte’s work is recommended as an antidote.

A. Lichtenberger, Le socialisme et la révolution française. Paris, 1899.

A. Mathiez, The French Revolution. English translation, New York, 1928. La vie chère et le mouvement social sous la Terreur. Paris, 1927. Mathiez was the heir of the Mountain as Aulard was of the Gironde. Mathiez is a reliable investigator of facts, and he was interested in the kind of facts we are now interested in. His generalizations are ruled by an extremely innocent version of the doctrine of economic interpretation of history. Although he indignantly denied he was partisan, he clearly belongs rather far to the Left.

D. Mornet, Les origines intellectuelles de la révolution française. Paris, 1933. Most of the necessary material implied in the title, conveniently assembled. Mornet has conventional French Republican notions about the role of the philosophes in the preparation of the revolution. Excellent bibliography.

F. Rocquain, The Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Revolution. English translation, abridged, London, 1894. An attempt to lessen attention on the writings of the philosophes and turn it to concrete quarrels and grievances in the last years of the old regime.

H. A. Taine, The Origins of Contemporary France. English translation, 6 vols., New York, 1876-1894. The classic attack on the revolution and all its works, written by a disappointed liberal and French patriot after the War of 1870. Still a mine of information, though its particular bias is no longer shared by many in the modern world.