Looking for a book on the French Revolution

[lucybeebee]

Does anyone know of a book on the French Revolution and/or The Great Terror that is sympathetic to the Church?

 

[Sr_Sally]

Does anyone know of a book on the French Revolution and/or The Great Terror that is sympathetic to the Church?

Try “To Quell the Terror”–it’s not really about the revolution so much as about the offering the nuns at a Carmelite monastary give to stop the war–their lives. A great read, very well researched.

 

[Lion_of_Narnia]

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama amazon.com/Citizens-Chronicle-Revolution-Simon-Schama/dp/0679726101/sr=8-1/qid=1169758105/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-2393980-8668933?ie=UTF8&s=books

 

[Nevarlander]

Lion beat me to it. It’s more “neutral towards the Church” than actively sympathetic, but a Really Good Read.

 

[Hastrman]

It’s more “neutral towards the Church” than actively sympathetic, but a Really Good Read.

Good, because the Church in France was so screwed up, all the good priests were Jacobins in the early phases of the Revolution. Being too pro-Church might make you neglect that little fact.

Supposedly, when Napoleon was trying to get the Church to support him (mostly because the French were still almost all Catholic, and he was himself, in a wishy-washy way), he said, “I’ll destroy the Church in France!”

And the Papal nuncio laughed in his face, and said, “If the French hierarchy didn’t, what chance do you think you have?”

Anyway, back OT, I’d recommend Hilaire Belloc’s book “French Revolution”. I think it might be available from TAN books. He was a professional historian, and, unlike nearly all professional historians writing in English, not only spoke French, but was French.