Of memoirs had turned into a major industry, and almost everyone, from Lafayette to Napoleon himself, had his own version of events ready for all to read. Soon, though, the facts began to be presented in a more inviting way. Great families, very lately at the peak of their splendor, struggled to survive newcomers rose dramatically, from workman to marshal of France or, in the most celebrated case, from impoverished lieutenant to emperor.Īll this made for reams of copy - first, and most austerely, in the shape of the decrees of the National Assembly and in the pages of official newspapers. Even when his execution had actually taken place, it still seemed almost more like fiction than fact.įor France, and then for the rest of Europe, the world changed utterly in the years that followed 1789: new regimes, new laws, a new organization of the way property was held, a new system of education - all these transformed the way people lived their Louis XVI, highly popular as late as the summer of 1790, would, two and a half years later, lose his life on the guillotine. He French Revolution, that swirl of events, passions and tragedies, struck even its participants as highly improbable: no one could have guessed that The New York Times: Book Review Search Article
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