433, 434, 435, 437, and the feudal priveleges surrendered on Augby the National Assembly, p. Yet, there are numerous references to the seigneurial system, to feudal dues, to labor obligations (corvées), and to other traditional feudal exactions throughout his text. Schama, like so many of his « revisionist » contemporaries, never doubts that the Old Regime was « modern », or « bourgeois », but that in any case, it was no longer feudal. This tells us more about the author's approach, however, than it does about his subject. As for his view on revolutions in general, he writes that « asking for the impossible is a good definition of a revolution. He has little to say on Robespierre and the Great Committees, and nothing but an « Epilogue » after 9 Thermidor. Yet, this portion attempts to recite the dramatic events from the winter of 1793 through the fall of Robespierre in the summer of 1794. Part IV, entitled « Virtue and Death », which covers the most important, and, in some respects, the most meaningful developments for our own times, is a mere 170 pages. The text is 875 pages long, but the fall of the Bastille does not begin until page 369. But the latter are not the Girondins, Enragés, Hébertistes, or Jacobins of the Left, but, rather, the Males- herbes, the Neckers, and the Talleyrands. Instead, he judges the movement from the victims' outlook. He seldom looks at the events from the revolutionaries' point of view and never with sympathy for them. In this respect his narrative is a sensational story. Schama sees the Revolution as a series of scandalous events.

Unfortunately, as Thomas Paine said of Edmund Burke, « He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.

He admits that he does not believe in « pure objectivity » - what historian does? But the reader has the right to expect of him a fair treatment of the revolutionaries in the real circumstances of a profound social and political crisis. In « shaking off the mythology of the revolution » (see the interview by Mervyn Roth- stein in The New York Times, April 27, 1989), Schama has created his own mythology. » Simon Schama wants no revolution at all. Robespierre used to chide his moderate opponents of « wanting a revolution without a revolution. Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution.

Citizens by simon schama