Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

The French Revolution of 1789 is remembered first and foremost for what Hegel called its ‘shrieking aftermath’, five years of bloody terror, lynchings and massacres, and for years of tumultuous political upheaval, culminating eventually in the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte and unleashing twenty years of war. The roll call of people sent to the guillotine, often for the flimsiest of reasons, still has the power to shock: Antoine Lavoisier, the chemist, because he was a former tax-gatherer; André Chénier, the poet, because of an editorial someone didn’t like; Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, denounced by Robespierre; Robespierre himself, along with 2,500 others. Robespierre’s loyal follower Philippe Le Blas blew his brains out but even so was taken to the Place de la Révolution (now the Place de la Concorde) and beheaded all the same. People spoke of ‘guillotinemania’ and of ‘the red mass’ being celebrated by ‘worshippers of the scaffold’.