Revolting tales
Is disappointed by a wry retelling of the French Revolution that lacks real academic insight
Stephen Clarke’s previous books have offered humorous insights into the French psyche from a self-consciously English perspective, with titles such as 1000 Years of Annoying the French and A Year in the Merde. In his latest, he turns his attention to the French Revolution of 1789, the event that transformed France from old regime to modern country and the seismic impact of which was felt globally.
Early chapters draw upon memoirs of courtiers at Versailles to show us the world that the revolution would sweep away. Stories of arrogant, power-hungry kings, ambitious mistresses and fatuous, decadent nobles are told with relish.
The last king, Louis XVI, was well-intentioned, and far from the fool often portrayed in popular histories, but he lacked the qualities needed to manage the financial crisis that threatened the monarchy from 1786. Pitiably out of his depth, he floundered indecisively, his lack of leadership doing much to precipitate the slide from state bankruptcy to revolution. His queen, Marie-Antoinette, also helped prepare the ground with her implacable hostility towards compromise with moderate revolutionaries and her growing determination to overthrow the revolution by means of an armed invasion by her Austrian relatives.
Despite the description of Clarke’s book as “the true, untold story of La Révolution”, few subjects have attracted more attention. Yet, puzzlingly, Clarke largely ignores what has already been written on the subject. Had he been more open to the work of historians, he could have found many more insights into what, as he puts it “went wrong” with the revolution – namely, why the constitutional monarchy, founded in 1789, collapsed just three years later.
The single most important reason is the war that broke out in April 1792 between France and Austria, escalating to include the major powers of western Europe united against the French. It was this war that radicalised the revolution and made the fragile monarchy untenable, yet the book devotes fewer than two pages to this fateful decision.
Clarke takes on the role of supercilious Englishman, explaining to his countrymen how the vagaries of the French led them to abandon their monarchy, whereas the English sensibly hung on to theirs. Of course, the narrative is meant to be humorous, but depicting history in terms of national stereotypes can be misleading. Clarke skims over the politics of the revolution itself, attributing its radicalisation to the antics of a few “troublemakers” leading “the mob” astray. In fact, relatively few nobles died under the guillotine. It was mass conscription – another consequence of the war – that ignited a civil war in western France, which in turn led to the great majority of deaths, most of them peasants. Clarke could have made interesting parallels here with the huge loss of life in Britain’s civil wars. But first he would need to abandon the national stereotypes, and read some more serious history.