French Revolution

The Remarkable Memoirs Of Madame Roland

Quintus Curtius Biography, History , , ,

When a writer composes his or her memoirs while in prison awaiting execution, we owe it to ourselves to consider what they have to say.  It may be a cliché that the prospect of death focuses the memory and concentration, but it is a cliché that is powerfully true.  In Chapter 5 of Thirty-Seven, I discussed the fate of Boethius, who wrote his Consolation of Philosophy while languishing in a dungeon (and awaiting execution) for a crime he did not commit.  I recently heard of another last testament written during captivity:  the poignant memoirs of Jeanne Manon Roland (1754–1793), known to history simply as Madame Roland.

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Focus On Causes, Not On Pretexts

Quintus Curtius Thought ,

The great Irish statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke wrote a seminal essay of political theory in 1790 entitled Reflections on the Revolution in France.  His purpose was to attack the intellectual underpinnings of the revolution and show, by reasoned argument, that the French revolutionaries were engaged in the height of folly by consciously turning their backs on the past.  The long essay was cast in the form of a “letter” to an unnamed “gentleman in Paris,” and stretched to nearly 360 pages.

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