Henry Kissinger once asked China's Communist Prime Minister Zhou Enlai whether the French Revolution had been a success. Too early to tell, was the famous reply. The storming of the Bastille in July 1789 marked the beginning of a revolution that would turn the entire world upside down. The seemingly eternal order of the Ancien Régime collapsed with a crash, a king by the grace of God fled and ended up on the guillotine, radical revolutionaries such as Danton and Robespierre seized power, and everything quickly descended into a frenzy of virtue and terror with thousands of deaths, until the revolution devoured its children and a victorious general finally took control. In barely ten years, which were among the most intense in world history, the door to a new era was thrown wide open. Johannes Willms, one of the foremost experts on the revolutionary era, describes, explains and analyses people, forces and motives. Above all, however, he repeatedly lets the actors themselves have their say. This gives his account the liveliness and power for which his historical works have rightly been praised.
Author
Willms, Johannes
Title
Tugend und Terror
Details
50 illustrations. 831 pages.
State
new
Subtitle
Geschichte der Französischen Revolution
Verlag C. H. Beck oHG Wilhelmstr. 9 80801 München Deutschland
