First Year of the First Republic

From Terror to thermidor (to brumaire)

Midterm Exam--in class, October 12 [everyone should meet in Ballantine 228, 12:20-1:10]

Background Reading
Censer and Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, pp. 85-114, 139-144.

Required Work
During this section of the course, you are expected to learn a basic chronological history of the 1780s-1790s (that is, to gain a core sense of "what happened, when"). Historians of the French Revolution often refer to "the tenth of August" without specifying a year; they mention "the flight to Varennes" without saying who fled. If you don't know what these terms, and others, mean, you will not be able to follow the remainder of this course.

In addition to taking careful notes in lecture and doing as much reading as possible, you will probably want to:

print a timeline so that you can note on it the significance of events (in your own words)

read through the Liberty, Equality, Fraternity timeline and use that website's "search" box to look up unfamiliar terms

print a list of important names and key terms—make sure you can identify them and explain their importance!

Further Reading
In addition to general histories, see:
Patrice Higonnet, Goodness Beyond Virtue: Jacobins in the French Revolution (1998).

Martyn Lyons, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution (1994).

R.R. Palmer, Twelve who Ruled (1941)—though an old book, this still provides the best account of the Committee of Public Safety during the Year II.

Jean Tulard, Napoleon: the Myth of the Saviour (1984).

"Frimaire" (the "cold" month, November to December)
in the revolutionary calendar


Grace Dalrymple Elliott, During the Reign of Terror: Journal of my Life during the French Revolution (1859).


Napoleon satires (big collection at Brown University)