The Terror: The Shadow of the Guillotine: France, 1792–1794

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.)