The third volume of Hippolyte Taine's monumental study on the origins of contemporary France focuses on the establishment and operation of the revolutionary government between 1793 and 1794. Taine details how the Jacobin faction, armed with the abstract dogmas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, seized absolute power through violence and intimidation, transforming the French state into a centralized despotism.
The author explains the mechanics of the Reign of Terror, showing how the Committee of Public Safety and the Revolutionary Tribunal exerted total control over life, property, and conscience. Through wholesale confiscations, forced loans, and the maximum price laws, the Jacobins systematically ruined the wealthy and middle classes while attempting to reshape human nature and society through socialist projects and a civil religion.
Taine describes the brave but ultimately futile provincial insurrections in cities like Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, and Toulon, where republicans who opposed Jacobin extremism were crushed and their cities subjected to mass executions and partial physical demolition. The author analyzes the fatal weaknesses of the moderate opposition, whose members were bound by habits of subordination and legalistic scruples that made them easy prey for ruthless fanatics.
The narrative follows the systematic proscription of the Girondin party through show trials, executions, and suicides, leaving the remaining members of the National Convention docile and terrified. Taine argues that the Jacobin system was a reactionary return to antique totalitarianism, wherein the individual was entirely surrendered to the community, destroying private initiative, economic productivity, and personal freedom.
The volume concludes with a profound philosophical critique of the modern centralized state, arguing that true public interest lies in the protection of individual liberty rather than in compulsory state regeneration, which ultimately leads to poverty, stagnation, and moral decay.
