Citizens: A Chronicle of The French Revolution

'Citizens' is written in a narrative style that gives life to a fascinating period in human history. The detailed descriptions of contemporary issues in art, literature and politics is a new feature in a description of the French Revolution.
In what is a novel approach to the history of the Revolution, Simon Schama devotes almost half of his work to a description of the Ancien Regime, including a very vivid glimpse into the lives of the Peers of the kingdom. By doing this his desciption of the lives of ordinary Frenchmen and Frenchwomen is not as satisfactory. He does, however, re-create the importance of the ordinary people in the lead-up to the Fall of Bastille, as well as the 'radical' phase of the Revolution.
The events surrounding the Fall of Bastille are well described with the effect that the reader feels part of the amazing and rapid changes of 1788-1790.
The period from the ratification of the Constitution of 1791 to the coup of August 10, 1792, is one of the most interesting and crucial turn of the Revolution. 'Citizens' descibes the rise of the republican movement excellently. The uncertainties of the time are shown vividly.
The feeling of destiny which marked the period of the beginnings of the First Republic, and its lead-up to the terror of the Committee of Public Safety, is seen both through the forceful and patriotic perspective of the revolutionaries, as well as the human and moderate eyes of those opposed to the radical solutions of this phase of the Revolution.
This is, however, where the narrative suffers. Schama's description of the Terror is emotional and filled with implicit and explicit condemnation. Although this is a natural reaction to the excesses of the period, it is a result of the benefit of hidsight. The National Convention was at the time genuinely trying to create a better system of government and the events of 1793-94 should be viewed through the eyes of the contemporaries. This is not to say, as the revolts in the Provinces show, that at the time there were no people opposed to the Terror.
Unfortunately, the inspired narrative ends with the fall of Robespierre. Although undoubtedly the intention of the author in pointing out how the Revolution made a full circle back to to tyranny, this is a sad result for those wanting to see how the Revolution lead on to the rise of Napoleon. Without this link-up the many important changes which originated during the Revolution and outlasted it are not given their due credit. The Revolution, after all, went on for another five years after the end of Terror.
Overall, 'Citizens' is an excellent book for those who wish to see the French Revolution through human eyes and in splendid detail. Anyone wanting a glimpse at the glamour of the Ancien Regime at its last, and Enlightenment philosophy in action, should definitely take the time to read 'Citizens'.

It is fashionable in America to presume that the American Revolution marks the fault line between the dynastic regimes of old and modern governments. The backwoods colonists of the New World handily defeated the trained soldiers of the Old and so liberated the world, paving the way for modernity.
Thankfully, this is not so.
Thankfully, because the responsibility for the curse of absolutism and the rise of oppressive, autocratic states so endemic in the 19th and 20th centuries falls squarely on the revered sans-culottes of France.
Reactionary, you say? Perhaps. But as Simon Schama demonstrates ably in this account of the French Revolution, the cry "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" so beloved of the Birkenstock Left first erupted from bloodthirsty mobs calling for their fellow citizens' heads.
The schoolboy believes the French Revolution was an inevitable reaction to its American counterpart, and to the coldheartedness of the French nobility. The Terror which followed, while regrettable, was wholly necessary to purge France of its old oppression. Like so much of history being taught today, this is simplistic tripe.
Schama explains the origins of the Revolution as no other, weaving the strands of the narrative together into a mighty torrent. Far from being unavoidable, the French Revolution was eminently preventable--if only the King took swift, decisive, and brutal action to deal with the revolutionaries before the famous Tennis Court Oath, or if he had reined in his imperial ambitions, or his incompetent ministers who bankrupted the Empire.
Schama punctures other schoolboy myths. The Bastille, long a symbol of monarchial tyranny, actually housed only a couple of bewildered old men, quite surprised at the row made over them. Queen Marie-Antoinette, far from being the viper who told starving peasants to "eat cake" if they could not find bread, went to the guillotine with a nobility the tyrant Robespierre could not match when his turn came. And there are countless other surprises in store within these pages.
Schama has an eye for detail. Were you ever morbid enough to wonder whether the victims of the guillotine were conscious as their heads were raised to the cheering throngs? It's in the book. Interested in the role figures of the American Revolution played in the French? Then you'll follow Thomas Paine, the Marquis de Lafayette, and others through the tumult.
Most importantly, you'll understand exactly how the Pandora's Box opened during the French Revolution drove the rise of fascism and communism, and why contemporaries the world over viewed it as the signal event of their time.
If there's one book you read on this fascinating era, read this one.

This book, in compelling narrative, makes is clear that the French Revolution actually began not with the clamor of the common people but with the blue-blooded aristocracy and the high clergy of the ancien régime who had been enamored with the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the views of the enlightenment (i.e., convincingly demonstrated in the Assembly of Notables convened in February 1787). Moreover, the revolution spilling into the streets of France began not in Paris but in the streets of Grenoble, the actual cradle of the revolution, with the Day of Tiles (June 10, 1788), and from there eventually spreading to the countryside with the grain riots and finally in March through April of 1789 in the concerted defiance of the hated game laws protecting birds and animals. The mobs learned to command the streets after the Réveillon Riots (April 1789) so that by July 14, 1789, they had had ample practice for the storming of the Bastille.
One gets to know with almost casual familiarity the important personages in the ancien régime, including those working behind the scene. (This has been heretofore usually the case only with the most bloodthirsty revolutionaries like Marat and Robespierre.) Regardless of what you have been led to believe, the earliest revolutionaries were not bourgeoisie, but nobility and high clergy, many of them functionaries in the old regime. Intoxicated by idealism and Rousseau's sublime concepts of virtue, reason, equality, etc., they had set out to correct real or perceived iniquities in France. Louis XVI's ministers saw the dangers lurking ahead, but seemed impotent to effectively protect the monarchy and solve the problems afflicting France, particularly the looming, serious financial problems and the threat of national bankruptcy. Nevertheless, these old regime functionaries, for the first time, are seen by the author as people of flesh and blood, although with all the frailties of ordinary men when all too often in times of crises - unlike other books in which they are portrayed almost anonymously as faceless aristocrats imbued not in human virtue, but only suffused of arrogance and other vices of idle and luxuriant living.
This book argues persuasively that the old regime was of itself undergoing changes of modernity in trade, technology, and laissez faire capitalism influenced by the teachings of the physiocrats, and these changes, rather than being openly welcomed by the people because of the advent of greater economic freedom, were actually decried and resented because these changes brought them insecurity and incertitude. The common people wanted cheap bread and regimentation whereas the lesser nobility wanted to hold onto the only thing left to them - their titles of nobility and what remained of their ancient land privileges, poor as most of them had become. It wasn't the lesser nobility or the bourgeoisie who led in the revolution.
From the outset of the revolution, for the most part, the liberal elite coming from the upper crust of the high nobility and clergy pushed for progressive change from above (operating in the voice of Mirabeau, Siéyès, Tallyrand, etc.) leading, whereas the poor and displaced persons militated from below. The destructive winter of 1788-1789 had forced the destitute and other disaffected elements of society to tread in the path of the revolution. The bitter harvest of 1787, the scarcities that followed, and the concomitant high prices for grain, bread, and other commodities did not help the looming economic and financial crisis. Mr. Schama certainly provides good evidence and persuasive arguments that those men of the nobility and clergy who were making war against their own classes set the revolution in motion - a tumbling, violent cascade that later they were unable to control.
One must visualize the French Revolution from its inception in 1789 to the end of the Terror on 9 Thermidor as a speeding log moving from left to right representing first the alleged enemies of the people, the aristocrats, the refractory priests, then the constitutional monarchists and foreigners, then the Feuillants, Girondins, Dantonists (and the Cordeliers), Hébertists, even more moderate or inconvenient Jacobins, and finally the Robespierrists - devoured by their own revolution. This log is ever being mounted by fresh radicals on the left while it continuously moves and is turned into lumber on the right by the circular saw of the revolution. (Only the Hébertists were out of sequence in the political spectrum only because the dictatorship of Robespierre outflanked them in the struggle for power.)
In the end, if the aristocratic leaders didn't escape as émigrés from the flames of the revolution they had created - almost uniformly, they, like reluctant ordinary Frenchmen, paid the ultimate price in the guillotine.
Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Sentinel of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) and author of Vandals at the Gates of Medicine (1995) and Medical Warrior: Fighting Corporate Socialized Medicine (1997).

This massive, exhaustively researched history reads more like a novel than an academic text. Schama has turned to the good old-fashioned style of narrative history in the tradition of Carlyle and has made his chronicle more than readable by the layperson.
I have only a few minor quibbles with this tour de force: Schama does make some minor errors of fact (errors which should have been caught by a copy editor, such as making not one but two mistakes over the age of one of the players); and he spends so many pages in exploring prerevolutionary France (over a third of the book!) that the crucial years 1793-94, in the final fourth of the book, seem to get short shrift. My guess is that Schama intended to spend more time with the Terror but was rushed to press by his publisher, who wanted to get the book in print in time for the July 1989 bicentennial.
Quibbles aside, a breathtaking and splendidly written history of the French Revolution.

Citizens is a truly wonderful example of narrative historical writing - a "tremendous performance", to borrow a favourite expression of Simon Schama. The author prefers a more old-fashioned interpretation of the French revolution, which presents the revolution as a drama and focuses on the characters that determine the unravelling of the plot. This choice provides the book with the memorable stories, such as the royal family's comically feckless flight from Paris in 1791, that make it such a delightful read. It is a liberating experience to find a general historical survey that does away with the conventional, stultifying analytical distinctions between economic, social and political factors. Instead, the reader can interact directly - as well as chronologically, which makes it easy to dip in and out of - with the actors and the events without having to navigate around tedious discussions of causal significance or complex arguments with other historians.

But it is the skill with which Schama recounts events like the fall of the Bastille that makes this book unique and easily the most enjoyable modern history of the revolution in English. The embellishing vocabulary (readers are advised to have a dictionary to hand), the recurring motifs (the revolutionary obsession with heads, whether on pikes or as busts) and the vivid build-up of tension are the true strengths of this so-called chronicle. It is perfect for the novice reader and the enlightened amateur alike. Citizens demands re-reading for the richness of its description to be fully appreciated, especially its masterful reconstruction of the fascinating and sometimes disturbing culture of the old regime, which is probably the most accessible that exists. The only disappointment is that it ends with Thermidor, in 1794. After 800 pages, one is still hoping for more, which is the highest recommendation possible for this genre of historical writing.

Simon Schama's "Citizens" is one of the best acccounts of the French Revolution by a modern scholar. And I mean, truly great scholarship is involved in this book - it is not a coffee table book by some romantic pop historian. Yet, it is not dry but a thrilling account, which shatters many politically correct preconceptions and misconceptions about the Revolution which set the stage for the birth of the modern world. Schama explores the politics of demonization used as psychological warfare. The people who stood in the way of the triumph of the Revolution, from Marie Antoinette to the peasants of the Vendee, were first dehumanized and then destroyed. Schama does not spare our sensibilities as he shows that Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were built upon lies, murder, and one of the most ruthless power struggles in the history of politics. I highly recommend this book for students of history and anyone interested in understanding how we got to where we are now.

For many years the Jacobin-Marxist school of interpretation has held sway in looking at the French Revolution. Historians such as Albert Soboul have dominated thinking about the events of 1787 to 1795. Schama takes careful aim at these historians with a massive work, that looks at the chaotic underpinnings of the French Revolution.
Schama is a great writer and recreates the swirl of detail of the period. Nonethless, historians such as Soboul need to be read as well. Schama can get a little lost in the detail and the great contribution of Soboul has been to look at the underlying social changes that affected French Society during that period.

It would be a grave mistake to believe that Schama was in any sense definitive, but he has shattered the Jacobin-Marxist school's ownership of the French Revolution. Each reader will have to decide which about truth of each interpretation.

Personally, I favour Schama.

In 1830, Tocqueville after his american journey wrote:In the future,two countries are doomed to share the world domination,United states and Russia.American people who has to make its ways through an hostile Nature, use freedom as mean for its domination.Russia which has to fight against its own people use bondage. Atfter reading this marvellous book,it appears to me that Schama draw the line between two revolutions. The first one is the freedom revolution the second one is the bondage revolution. The first revolution was dedicated to freedom, like its little american sister.Its goal was to achieve the world domination.To do that Revolution needs Unity.And the only one in France at this moment who symbolized unity and could achieve it was the King.Actually in the economic fied, Louis XVI pretty much agree with the Adam Smith's theories . But in social and religious matters he had more reservations. Mirabeau, La Fayette and others tried to change the king's feelings.The Prise de la Bastille cleared the way for reforms.The representants of the old feudal order, nobility and church,lost their obstructive power. Left the insider opposition. France since the beginning of the feudal order was a very divided country.From the time were monney was scarce and bartering the usual way to do business, french people don't like the ones who make money.The influx of new money and liberty threatened the " situations acquises" actually the old social order. The second revolution capitalized on this fears. The Rousseau zealots were against the Voltaire's followers.They prefer equality versus Liberty.But they thought in a very animals farm Orwell twist that some are more equal than others.To assure their domination, (in the future their russian bolchevic heirs will mimic them,) they used bondage with its collateral violence. But they have the same goal than their predecessors and they need unity. So they use an abstract concept the General Will easier for its prophets to manipulate than a live person, the king. Napoleon with the same goal, the world domination will unify the two revolutions. He will bring freedom to the other europeans nations through bondage. To my knowledge this exellent book is not translated in France. I guess I understand why? French people in their opinion brought the torch of freedom to the world and they don't like that a foreigner, told them that the truth is a little bit more complicated. Today french people are still divided between Unity an division. The same frenchman who had kissed, hugged and loved his fellow country men after the world cup victory in the soccer game,as soon as he is behind the wheel step on it and hate all the others drivers.

This is an extraordinary work of history. Schama brings the Revolution to life in a way that is reminiscent of a novel. The violence is brought to the fore in a way which I suspect is more appropriate than the prominence of ideology or demagoguery I've found in other works - and not only the September massacres or invasion of the Tuilieries, but small(er) events like the suicides of the Bishop of Grenoble in 1788, or Lamoignon (sacked minister of the crown) or the execution of Malesherbes.

I did think the narrative dropped off a little after the execution of Louis.

Even though I am well versed in both American and European history, my knowledge of the French Revolution was rather limited. Mr. Schama filled in all those gaps and then some. It is facinating to read how the revolution got more and more radical as time went on, until it got to the point where each group systematically destroyed each successive group and its individuals. What started as a noble goal degenegated into class hatred and retribution. Political correctness truly was the order of the day, and it took only one wrong word to literally lose your head! The contrast among the English, American and French revolutions is also interesting. The stability of the former two compared to the chaos of the latter. I was disappointed the book didn't continue until the Napoleonic coup of 1799. A glossary of the French terms would have helped.

The few negative reviews are written by neo-marxian ideologues. The man who stated that one cannot accept the American revolution while simultaneously rejecting the French is an imbecile. Burke did both. The American revolution was a conservative reaction to innovations by the English Crown and Parliament. The French Revolution was the fist great attempt the completely level society; to throw out the entire civil structure and in its place set up a polity based on nothng but the abstract reason of coffee house philosophes. No wonder Mr. Schama found reason to pause before praising this monstrosity. The old auto-de-fe was replaced by the more murderously efficient guillotine. What progress they attained!

I wouldn't have thought it possible, but Professor Schama has managed to write a boring history about one of the most dramatic events on modern history. Just why so many readers find it this book exciting is a mystery to me. I gave up after about a hundred pages. And I have read many books on the subject, both in English and French. Interestingly, a lot of my British friends regard this man as vastly overrated, and I can see why.

That history is inherently political. Schama's treatment of the Revolution as a destructive force to decent people (the Old Regime) should be pretty embarassing even for conservatives (not neccessarily by modern standards, I mean only in contrast to revolutionaries). The Old Regime was by no means as modern or innovative as he would have people believe. Yes, of course there were idealistic nobles, but the peasants were starving. Hunger doesn't make an appearance until page 280-something. His basic lack of compassion for the early revolutionaries, and their basic human needs, is pretty disheartening. It is also sad to see him shrug off the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. It just seems hypocritical for him to focus on the revolutionary (benevolent) nature of Old Regime nobles and not focus on the truly revolutionary nature of the DRMC.
I've always been idealistic about the unbiased nature of histroy, and have been unwilling to link politics with history. But Schama's book, truly laced with conservative prejudices and presuppositions, kind of disillusioned me.
He is a very good writer, and his incorporation of pictoral evidence is good, but he gives a slanted view of the Revolution.
Nevertheless, read it, but do so in comparison to an alternate history of the Revolution. For an equally skewed version, socialist histories are great counters. Georges Lefebvre is good (for a counter), and draw your own conclusions based upon the often counter theories.
Just don't think of Schama as the unbiased truth.

Brilliant and well written, Schama sweeps away the cliches - e.g. about the ancien regime being fossilised, and about class warfare. Instead, the complex dynamics of a desperate episode are revealed. How the revolution ate its children is well portrayed. The revolution's fascination with symbols and grand spectacles I found particularly striking and there are other aspects which may ring warning bells for today - for example the danger of sweeping away existing moral forms. Economics

Citizens is a complete chronicle of the French Revolution with heavy emphasis on the changing values of 18th century society. Simon Schama points out that Louis XVI's France was a much more progressive and dynamic society than the name "Ancien RegimeEsuggests. Did the Revolution (and subsequent Reign of Terror) actually put a stop to the social and political reforms that were slowly but surely coming to France under the Monarchy? This huge book is knockout history written by an author whose writing style is exciting and compelling!

Great as a cure for insomnia! The author jumps all over his timeline, pays close attention to irrelevancies and barely mentions pivotal events. A solid fifth of this book is setting the tone/scene. Truly one of the worst history books I've ever read. Rivaling Davies' 'Europe: A History,' it being the #1 worst.

This book is wonderfully composed; as is to be expected from one of the most prominent and well spoken historians of our time. Schama breaks down the events and people in a way that paints a magnificent and complete picture of the French Revolution.

Schama is trying to alter some pretty generally accepted perceptions of the French Revolution. We need to have our notions and opinions challenged. But not every challenge will overturn the established view or paint a truer picture of the subject.

Emphasis in this book is skewed; that is, the number of pages given to events is in improper proportion to what occurred and when. Some of the stories can be shown to lack vital context. I believe Schama is wrong about the French Revolution. I think too that he is driven by ideological fashion.

Roughly speaking, it is generally understood that the French Revolution was an attempt to gain some equality, justice, and efficiency in an utterly unjust and outmoded society. How and why something so highly conceived spiraled at times into the politically macabre is not answered once and for all. It's the reason for the endless fascination with this epoch. Simon Schama says it was all just romantic silliness, naiveté, and blood lust.

To make the case, he must paint the Old Regime as vibrant, healthy, and bourgeois. The picture does not square with the facts. Louis XVI, in a speech three weeks before the storming of the Bastille, said: "All property without exception, shall be respected at all times, and his majesty expressly includes under the name of property the tithes...feudal and seigniorial rights and duties, and, in general, all rights and prerogatives, useful or honorary, connected with lands and fiefs, or appertaining to persons."

Does your definition of property include the church's right to a certain percentage of your income? Is preferring not to work a month or two out of every year for the local aristocrat some form of extremism? Those obligations passed down from generation to generation.

It pays too to read Rousseau. Professional philosophers have not stopped having to take him seriously.

You cannot consistently condemn the French Revolution and approve of the American Revolution.

This is not a reliable overview. True, enough: There are plenty of good stories. But don't fail to notice that "Citizens" is veiled polemics.

The author has a powerful command of the english language lending support to convey a landscape of color to a black time in french history.
Schama gives his personal convictions as to the causes leading up to this bloody revolution.
He tends to firmly believe the leading aristrocrats are the ones leading the charge and not so much the suffering peasants.
Here i beg to differ.
The leading aristocrats knew that things had to change drastically or else the poor would revolt to such a degree that not only the royal would be cut down , but the entire landowner class throughout france.
The crisis began centuries ago with the wealthy/monarchy of europe fighting each other, fighting other nations, fighting the poor, the poor fighting each other, etc,,fights revolts on every side , on all levels of *society* non stap for 2 millinium, IOW the rench revoltion had always been there as a reality, it just boiled up in the pot,,like a good cajun gumbo, and seems the chef took his eye off the kettle and the brew boilded over.

The germanic tribes/prussia used Iron Death squads to crush the poor for centuries, thus avoiding a major catastrope like that in Frnace late 1700's.
Anyway with my Jungian studies, I am able to see more of the psycholoy behind key events, key players in this blood bath, and thus see beyond the plain cold hard facts, just how this senario will continue to be played out.
Oh yes , france is a longgggg way off from any non revoltionary times. .
Here is where historians like the 40 reviewers and Schama have to bow and give a humble ear to Jungian ideas of humnan nature, the collective unconscious and its laws..
You see with Jung's ideas one has a clear mountain/valley eagle eye, fox nose sense of what is really truly going on.
IOW w/o Jungian studies one's senses are dulled, blurred by ones ego/lopsided opinions.
Sorry you historians, history can only come to like, take breathe only with a superior psychlogical eye.
True, I have not read the entire book as yet, with a smattering of euro history.
Lastly I wish to say now I can understand why france is entraped in the death throes which entangle her on all sides, as she clings to life.
She has never learned from her bloody history and now it is too late to learn, the *revolution* will take place upon all france, rich/poor , all color, all her multide of races.
Only, only through a complete committment to the Holy Spirit of God, through Jesus Christ will a few souls survive the next century of revolution.
France will torn to pieces via deep social unrest/illness and through God's chastizements.
Remember france is suffering from a huge influx of islamic immigration, top this off with geramny now holding the purse strings to feed a ever poorer europe. Germany has to feed her 20+ children. (20+ poor euro countries)
When german funds run out, france will go crawling to germany looking for a *bailout*, which will never come, as germany will confess the money has already been given out in the past 100 yrs to keep the monsterous euro machine alive.
*what, no money /food for us brother germany?*,
*can't, as we have scant little for ourself just barely staying alive,,if you want to call this life*
Can you believe france will go begging to their longtime arch enemy germany, those cousins who they hate with a eternal passion?
France is cornered in by islamics and her germanic cousins.
She can not run to the catholic church, that cess pool of of antichrist tradition. Protestantism?
Nah, no spiritual help there either.
Only God's Holy Spirit will deliver a few souls in france from the fires of the next 100 yrs.
Yes the book is a absolute read if you want the inside scoop of the complex tragedy.

Well written, but profoundly reactionary. The author's counter-revolutionary preferences are so glaringly obvious that I could not enjoy the book, not even as a counter-point to my own opinions.

I've seen this recommended as the one book to read about the Revolution, but I disagree. There are vastly superior authors to read like Souboul, Mathiez and Lefevbre.

The ideal historian's first concern is with truth, facts, correct information.
The ideologist/propagandist first concern is selling a particular point of view,
and treats facts with great liberty, spotlighting them or ignoring them
according to how well the facts fit the ideology being pushed.

Simon Schama is here pushing the conservative view of the French Revolution,
and does it to an extreme. Facts that indicate that the Revolution was
both unnecessary and a disaster are highlighted, facts indicating
the opposite are ignored. The prose most often falls into the most banal sort of 'op ed' writing
(if the op ed page was in the Wall Street Journal or the National Review).
Only Mathiez (Robespierre's most well-known champion) matches Schama for
his ideological treatment of facts and his passionate but mediocre rhetorical
trumpeting of an ideological 'line.' Once again, political opposites
appear alike in their abuse of the art of history in the name of propaganda.

For more reliable and objective accounts, try Doyle for the conservative
viewpoint (Oxford History of the French Revolution), and Lefebvre for the liberal
view (any of his volumes of the French Revolution, or the whole big set).

I spent 5 months dragging myself through the endless pages of this terrible book. I don't know how he managed to make such an interesting topic such a cure for insomnia. Schama's greatest fault is his lack of information. For hundreds of pages he wanders from topic to topic with no coherent link to any of them, or any apparent order. You can skip the first 500 pages and not miss much. After that, it gets a bit more exciting, and a bit better organized, but it still isn't very well-written, and it doesn't even come close to being concise. Not worth the money to buy it or the time to read it.

Schama's "Citizens" is an in-depth, scholarly, and, ultimately, readable, tome which sets out to examine in detail virtually every aspect of a key event in European history, the French Revolution. At nearly 900 pages, the book is not designed for those wishing to simply develop a basic understanding of the events surrounding the Revolution (Doyle's The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction admirably fulfills that role), nor is the book designed to be a strictly sanitary textbook treatment of the subject (more on that in a bit). But if you have a few weeks of daily reading time to invest, and if you are willing to carefully work through the text (and yes, as one reviewer said, with thesaurus in hand), the reader can develop a highly detailed understanding of this epochal event, and even develop some defensible opinions about it.

As anyone familiar with Schama's masterful application of the English language knows, any Schama piece generally exhibits a more sophisticated level of writing than many US readers might be accustomed to, and it is necessary to slowly and carefully read each sentence before moving on in order to keep the logic and detail of the narrative clear. Nevertheless, over time, one becomes accustomed to Schama's elevated style of writing, and that will be the point when the true mastery of the prose begins to emerge: this is truly scholarly writing that is, nevertheless, aimed at the general audience. The exercise is initially difficult, but ultimately, rewarding, and one finds appreciation for such writing skill growing with each page turn. (Compare Schama's similarly-written text, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, which can even be more complicated at points than the present work.)

"Citizens" chooses a biographical style to deliver a massive amount of information surrounding the French Revolution, and considering the numerous and intricate details of the topic, was probably a wise choice on the part of Schama. As we work our way through the volume, we are comprehensively introduced to such characters as Nekker, Mirabeau, Brienne, Target, and a host of others (including the more commonly known characters) to the point where we begin to feel we know these individuals as people, rather than historical place markers. Viewed through the lens of each, we begin to see how the Revolution simultaneously made sense and no sense, depending on who was being asked. And here is where Schama's text diverges from more traditional views of the Revolution. Unlike many histories, Schama provides a variety of evidence to argue that the Royalty (the "Ancien Régime," the Old Regime) was actually in the process of undergoing reform on a number of fronts, particularly the area of taxes, without a revolution taking place to precipitate such reforms. Whether one believes that the reforms being attempted under the Ancien Régime were sufficient, or even destined to become permanent, is not quite the issue. Schama presents the argument, and not totally unconvincingly, that the presence of such reform attempts makes one question the ultimate necessity of the Revolution. Compared with such events in England as the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (the bloodless revolution that saw England move from absolute authoritarianism to parliamentary rule), Schama makes the telling point that it is not a necessity that bloodshed and violent overthrow of government be a part of movement toward constitutional rule. The contrast, then, of the development of British parliamentary government with French Revolutionary goals is clearly made.

Schama brings then point home by commencing to depict, in sometime hideous detail, the gruesome terror that descended upon France. These "excesses of the French Revolution," as Thomas Jefferson may have called it, serve in Schama's prose to be witness for his point: the seeming meaningless slaughter at times with no point seems to speak its own message to the reader.

There can be little doubt that the French Revolution, in spite of the often horrible events surrounding it, eventually precipitated good in a number of ways for the French people, and perhaps, for the world at large. Schama's history is tagged "revisionist" by many reviewers here, but I think not. Schama has a knack for presenting historical facts even when those facts may not entirely support someone's historical agenda or interpretations. And in the end, Schama presents a strong amount of evidence to make one question a more common interpretation of the event. Whether one accepts the underlying assumptions is perhaps not as important as learning all Schama has to teach us about the event we call "The French Revolution."

See also
Interpreting the French Revolution (a differing view from an esteemed French historian on the left)
The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (a fantastic short introduction)
The Oxford History of the French Revolution (Doyle's more extensive look, published by Oxford)
Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, Vol. 1 - Conflicts and Divisions (a chapter in the monumental and critically acclaimed work by the French historian Nora)