Since 1793, the French government had carried out policies intended to ruin British commerce; it hoped in this way to eliminate or at least dampen the British will to join in and its ability to finance military coalitions against the French. Napoleon…
In this document, Jean–Paul Rabaut de Saint–Étienne, a Protestant pastor from Nîmes who had been a deputy to the National Assembly and who would later be elected to the National Convention, warns the central government of the ongoing violence in the…
The abolition of the feudal system, which took place during the famous night session of 4–5 August 1789, was precipitated by the reading of a report about the misery and disturbances in the provinces. The report was adopted in a fervor of enthusiasm…
Jacques Roux, a former priest turned radical revolutionary, became the leading voice for a group known as the "Enraged," because they expressed constant anger at the unfairness shown toward the ordinary, poor people who made up the bulk of the…
The petitions from rural communities focused in part on the abuse of seigneurial dues owed by peasants to lords for which, in principle, they received protection and supervision. But by 1789, these excerpts demonstrate that peasants considered their…
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), whose original name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein, was one of the chief figures in the Russian Revolution of 1917. After years spent in exile agitating in favor of Russian communism, he put his ideas into practice as one of…
Here Moreau de Saint–Méry describes the topography and peoples of the French part of the island, providing some important basic knowledge which he expands upon in subsequent passages.
The German philosopher and founder of international communism, Karl Marx (1818–83), wrote on many occasions about the French Revolution, which he considered the first stage in an eventual worldwide proletarian revolution. In this relatively early…
Marx’s lifelong collaborator, Frederick Engels (1820–95), devoted himself to popularizing the ideas he had developed with Marx. In 1880 he published this pamphlet in French in order to explain the main principles of communism. In this excerpt Engels…
One of the most widely–read authors of the late nineteenth century, Anatole France (1844–1924) saw the humanity of even the most notorious revolutionary figures such as Jean–Paul Marat. Yet, dedicated to the principles of 1789, France preferred the…
