Ernest Belfort Bax

“ It is undeniable that there are many Englishmen who would indignantly repudiate any aspersions on their education for whom the French Revolution means little more than the destruction of one institution called the Bastille, the erection of another institution called the Guillotine, and the establishment of the Napoleonic Empire on the ruins of both. ”

“ For such as these, and for many others to whom the above remarks will not altogether apply, a condensed statement of the facts of the French Revolution cannot but be desirable, and although there exist summaries galore, the writer ventures to think that the present little work differs from them in two respects: firstly, in the point of view from which the Revolution is viewed, and secondly, in the endeavor to throw the principal events into as strong relief as possible by the omission of all detail which is unessential to the understanding of them. ”

“ Yet, though they may have suddenly become especially prominent, it must be understood that, in almost all cases, they were already familiar to the population of Paris, and, in many cases, of the whole of France, as club-orators, parliamentary politicians, or as journalists. It is not too much to say that in the French Revolution journalism first became a power in the world’s history. ”