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Twelve Who Ruled - The Year Of The Terror In The French Revolution Paperback – January 1, 1966

by R.R. Palmer (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 5 ratings
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  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    Atheneum
  3. Publication date
    January 1, 1966
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000VA6YOA
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Atheneum (January 1, 1966)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 5 ratings

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R. R. Palmer

R. R. Palmer

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4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
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Top reviews from the United States

Dr. Miguel A. Faria
4.0 out of 5 stars The Tyranny of a Committee written in blood!
Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2020
R.R. Palmer was a Professor of History at Yale University, and as such, he wrote with as much objectivity, as he could muster. He also narrates with a profundity of knowledge that is salutary to facts, figures and historiography. Nevertheless, his thinly-veiled admiration for the Committee of Public Safety that ruled during the critical years of mid-1793 to mid-1794, in general; and Maximilien Robespierre, in particular, is palpable — in spite of his efforts to remain neutral.

Be that as it may, Professor Palmer is a witty and elegant writer, and his knowledge of the twelve members of the Committee of Public Safety during Year II and III (i.e., Revolutionary calendar) of the Republic, which by no coincidence are the same as those of the Reign of Terror — is incisive and commendable. This is true, not only for the Committee functioning as a collective body in the Green Room, but also in recollecting the deed of the individual members of the Committee, wherever they were sent and empowered to rule as virtual Roman proconsuls when serving as Representatives-in-Mission for the Republic in far of districts — whether they were ameliorating the terror as in the case of Couthon at Clermont and St Just at Alsace, or worsening it, as in the case of Collot d'Herbois at Lyons. We follow them from the time they ruled to their graves and the legacy of terror they left behind, so well-defined in the bloody totalitarian regimes of the 20th century.

I strongly recommend this book for scholars and history buffs of the French Revolution. No other book has this information in such a thrilling narrative, even and despite the author's propinquity to admire these men who were most responsible for the Terror that took the life of over 40,000 Frenchmen, and which, notwithstanding the author's opinion, has led to so much evil and class warfare in our own time.

Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D. is Clinical Professor of Surgery (Neurosurgery, ret.) and Adjunct Professor of Medical History (ret.), Mercer University School of Medicine; Associate Editor in Chief in socioeconomics, politics, medicine, and world affairs of Surgical Neurology International (SNI). His most recent book is America, Guns, and Freedom (2019)
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CJA
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Narrative History of the Terror
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2015
Verified Purchase
A beautifully written and thoughtful narrative of the year of the Terror and the 12 members of the Committee of Public Safety who ruled it. We are taught and socialized to believe that this was a time of simple insanity and that the revolutionaries were little better than the Einsatzgruppen who terrorized East Europe 150 years later.

There was, to be sure, a nutty element to the French Revolution. "Moderate" was a dirty word, and there was considerable pressure to stake out one's revolutionary correctness by advocating the most extreme measures. And there was a distinctly insane order issued by the Committee to liquidate the entire city of Lyons, at the time the second biggest city in France. Of course, this order was not carried out, and Palmer puts the terror into proper perspective. If anything, the Committee did not go far enough. As we learned later in the Twentieth Century, consolidation of power requires a great deal more killing than the amateurs of 1793-94 had the stomachs for.

Palmer stresses the innovation of the Revolution in mobilizing the assets of the nation around a centrally directed national fervor – which gave France a comparative advantage over all her enemies. We’ve become used to this technique in the past 100 years, but at the time it was entirely novel. The Terror was at first a means of furthering this mobilization effort and rooting out enemies who sympathized with the foreign powers fighting France. But as time went by, and France’s fortunes on the battlefield flourished, this fifth column rationale became less compelling. In the end, the Terror was a means of protecting the momentum of the Revolution itself. The Committee feared a flagging enthusiasm that would lead the nation away from the millennial goals of the Revolution.

As noted by Palmer, the Revolution cast off an evil and backward regime and attempted to institute all at once a modern secular state that rejected religion, promoted science, and promoted the rights and perfection of the individual. Much of the history of the Twentieth Century is presaged in the Revolution, which is why it still holds such a fascination for us.

'
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Bayard B.
4.0 out of 5 stars Great book! Describes cruelty, arbitrary murders and executions by Committee of Public Safety.
Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2022
I thought it was a great book on the cruelty, arbitrary murders and executions, and capriciousness of the Revolutionaries of 1793 - 1794. Chapter I provides brief biographies of the 12 men who comprised the infamous Committee of Public Safety. Chapter III “Organizing the Terror” describes the frenzy of murder of perceived “enemies of the people.” Succeeding chapters describe the paranoia of perceived foreign plots and domestic enemies. I thought that Chapter VII “Doom at Lyons” showed the revolution at its worst: the Committee of Public Safety ordered the city to be destroyed because too many of its inhabitants were judged to be insufficiently patriotic. It wasn’t done, but the actions of the revolutionaries in Lyons left a long-term revulsion against extremist political activities in France. Other chapters discuss political purging missions to Alsace and Brittany.

Chapter X “Dictated Economy” offers an interesting story of the revolutionary attempts at creating a controlled economy ranging from food to gunpowder. I wonder if Lenin and Trotsky used this as a model for War Communism in Russia in the early 1920s.

I have always been amazed (although perhaps I shouldn’t be) at the egomania of political extremists of both the Nazi and the Communist personalities.
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