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The third volume of Taine’s Origins of Contemporary France focuses on the Jacobins, tracing their origins, their rise, their conquest of power, and their conduct right up until the eve of the Reign of Terror. Taine first looks at them as a distinct political species–the specific conditions that gave rise to them, their common characteristics, their psychology, their language, their illusions, their manner and style. Taine then describes the formation of the Jacobin club, their primary sources of recruitment, the multiplication of their societies, their rallying points, their sources of power, their political manoeuverings, and the extent of their fanaticism. From their coming to power, the narrative deals with the despotic, dishonest, and criminal tactics with which they defeated the Girondists and justified or encouraged physical violence, up to and including mass murder, leading, finally, to the September massacres and the guillotining of Louis XVI. It seems the moderates, the reformers, and the enemies of the rising party are impotent, cowed, or without hope, unable to quell the Jacobins’ high-flown stridency, halt their aggression, or placate the cruel rapacity they instigate, all of which is invariably backed with brutal force, while couched in the fine phraseology of lofty humanist principles. Comprehensive, data-driven, and systematic, Taine’s account of the unfolding Revolution is, nevertheless, replete with human detail, macabre atmosphere, and literary flourishes; it is factual history, but it rather reads like a tale of Gothic horror.
