The French Revolution

The French Revolution is a work by Scottish essayist, philosopher, and historian Thomas Carlyle. It is a massive, even heroic undertaking - one which hadn't been achieved before and has not since. Carlyle's literary style is unique: written in the present tense first-person plural, A History follows along chronologically as the events of the Revolution unfold with sweeping, apocalyptic grandeur. The reader feels as though he or she were observing, participating almost in, the events occurring on the Paris streets. The reader is carried along day-by-day, month-by-month as the as the inevitable disaster comes to life: the meeting of the Estates General, the Tennis Court Oath, the march on Versailles, the varied attempts to draft a constitution, the fall out between the royal couple and the Revolutionary Government, the escape attempt to Varennes, the beheading of the king and queen, the "Reign of Terror," and lastly the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte as he famously cleared the streets with a "whiff of grapeshot."