How to understand the events after the French Revolution without this detail. The murders and thugs imported to Paris are shocking. Was France akin to Rawanda in the last century in violence ? The detailed biographies are especially revealing. Excellent ( )

1320. Paris in the Terror June 1793-July 1794, by Stanley Loomis (read 29 Mar 1975) This is one of the best books on the French Revolution I've ever read. It is in three parts. The first part covers in splendid detail Charlotte Corday and her murder of Jean-Paul Marat in July 1793. The second part deals with Georges-Jacques Danton and his trial and death in April 1794. The third and climactic part tells of Robespierre and the astonishing events in the Convention on July 27, 1794. The book is superbly if opinionatedly written and makes vivid those action-packed historic months when the French Revolution reached its climatic height of fury and death. To try to preserve a sense of the drama of this book I set out an excerpt:
"An obscure deputy named Louchot suddenly arose and spoke the historic words, ' I demand the arrest of Robespierre!' The word was spoken! The Mountain answered it with cries of 'Down with the tyrant!' The President's bell clanged without cease above the pandemonium. Robespierre, with a desperate effort, made himself heard: 'For the last time,' he cried at Thuriot 'will you let me be heard, President of the Assassins!' Like most famous phrases this one was reported in several forms. Others present thought that they heard Robespierre say, 'By what right have you made yourself the president of these assassins?' Whatever his words may have been, they gave the President a pretext to put his arrest to the vote. 'The monster has insulted the Convention!' declared Tallien indignantly.' A few pages later: "So, escorted by the cruel laughter and bitter maledictions of the People, to whom he had so ignorantly and so selfishly pandered, Robespierre went to his death. We are distant from the violent passions that informed that ignoble spectacle. .When Robespierre's turn finally came he was obliged to mount a scaffold covered with the blood of those who preceded him. A deathly hush fell over the mob as, assisted by Samson's men, he stepped towards the plank. Just before throwing him under the knife, Samson reached out and ripped away the bandage that supported his broken jaw. Robespierre's scream of pain, 'like that of a slaughtered animal,' was heard from one end of the great square to the other. An instant later...he was dead." ( )

Two copies