The Revolution - I

Volume number two of Taine's Origins of Contemporary France deals with the first stages of the French Revolution, from its immediate prelude, the winter of 1788, until the rise of 'the Mountain'. Taine details the dire economic and administrative conditions that led to the convocation of the States-General, the psychological transformation of the populace as it became aware of its squalid condition, and the intervention of ruffians and vagabonds, who sowed discord with rhetoric based on the 'new ideas', these malefactors interpreting political developments as it suited their vengeful and destructive instincts. From there, Taine catalogues the rapid descent into anarchy-the Great Fear of 1789-aided by feeble and ineffective measures of control on the one hand, and supine or colluding authorities on the other, while the mob grew into a political force. He analyses various factors influencing the formation, composition, operation, and results of the Constituent Assembly; the crumbling and systematic demolition of the old order; and the shambolic and chaotic attempts to build a new one as unrestrained passions, supported by ideology and expressed through violence, gained sovereignty over the land. Popular outbreaks, outrages, illegality, murder, arson, book-burning, wanton destruction of private property, military insubordination, and even instances of cannibalism herein set the stage for the Jacobin conquest.