The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine: France 1792--1794 (Greek Edition) [Hardcover]

Graeme Fife (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0312352247 | ISBN-13: 978-0312352240 | Edition: First Edition

For the audience that made a major bestseller of Simon Schama’s Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution comes this exhaustively researched, character-driven chronicle of revolutionary terror, its victims, and the young men---energetic, idealistic, and sincere---who turned the French Republic into a slaughterhouse.

            1792 found the newborn Republic threatened from all sides: the British blockaded the coasts, Continental armies poured over the frontiers, and the provinces verged on open revolt. Paranoia simmering in the capital, the Revolution slipped under control of a powerful clique and its fanatical political organization, the Jacobin Club. For two years, this faction, obsessed with patriotism and purity---self-appointed to define both---inflicted on their countrymen a reign of terror unsurpassed until Stalin’s Russia. 

            It was the time dominated by Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Danton, Jean-Paul Marat and Louis-Antoine Saint-Just (called “The Angel of Death”), when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette met their ends, when any hint of dissent was ruthlessly quashed by the State.  It was the time of the guillotine, neighborhood informants, and mob justice. 

            This extraordinary, bloodthirsty period comes vividly to life in Graeme Fife’s new book.  Drawing on contemporary police files, eyewitness accounts, directives from the sinister Committee for Public Safety, and heart-wrenching last letters from prisoners awaiting execution, the author brilliantly re-creates the psychotic atmosphere of that time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The contradictions and ironies of the Terror, when the guillotine bloodily ruled France, are well described by Fife in his part-narrative, part-character study of that dreadful era (the second recent history, after David Andress's, published last January). During Robespierre's Terror—often believed to have been a bourgeois-led, peasant-backed uprising against an autocratic nobility—nearly 95% of its tens of thousands of victims were, in fact, poor or middle class. And those left alive were tyrannized by the very same revolutionary fanatics who once claimed to be liberating them from the ancien régime. Playwright and documentary writer Fife ruefully concludes they had fallen victim to "sublime nonsense": the belief that by "destroying so much real life it was possible to remake an imagined life," and "that in striving to forge a republic of love, harmony, liberty and happiness," they inadvertently birthed "a monstrous, repulsive travesty of it." Fife gives an excellent introduction to the period, which should find an eager audience familiar with Simon Schama's bestselling Citizens, though its lack of endnotes makes it difficult to confirm Fife's numerous examples of spoken speech—or at least his translations of it (did Henri Admirat really say, "Come on, you low-lifes, come and get it"?). 16 pages of b&w photos. (Nov.)
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Review

“Strongly evokes the sense of isolation that fuelled the violence of those two years.”---BBC History Magazine (UK)

 

“Pulls readers into the frightening world of Robespierre and the horror he inflicted on the suffering population he was aiming to save.”---History Today (UK)

 

“Fife re-creates the horror of the time, offering readers a rare window into the past.”---The Good Book Guide (UK)

 

“A powerful and frightening account---based on fresh research and eyewitness accounts---of the great terror that swept France after the Revolution.”---Publishing News (UK)

 

“Graeme Fife’s engrossing narrative captures the perverted idealism that fuelled the Terror and vividly portrays the atmosphere of fear, panic, suspicion, and betrayal that gripped the populace.”---Yorkshire Evening Post (UK)

 

“These truly terrible happenings that convulsed and very nearly ruined France are brought vividly to life by Graeme Fife in The Terror, who brilliantly re-created the deadly, paranoid atmosphere of the time. . . . An exceptional work that will be welcomed by all students of the French Revolution and its terrible aftermath.”---Chester & District Standard (UK)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (November 14, 2006)
• Language: Greek
• ISBN-10: 0312352247
• ISBN-13: 978-0312352240
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #825,023 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Popular History, May 2, 2007

By 

R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine: France 1792--1794 (Greek Edition) (Hardcover)

Graeme Fife's "The Terror" is a popularization of this horrific but fascinating subject. I mean that in a good way. This book lacks a traditional scholarly apparatus (i.e. footnotes) and is stronger on storytelling than analysis. Simon Schama's majestic Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution is still the book to beat about the French Revolution. But if you perversely enjoy blood-chilling tales of political warfare and madness, as I do, you will like this book. Fife rolls out all the fearsome tales: the September massacres, the war against the Vendee, the political infighting that lead to the revolution devouring almost all its children. But Fife never loses sight of the dreadful human cost of the time: the shattered families, ruined lives and blasted populations and economy. When I finish a book like this I always thank heaven I live where I do, when I do. And hope we can learn the appropriate lessons about political humility, compromise, and, yes, charity.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thrilling "terror", January 16, 2009

By 

Mark Pearce (Melbourne Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine: France 1792--1794 (Greek Edition) (Hardcover)

I started reading this book before Christmas and before I knew it I was totally engrossed.

Fife does an excellent job of describing the madness of the Terror, and he skillfully weaves the actual voices (through letters etc) of the victims into the text.

Its an amazing story, and I found the book impossible to put down.

Also, Fife's prose made me turn purple with laughter in some places.. I think he is a very good writer... highly recommend it.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Lesson in History, August 4, 2007

By 

Roger D. Paterson "MD" (Haslett, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine: France 1792--1794 (Greek Edition) (Hardcover)

A Lesson in History
In this Postmodern Age of "enlightenment and progress" one needs to reflect on the lessons taught by history.
So many recent scourges of populations of helpless human beings who have found themselves at the center of political and ethnic conflict might convince oneself to ponder its meaning.
To me, the horrors of Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and many others, remain beyond understanding. So, in the midst of our modern-day national political scene, in the freest of all countries in the world, one can see the shadows of the ills that arise in those other outcomes.

The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine: France 1792--1794
This is the second newly published and fully researched book I have read on that subject.
The short-lived effort and ultimate failure of a people to obtain freedom from tyranny and unjust governance is one of horror and saturated with intrigue and betrayal.
It is completely astounding to me to think that the victory of the American Colonies over Great Britain in 1776 had only just been won less than two decades earlier!
Because by 1815, France had again reverted to a monarchy and who could have imagined the lives that would be fruitlessly sacrificed in that struggle for freedom?

The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France by David Andress (Hardcover - Jan 10, 2006)
This was the first book I read, and it was also a detailed and scholarly work. Both books added to my understanding of the human condition.
By a careful study of the story of that struggle for freedom and their hope to live in a free society, these two books will open the eyes of the thoughtful reader to our present day world.
I highly recommend them both.