1792-1794 (slides)

1794-1799 (slides)

Background Reading
Censer and Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, pp. 62-85.

Discussion: The Most Important Dates
(23 and 25 February 2011)
If you could put only four dates on a timeline of the French Revolution (1787-1800) what would those dates be and why? For this week's class, you should write approximately two pages (double-spaced, normal margins and font size) in which you defend each of your dates. This assignment will be the basis of this week's discussions and will be counted as extra credit. Grading will work as follows:
• a "minus" on this assignment means no extra credit;
• a "check" on this assignment will raise your grade on one of the first two assignments [the one on which you received the lower grade] by 1/3 of a grade. So, if your grades on the first two assignments were a B- and a B, getting a "check" on this assignment would raise your grades to two Bs.
• a "plus" on this assignment will raise your grade on one of the first two assignments [the one on which you received the lower grade] by 2/3 of a grade. So, if your grades on the first two assignments were a B- and a B, getting a "check" on this assignment would raise your grades to a B+ and a B.

In doing this assignment, you should draw on Liberty, Equality, Fraternity as well as on materials presented in lecture. You MUST complete this assignment in order to pass the course. Ordinary late penalties apply.

Further Reading
In addition to the general histories listed last week, see:

Patrice Higonnet, Goodness Beyond Virtue: Jacobins in the French Revolution (1998).

David P. Jordan, The King's Trial: The French Revolution vs. Louis XVI (1979).

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.

Warren Roberts, Jacques-Louis David, Revolutionary Artist: Art, Politics, and the French Revolution (1989).

Timothy Tackett, When the King Took Flight (2003).

Michael Walzer, ed., Regicide and Revolution: Speeches at the Trial of Louis XVI (1992)

"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); sensationalist memoirs of a royalist Scottish courtesan.