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Novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a giant of nineteenth–century European literature. In his multivolume The Human Comedy, he investigated the general desire for social advancement in the post–revolutionary world. Although generally supportive…

Here Antoine–Pierre Barnave, a well–connected and influential lawyer from Grenoble, represented those interests that wanted to hold onto France’s rich colonial possessions. He wanted to treat the colonies separately from mainland France in order to…

Like his predecessors of earlier generations, playwright Pierre–Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais—who became an important figure of the late Enlightenment because of the controversy surrounding his work The Marriage of Figaro [1784]—believed that a…

Benjamin Constant (1767–1830) spent the early years of the French Revolution in a post at a minor German court. He moved to Paris in 1795 and became active in French politics (and became the lover of de Staël). He published pamphlets attacking…

The term "bourgeoisie" had many meanings in eighteenth–century France, from the most literal sense of "citizens of a city" to a more sociological meaning of talented and cultivated members of the Third Estate. Some eighteenth–century writers also…

Bonaparte’s secretary describes the religious practices, attitudes, and views of Bonaparte with regard to Islam. Accepting that the general curried favor with Muslims, he also hoped to deflect criticism of Bonaparte, claiming that what he did was…

In the waning days of the Convention in the fall of 1795, royalist–influenced sections in Paris revolted to prevent a new constitution that protected the position of the radicals. Bonaparte was delegated to put down the uprising of 5 October 1795 (13…

Jacques–Benigne Bossuet (1627—1704), bishop of Meaux, was a well–known seventeenth–century peacher who believed that although France had a sizable minority of Protestants, France should have a single religion, Catholicism. At the same time, he was a…

Having seized power through the coup of 18 Brumaire [9 November 1799], Bonaparte—now First Consul—set out to win public support for yet another new government. His first public pronouncement was the proclamation reprinted below, in which he claims he…

The petitions from rural communities decried the abuse of seigneurial dues that peasants owed to lords in exchange for which they were supposed to receive protection and supervision. But by 1789, as these excerpts demonstrate, peasants had come to…