The period between the fall of the Gironde, 31 May 1793, to the execution of Babeuf four years later saw the unfolding of the first modern class conflict. The new bourgeoisie back-tracked from the ...

David A. Bell teaches French history at Princeton. His “Shadows of Revolution: Reflections on France, Past and Present” is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Two hundred twenty-six years after ...

Saturday was Bastille Day, the French holiday commemorating a pivotal moment of the French Revolution: The storming of the Bastille prison. But in addition to remembering the revolutionaries with a ...

When angry commoners stormed the Bastille in Paris on July 14, 1789, they struck a blow against one of the monarchy’s most forbidding symbols. The infamous prison no longer exists—it was destroyed in ...

At times confusing, at times insightful, this exploration of the French Revolution relies heavily on Freudian concepts of psychoanalysis and Hegelian concepts of "historical stages" to explain how the ...