After Robespierre: The Thermidorian Reaction

A companion volume to Matthiez' great history of the French Revolution (UL-169), After Robespierre describes the crucial period following Robespierre's overthrow and execution that was to end, finally, in the supremacy of Napoleon. It was a period of intrigue, misgovernment, corruption and counter-revolution as politicians jostled and competed with one another in bids for popularity and power. For with Robespierre's fall, revolutionary idealism had perished as an effective force in France, replaced only by personal rivalries and private interests. Matthiez' masterly account of the breakdown of the first great European experiment in representative democracy is drama of the highest order and history of the first rank.