I haven't actually read today's chapters yet, but I got the email right as I was thinking about people's reactions to the Wolf Hall Trilogy v APoGS, so I thought I'd ask: Hilary Mantel loves her morally grey tragic heroes, and yet people seem to interact with Cromwell in a much less morally judgemental way than I've noticed people doing with Danton or Camille or Robespierre on this slow read, even though there's a lot of parallel as all four slowly become "worse" throughout the book/s. I have speculations as to why, but I don't really know, and I'm very curious as to why other people think!
I think there are all kinds of possibilities: the multiple perspectives mean we never get quite as attached to any of these guys as we do with Cromwell. We live inside his head for 2,000 pages, and that creates an intimacy we are not given here.
Arguably, we can also say that the Jacobins are less redeemable than Cromwell. Mantel portrays each of the three Jacobins as quite fundamentally flawed, in such a way that they will be guilty of immense crimes against humanity. Cromwell's flaws are almost more human: ambition, overconfidence, self-delusion.
I remember at the Wolf Hall Weekend, the Cromwell historian Diarmaid MacCulloch saying he couldn't finish A Place of Greater Safety, because everyone in it is so horrible. Perhaps he would say this, but with Cromwell, we are dealing with a more sympathetic character.
Saying all that, I wonder whether it is entirely correct to say the four characters get "worse" throughout the books. Power corrupts them, certainly. But the thing that seems more to unite them is a sense of becoming more trapped, more boxed in: forcing them to make mistakes and more violent decisions.
Afterall, Cromwell was always a murderer, and the three Jacobins were pretty wretched to begin with.
Very interesting thoughts! Your point that it's not them who gets worse, but the range of decisions that they have that gets narrower rings very true to me, and I think is the root of tragedy of both books. They don't have any good decisions left to make, and even Max is forced to compromise his morals.
It's interesting that you view Cromwell as a more sympathetic character: ignoring Mantel for a second, he spends his life working for someone basically everyone agrees is a monster, who I've read personally had more people executed than were killed in the Terror (citation needed), for no other reason than he wants to rise in the world. Whereas our three revolutionaries are trying to make a better world: they are establishing the beginning of human rights in Europe, trying to abolish slavery, starting the suffrage right, and so on. Particularly Danton might be doing it for the same reasons as Cromwell, but Robespierre and Camille both believe in it too some extent, but it's hard for me to see them as more "horrible" than Cromwell. Though of course, they are all dangerously flawed as people, but again, their flaws seem quite as human to me as Cromwell's: Danton's are basically the same, for example. Robespierre is, what, rigidity and idealism and a sort of stubborn blindness to reality and an over-reliance on himself, and then the increasing paranoia as he gets iller, and then Camille is self-obsessed and has a cruel streak and doesn't really care about anyone apart from "his" people. A bit oversimplified there compared to Mantel's masterful analysis but I don't think it makes them particularly inhuman.
One of the things I particularly like about APoGS is that it's basically about how power corrupts: what kind of personality could you have that wouldn't be twisted in those sorts of circumstances? Because it's not just our (anti)heroes, everyone on all sides acts horribly when they pressure is on. The scene where they vote to now prosecute deputies is particularly awful, in a great way.
It's a bit different to Cromwell, but one of the things I love about Wolf Hall is how he starts off as a normal person, and makes worse and worse choices until he too is also a monster like Henry VIII, but Mantel does a masterful job of justifying him to himself in the text, and perhaps it's because she did such a good job at it that he is so much more sympathetic!
Whereas in APoGS it is the opposite: there is very little textual justification of why characters act the way they do, it's a bit more honest in a way than Cromwell as unreliable narrator. And despite being a book about the French Revolution, it's notable how it's actually almost entirely absent from the text: it's portrayed more as something happening off-screen, which the characters don't think about except either in the vaguest terms or entirely mercenarily. Only their quotes and glancing mentions show what they actually thought about the French Revolution and the fashions and ideals of the time, rather than their lives as the French Revolution was happening, whereas from what I've read of Camille & Max, they both seemed to really care about a lot of the principles of it. Not that you'd know that from this book! Which I'd never noticed before this slow read. It's almost defined by its absence. Which is a fascinating choice.
I think another difference as well is systems of power: Henry VIII and Cromwell are the system, whereas our revolutionaries are (at the beginning) fighting against the system, and we always view violence against the current system as worse than violence from the current system for some reason.
Sorry this is an essay haha, I've been thinking about it a lot recently. I think you're right in that it probably just comes down to that intimacy that Cromwell has that we don't find with the FR guys.
It makes me want to reread Mantel's essays to see what she says about these things!
Also, thanks for the Dillon letters link, that was very interesting.
I'm afraid the point about executions is definitely wrong and misleading. There were 10,000s of executions during Henry VIII's reign, but that includes common criminals in an era where capital punishment was commonplace. It also covers four decades. The Henrican Reformation was bloody, but nothing like the scale of the French Revolution (which itself was tiny compared to the killings in the 20th Century).
I think it is also completely wrong to contrast the Jacobins as principled revolutionaries trying to make a better world with Thomas Cromwell as a cynical henchman carrying out orders. The picture that emerges from Diarmaid MacCulloch's analysis is an energetic reformer and Rennaisance administrator who thought government could be improved and he could do it.
I'd also disagree that APOGS presents the protagonists as entirely cynical. I think Mantel does a good job at showing that they do care about injustice and do believe they are making a difference. We see a lot of that in the early part of the novel, and while Danton and Camille lose heart, Max becomes clearer on this point towards the end. But Mantel does a great job at showing that this isn't all they care about, and that each individual is a mess of competing interests and motivations.
So I'd agree that a lot of it comes down to our intimacy with Cromwell, Mantel's mature writing style, and the fact that the story of Thomas Cromwell is just fundamentally a better and more compelling narrative than the Jacobins'.
Good to know about the execution figures being wrong! Should have looked into that when I read it.
One thing I find a bit frustrating about talking about these books on substack is I find it quite difficult to make my points understood without writing a whole essay lol, I don't think I'm very good at summing up my ideas in shortform and I feel like it often comes across wrong. I definitely don't think our (anti)heroes were particularly principled, or that APoGS presents them as entirely cynical (well I think Max and Danton are quite far apart on that scale but in a human way), nor am I saying that Cromwell is just a cynical henchman. But I also don't see them as straight up evil or amoral like some people have commented, or Cromwell as entirely a good person as I've seen some people (not here) argue. I think the whole point of what Mantel writes about them is that they're morally grey, they're people not characters even though of course they are characters, if that makes sense. They act according to what their values and morals are, how they can best get ahead, how they can protect themselves and the people they care about, and their personalities dictate how they compromise and how they justify themselves when faced with impossible - or difficult - decisions. In a way I think it's a really large part of the genius of Mantel, that her characters aren't just black or white like so many fictional characters are, and I think a huge amount of both books/series are lost without that kind of greyness and humanity.
Nothing wrong with a whole essay! Just this morning someone sent me a message saying how much the comments enrich the reading and I totally agree!
I think we pretty much agree on the moral greyness of all these characters, and I do find myself pushing back against readings that seem to flatten the characters and dispel the ambiguity, one way or another.
In a way, Mantel can't win. She came under flak for making Cromwell seem "too nice" and gets criticised for making the Jacobins "too horrid." Of course, she does nothing of the kind. But critics who ardently want to believe French Rev = good ; Henrican Reformation = bad, are going to have a hard time with Mantel's books.
"Flattening" the characters is absolutely correct. I'm not sure if it's a recent trend in fiction or if I've simply been noticing it more recently but it does seem like people are less accepting of grey characters, and want to put them in either "good" or "bad" which I'm not sure works well for fiction or life generally, but certainly works badly for Mantel. I've spent quite a lot of time arguing with a few friends who say that Mantel is glorifying Cromwell and viewing him as entirely perfect or something. Like you've pointed out many times, it ends up being a very shallow reading of her works & I think it does her a disservice: i suspect there's far more nuance in her books than I've spotted!
Interestingly I don't think many English-speakers view the French Revolution as a good thing, I think they're far more likely to see it and its protagonists as a negative thing and imo that's partly why even at the beginning of APoGS when Max is very ethical and principled and not at all murdery people tend to view him as evil or horrible. (I do tend to view the FR as overall a good thing for the world, excluding the Terror ofc and the many other negatives, but I suspect that's because I read French sources first: perhaps that's why I find it easier to see the revolutionaries as flawed & grey humans who achieved a lot of good and a lot of bad than as simply evil or immoral).
But I do also think Mantel succeeded much more in making Cromwell sympathetic than the APoGS people, and that is reflected in how people respond to the characters. Another theory is that perhaps she was simply wasn't trying to.
Haha I think perhaps I should leave the essay-writing to people who are more eloquent than me. I also love the comments though, I find them really valuable, particularly with Wolf Crawl as I actually know very little about the Tudors (although I know more now!). You've made such a great thing here with these slow reads with your information, commentary and the comments too, and it's always a highlight of my week!
In Wolf Crawl, Cromwell speaks directly to us (almost), so we are seeing his point of view. Although, he presents what he wants us to see - presumably the best - he doesn’t shy away some of the less than perfect aspects of his actions.
It reminds me a bit of 'Richard III' where he gets us on side, even though he is doing appalling things. Without the sililoquies, he'd just be an out and out villain.
I think you're absolutely right! If you think about what Cromwell is doing - choosing to follow someone as frankly evil as Henry VIII, executing people over religion because it meant he had more power and more money and so on - he is a villain. But Mantel writes his perspective so cleverly that it feels almost justified, you barely even notice, he's just shades of grey like everyone else. Which I suppose is the point!
It's all such a mess! Who's sure if who is doing what with whom? I thing Mantel manages to give us the sense of chais brilliantly, but I'm feeling a bit lost with the events. (I think that may be deliberate on Mantel's part.)
I really enjoy the confident writing that allows Mantel to put in a very funny confessional scene in the midst of the drama. And Manon's farewell to her husband is just heartbreaking.
Tangent: a journalist I used to know has published something about a new metro mayor possibly doing things off his own bat without (possibly) getting the right permissions and (allegedly) inappropriately involving his party. I couldn't help thinking that that is exactly what's going on here.
Quick! Send for some decent administrators and governance experts!!
"There are periods in revolution when to live is a crime, and people must know how to yield their heads if they are demanded."
The slow, steady march of Max's tone towards darkness has been really well executed throughout this novel, and this was a set-the-book-down-for-a-second line for me. It also sets up a fascinating juxtaposition with Camille and his increasing skepticism: "It is a sort of blasphemy to make human reason contradict itself and advise in the name of policy what it forbids in the name of morality."
When Camille is speaking most wisely and admirably of our trio, it cannot bode well for him, I'm sure...
Really enjoyed the whole discussion about how we react to the key figures here compared to how we react to Cromwell. I honestly think it does boil down to the singularity of viewpoint, which works so brilliantly in the Wolf Hall series. You really feel you're in that person's head, and though you might not always like what he's doing, you totally get why he's doing it. I've struggled a bit all through APOGS with the multiple perspectives, and have definitely ended up feeling much less forgiving... (Apart from Camille... It's illogical, but I do have a soft spot for Camille, partly because he gets so many of the best lines, and partly because Jonathan Keeble gives him such a good voice.)
I'm putting my hand up as confused this week, I think I need to read over it again. So much takes place off the page. Did I just miss Manon's arrest/capture, or did we not actually see her again after she farewells her husband? A tragic scene if there was one!
I've also realised I've been confusing my Antoines - Saint-Juste is NOT Camille's cousin, just the object of his murderous fantasies. Am I right in thinking that both Saint-Juste and the other Antoine, Fouquier-Tinville, both end up fairly central to Terror-related activities? Are they part of the same faction?
Despite missing some of the key moments, the growing dread is palpable. Robespierre taking out his little notebook and writing "Danton" at the top of the page was chilling. There is such a sense of events piling irrevocably upon one another, so that even the most principled person is backed into a bloody corner. And who wouldn't try to fight their way out and take their political enemies down in the process? Maybe I'm too sympathetic to the bloodthirsty, but Mantel gives us such a human story. I can condemn it, but I also see how it happens!
Hang on, I've just gone back to your very helpful character summaries, Simon, and seen that in fact both Antoines might be related to Camille! I'm surrendering myself to Antoine-based confusion, all Antoines are someone's cousin 🤯
Feeling the dread! Yes, Manon has been arrested – her husband has fled. And although Fouquier is definitely related to Camille, Camille thinks he is also related to Saint-Just in some way. Perhaps yes all Antoines are our cousins.
They are not members of the same faction. Saint-Just fill sit on the Committee of Public Safety when Camille is arrested, and Fouquier will be the public prosecutor at the Revolutionary Tribunal. Saint-Just definitely wants Camille dead, but Fouquier is just doing his job! 😬😬
Poor Camille, persecuted by so many Antonines. I can’t remember what happened to Antoine Barnave (is he dead yet? I assume like pretty much everyone he will be soon) so perhaps the Antoines are just getting their own back!
This made me feel better, I had a sudden moment of clarity earlier today when I realised that Saint-Juste & Fouquierre-Tinville weren't the same person!
This section gave me a queasy feeling, it's hard to feel on solid ground when there are so many ominous references to the future. ("In April there were seven executions; undramatically, the numbers will increase." & "The Tribunal often acquits: in these early days, at least.")
I've been listening to the Revolutions podcast & although I haven't got very far yet, I did pick up one point that really hit home: he mentions that an unusual aspect of the French Revolution was the constant presence of an audience: "the leaders of the French Revolution always had a crowd to play to, and the impact of turning governance into theatre would play a major role in how things would unfold". This felt very true in this chapter: Danton's endless list of concerns includes the public gallery and the press, Marat is acquitted at a trial that is "packed with Maratists from the streets", and at the new home of the National Convention, the president looks down warily as "three thousand insurrectionists pour from the Faubourgs and mill about on the floor below him".
I'm always on the lookout for points of connection between APOGS & Wolf Hall, and this section seemed particularly full of them.
- Robespierre comments on the importance of being seen and heard: "I can't afford to be ill."
- Robespierre's approval of erasing the Brissotins from political life even if the specific charges are untrue reminded me of Cromwell in Bring Up the Bodies, finding men who are guilty "Though perhaps not guilty as charged";
- Manon thinks that Danton values "cynics with strong stomachs";
- Robespierre feels obliged to take notes on things that Camille has told him in a private conversation, reminding me of Cromwell’s reminder to Wyatt, "You know I am not a man with whom you can have inconsequential conversations";
- & Lucile/Cromwell's little knife makes another appearance when Camille fantasises about killing Saint-Just with "a small knife, the kind you would hardly know that you were carrying".
Finally, I found it a little unsettling that Robespierre, a man previously known for believing everything he says, is now distinguishing between his personal views and recommendations to the nation, leaving dissolute Camille as the voice of integrity who claims "My public views and my private views are the same".
In these chapters, Europe discovers totalitarianism. The French Revolution, for all its Enlightenment origins, becomes the prototype, the model, and the inspiration for what Hannah Arendt later identified as the modern authoritarian state: centralized, ideological, and ultimately murderous. The Mountain Jacobins didn’t just seize power—they redefined the nature of governance.
Robespierre’s insistence that only “a strong central authority” could save the Revolution laid the groundwork: “The ministers are ciphers, the Convention is factious, so it must be the Committee.” Advocacy for American-style federalism—once considered a legitimate political stance—became grounds for execution. “They are for the provinces and against Paris—they are federalists,” Robespierre warns. “They want to split the nation into little parts. If they get their way, what chance have the French people against the rest of Europe?”
By this logic, internal dissent became treason, and the Revolution began devouring its own. Even the aesthetics shifted: the Convention, relocated to the Tuileries, now sits in brutalist geometry—right angles, blank plaster, immense tricolor banners, and the bust of Lepelletier as memento mori. The stage is set for ideological purification, not democratic deliberation.
The Revolution’s version of January 6 succeeded. On June 2, 1793, the Convention was surrounded by 80,000 armed citizens and National Guardsmen. Their demand: the expulsion of twenty-nine deputies—Buzot, Vergniaud, Pétion, Louvet, Brissot among them. These men were arrested, convicted in kangaroo trials, and guillotined not for conspiracies, but for disagreement.
A lingering injustice of the Reign of Terror is how poorly these liberal martyrs have been remembered. The Girondins are rarely held up as heroes. Why? They stood for process, legality, and constitutionalism. They admired the American and British models. They opposed the September Massacres. They believed in Enlightenment values and hoped to preserve the Revolution without descending into tyranny. Meanwhile, the Mountain Jacobins centralized power, built a surveillance state, and eliminated dissent under the guise of revolutionary virtue.
The Girondins weren’t crushed because they failed the Revolution. They were crushed because they stood in the way of an authoritarian current that no longer tolerated opposition. The Jacobins were the forerunners of the Bolsheviks. Like Stalin’s regime, they executed not only aristocrats and monarchists but also their former comrades—those who remained loyal to the liberal promise.
And yet, popular history still insists on ambiguity. “Both sides were flawed,” we’re told. But were they equally so?
Part of the reason for this moral flattening lies in 20th-century historiography. Academics, particularly in France, often treated the Jacobin phase as the Revolution’s heroic apex. Anyone who opposed it—like the Girondins—was branded reactionary, bourgeois, or irrelevant. Even writers who themselves favored the Enlightenment’s liberalism, like Carlyle and Mantel, often reduce them to vain talkers or naive idealists, while the Jacobins get all the charisma and tragedy.
Harvard professor Jonathan Israel, in his book Revolutionary Ideas, tries to correct this. He writes: “But in terms of the philosophique values of 1789, and eagerness to champion freedom of press, individual liberty, and racial and gender equality, it was the Brissotin Jacobins, not the Maratiste or Robespierre Jacobins, who were France’s democratic radicals and republicans.” His defense of the Girondins as the true standard-bearers of Enlightenment republicanism was not well received—perhaps because it punctures the romance of revolutionary violence.
I agree to an extent. It’s unfortunate that in an age of polarisation they became quickly associated with Royalist counter revolution. There was no room for dissent. Perhaps some of the history you speak of is explained by the fact that the Left in Europe took many years to accept the crimes of Stalin? Even in the 80s there were many fellow travellers who swallowed the Soviet propaganda whole, and so would have glorified Danton et al less critically than otherwise. And the monarchist position quickly deteriorates to Burke. The middle - the grey - is murky and harder to defend.
I could not help thinking about the Russian bolshevik revolution as the narrative progressed to the execution of anyone of “wrong provenance”, committee activities, intolerance of other points of view, surveillance, pandering to the ultra violent stances, provinces versus capital, also just the plain rhetoric of the proclamations and speeches, and even the evidence of possible foreign sponsorship of the revolution - all of it gets repeated and repeated again. Ironically, November 7, formerly the official holiday of the Bolshevik revolution, singled out by parades and appropriate pageantry, is now rebranded as a national unity day, with appropriate celebrations and tricolor decor. This does not have anything to do with Mantel’s writing per se, but the historical context is enormously important for the modern era …
Agree with all this. The pernicious Jacobins, driven by abstract ideals, failed to deliver a viable model of government. Just as in the Russian Revolution, they couldn’t accept a plurality of approaches. There was only one option: dictatorship in the name of the people. What a shame that HM bought into the myth and makes the Girondins look weak and ineffective.
I disagree that Mantel has bought into a myth about the Girondins.
It is fairly clear from reading A Place of Greater Safety that they were the principled republicans, brilliant orators and consummate politicians. Their destruction is part and parcel of the tragedy that Mantel is telling, but she is telling it from the narrative focal point of the Mountain.
It is difficult to read A Place of Greater Safety and conclude that it romanticises or glorifies revolutionary violence. I'm sure such novels exist, but this ain't that.
I think we should amicably agree to disagree. I accept HM is not writing history, but as you’ve said many times there is a multiple narrative viewpoint, not just a Jacobin focus. Even then I just don’t see the evidence for a positive view of the Girondins. I guess the enormous crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Jacobins are always going to be more interesting to write about for a novelist.
Agreed, we'll just have to disagree about that – the beauty of fiction is there are as many interpretation as there are readers. This isn't a novel about the Gironde, and I'm sure if it was we'd get a much different picture from Mantel. She's staying true to her goal of holding the camera from the Jacobin POV (admittedly with less success and control as she does with Cromwell... but hey, that's the difference of several decades of writing experience).
Thank goodness we have Simon and each other to go through this rollercoaster…🫣I also found the moment when Max writes “Danton” on his notebook absolutely chilling, and how he tries to convince himself that nobody else will read it. And so disturbing and infuriating that this act is the consequence of Camille’s jealousy of Louise and Danton’s marriage! He is very clever, so I think he could be aware of the implications of his words if he would stop looking at his own navel… On the other hand, it’s true that he also shows the same impulsive character when he decides to defend Dillon publicly, and only later does the penny drops about Saint Just’s reference to Saint Denis…
Regarding Manon Roland, I just wanted to drag her out of her rigidity and France and her unfair destiny… My heart wrenched both when her husband cried, in a previous chapter, as she confessed she wasn’t in love with him; and when she said farewell to him and decided to stay in Paris and face whatever was to come 💔
As always, thank you for your analysis and tangents, Simon, and everybody for your comments.
And a burning question: do we think Lucille ever slept with Danton? I’m inclined to believe she didn’t…🧐
Very much echoing her later Cromwell novels in this chapter selection - the hunters become the hunted, mistakes have been made, wealth accumulated. Lawyering still to be done … “Sunlight glides narrowly through deep windows; on winter afternoons, faces loom, indistinct from hostile benches. When lamps are lit, the effect is ghastly; they deliberate in catacombs, and accusations drip from unseen mouths.” It could be equally a backdrop for one of Cromwell’s legal sessions. The characters rush from one meeting and convention to the next, papers scatter, dialogues switch from present to past tense quickly, events pile on top of each other (thank you, Revolutions podcast for keeping me orientated). People get arrested, crimes of thought become routine. New religions get invented. I really think it is Mantel’s foundational writing through and through…
Also family - all these characters in both sagas maintain an elaborate home, they want a home, they need to be running from city to cottage, visiting relatives, remarrying, managing a household, as if normal life could go on in between the sessions of some committee or court or tribunal. That makes these characters so close to the reader because in the end they are human and they are only as alive as their interactions on a personal level. Mantel magic, what else can we call it?! Favorite phrase - of Camille “… the power of words moving through his bloodstream like a drug.” Words is what saves, incriminates and ultimately destroys in both narratives… it is fascinating to me how the narratives start to converge. Mantel said she did not write historical novels for decades after APOGS was finished and not immediately published but the progression in her thinking, narrative structure and style, to me, is quite remarkable. Am I wrong?
Like many others have noted, Hilary Mantel's writing style, focusing on Camille, Danton, and Robespierre, and limiting the narrative to Paris, makes it challenging to grasp the broader context of the revolution's progress.
I have done a couple of things that have helped. First, I am simultaneously reading Timothy Tackett’s “When the King Took Flight,” which focuses on the attempt to flee the country by the King and Queen in June 1791. Although it also has a particular focus, it does provide a bit more of a tick-tock of the events at least related to that event, as well as a feel for what was going on in the provinces.
A second step was to ask the various free versions of AI large language models to give me a tick-tock. Here’s the cue I used:
“I am reading Hilary Mantel’s “A Place of Greater Safety,” about the French Revolution. It is terrific, but because of its focus on Paris and three individuals’ role in the Revolution, it is easy to lose sight of the overall events of the French Revolution. It would be helpful to have a moderately comprehensive, but not exhaustive, tick-tock of key events. I would like to get a sense of what was going on overall as I read Mantel’s work, without being too swamped with all the details, if that makes sense.”
That produced moderately good results, although with a couple, I asked for a more detailed version, saying I thought I had perhaps limited the AI too much with my “moderately comprehensive, but not exhaustive,” instructions, and got results which were more what I was looking for.
In that process, I also got a reference to the very comprehensive chronology in Wikipedia (Timeline of the French Revolution). It is 25 printed pages front and back, but it certainly adds a lot of detail.
For example, here are events in the month following the attempted escape of the King and Queen in June 1791:
June 20–21: The Flight to Varennes. In the night of 20–21 June, the King, the Queen and their children slip out of the Tuileries Palace and flee by carriage in the direction of Montmédy.
June 21–22: The King is recognized at Varennes. The Assembly announces that he was taken against his will, and sends three commissioners to bring him back to Paris.
June 25: Louis XVI returns to Paris. The Assembly suspends his functions until further notice.
July 5: Emperor Leopold II issues the Padua Circular calling on the royal houses of Europe to come to the aid of Louis XVI, his brother-in-law.July 9: The Assembly decrees that émigrés must return to France within two months, or forfeit their property.
July 11: The ashes of Voltaire are transferred to the Panthéon.
July 15: National Assembly declares the king inviolable, and cannot be put on trial. Louis XVI suspended from his duties until the ratification of a new Constitution.
July 16: The more moderate members of the Jacobins club break away to form a new club, the Feuillants.
July 17: A demonstration sponsored by the Jacobins, Cordeliers and their allies carries a petition demanding the removal of the King to the Champ de Mars. The city government raises the red flag, the sign of martial law, and forbids the demonstration. The National Guard fires on the crowd, and some fifty persons are killed.
July 18: Following the events in the Champ de Mars, the Assembly forbids incitement to riot, urging citizens to disobey the law, and seditious publications, aimed at the Jacobins and Cordeliers. Marat goes into hiding and Danton flees to England.
The above has been helpful, but certainly not necessary to my enjoyment of this book.
I think a minor detail that I liked about this section is there is a subtle arrogance to Manon Roland. I feel a lot of empathy for the women revolutionaries, where there was an opening for women's involvement in politics, it is now almost firmly shut. But there's a little snobbish in how almost aristocratic her flight through the streets is, that she takes a carriage (which were pretty universally hated in Paris) and then when she receives some desert treat without even perceiving who has provided it. An odd parallel to Danton, who in the early chapters is dodging carriages, now himself taking one everywhere, barely noticing his servants. She is obviously a far more likeable character, but given the Girondin's war is where things tipped so far, she isn't without blood on her hands.
Overall thoughts on these chapters I feel most sympathetic to Camille. Danton is distressing. Robespierre almost strikes me as less paranoid than he has been in the prior chapters, but his public/private split in his ethical thought is I think, is almost where he seems to be scrambled.
I've only read bits and pieces of Marx but he had a comment on the french revolution that sticks in my mind. Paraphrasing, along the lines that appealing to the roman republic for ideals of virtue and democratic governance was stunting their thought by idealising an imaginary idea rather than acknowledge it as a slave owning society, Rome only ever meant "Vertu" and equality for the few! Though I know Roman philosophy hardly at all, my sense is that's where the idea of separate private and public virtue comes from, and probably how Robespierre justifies himself - Maintaining a private aversion to executions, while aiming for public actions "virtuous" within the bounds of the revolution / war government.
Yet at times Mantel almost seems to put an argument about history in his mouth - the more I learn about the era the more it does seem like there is an inevitability about the revolution.
I haven't actually read today's chapters yet, but I got the email right as I was thinking about people's reactions to the Wolf Hall Trilogy v APoGS, so I thought I'd ask: Hilary Mantel loves her morally grey tragic heroes, and yet people seem to interact with Cromwell in a much less morally judgemental way than I've noticed people doing with Danton or Camille or Robespierre on this slow read, even though there's a lot of parallel as all four slowly become "worse" throughout the book/s. I have speculations as to why, but I don't really know, and I'm very curious as to why other people think!
A very interesting question, Georgia!
I think there are all kinds of possibilities: the multiple perspectives mean we never get quite as attached to any of these guys as we do with Cromwell. We live inside his head for 2,000 pages, and that creates an intimacy we are not given here.
Arguably, we can also say that the Jacobins are less redeemable than Cromwell. Mantel portrays each of the three Jacobins as quite fundamentally flawed, in such a way that they will be guilty of immense crimes against humanity. Cromwell's flaws are almost more human: ambition, overconfidence, self-delusion.
I remember at the Wolf Hall Weekend, the Cromwell historian Diarmaid MacCulloch saying he couldn't finish A Place of Greater Safety, because everyone in it is so horrible. Perhaps he would say this, but with Cromwell, we are dealing with a more sympathetic character.
Saying all that, I wonder whether it is entirely correct to say the four characters get "worse" throughout the books. Power corrupts them, certainly. But the thing that seems more to unite them is a sense of becoming more trapped, more boxed in: forcing them to make mistakes and more violent decisions.
Afterall, Cromwell was always a murderer, and the three Jacobins were pretty wretched to begin with.
Very interesting thoughts! Your point that it's not them who gets worse, but the range of decisions that they have that gets narrower rings very true to me, and I think is the root of tragedy of both books. They don't have any good decisions left to make, and even Max is forced to compromise his morals.
It's interesting that you view Cromwell as a more sympathetic character: ignoring Mantel for a second, he spends his life working for someone basically everyone agrees is a monster, who I've read personally had more people executed than were killed in the Terror (citation needed), for no other reason than he wants to rise in the world. Whereas our three revolutionaries are trying to make a better world: they are establishing the beginning of human rights in Europe, trying to abolish slavery, starting the suffrage right, and so on. Particularly Danton might be doing it for the same reasons as Cromwell, but Robespierre and Camille both believe in it too some extent, but it's hard for me to see them as more "horrible" than Cromwell. Though of course, they are all dangerously flawed as people, but again, their flaws seem quite as human to me as Cromwell's: Danton's are basically the same, for example. Robespierre is, what, rigidity and idealism and a sort of stubborn blindness to reality and an over-reliance on himself, and then the increasing paranoia as he gets iller, and then Camille is self-obsessed and has a cruel streak and doesn't really care about anyone apart from "his" people. A bit oversimplified there compared to Mantel's masterful analysis but I don't think it makes them particularly inhuman.
One of the things I particularly like about APoGS is that it's basically about how power corrupts: what kind of personality could you have that wouldn't be twisted in those sorts of circumstances? Because it's not just our (anti)heroes, everyone on all sides acts horribly when they pressure is on. The scene where they vote to now prosecute deputies is particularly awful, in a great way.
It's a bit different to Cromwell, but one of the things I love about Wolf Hall is how he starts off as a normal person, and makes worse and worse choices until he too is also a monster like Henry VIII, but Mantel does a masterful job of justifying him to himself in the text, and perhaps it's because she did such a good job at it that he is so much more sympathetic!
Whereas in APoGS it is the opposite: there is very little textual justification of why characters act the way they do, it's a bit more honest in a way than Cromwell as unreliable narrator. And despite being a book about the French Revolution, it's notable how it's actually almost entirely absent from the text: it's portrayed more as something happening off-screen, which the characters don't think about except either in the vaguest terms or entirely mercenarily. Only their quotes and glancing mentions show what they actually thought about the French Revolution and the fashions and ideals of the time, rather than their lives as the French Revolution was happening, whereas from what I've read of Camille & Max, they both seemed to really care about a lot of the principles of it. Not that you'd know that from this book! Which I'd never noticed before this slow read. It's almost defined by its absence. Which is a fascinating choice.
I think another difference as well is systems of power: Henry VIII and Cromwell are the system, whereas our revolutionaries are (at the beginning) fighting against the system, and we always view violence against the current system as worse than violence from the current system for some reason.
Sorry this is an essay haha, I've been thinking about it a lot recently. I think you're right in that it probably just comes down to that intimacy that Cromwell has that we don't find with the FR guys.
It makes me want to reread Mantel's essays to see what she says about these things!
Also, thanks for the Dillon letters link, that was very interesting.
Don't apologise, it is an interesting discussion.
I'm afraid the point about executions is definitely wrong and misleading. There were 10,000s of executions during Henry VIII's reign, but that includes common criminals in an era where capital punishment was commonplace. It also covers four decades. The Henrican Reformation was bloody, but nothing like the scale of the French Revolution (which itself was tiny compared to the killings in the 20th Century).
I think it is also completely wrong to contrast the Jacobins as principled revolutionaries trying to make a better world with Thomas Cromwell as a cynical henchman carrying out orders. The picture that emerges from Diarmaid MacCulloch's analysis is an energetic reformer and Rennaisance administrator who thought government could be improved and he could do it.
I'd also disagree that APOGS presents the protagonists as entirely cynical. I think Mantel does a good job at showing that they do care about injustice and do believe they are making a difference. We see a lot of that in the early part of the novel, and while Danton and Camille lose heart, Max becomes clearer on this point towards the end. But Mantel does a great job at showing that this isn't all they care about, and that each individual is a mess of competing interests and motivations.
So I'd agree that a lot of it comes down to our intimacy with Cromwell, Mantel's mature writing style, and the fact that the story of Thomas Cromwell is just fundamentally a better and more compelling narrative than the Jacobins'.
Good to know about the execution figures being wrong! Should have looked into that when I read it.
One thing I find a bit frustrating about talking about these books on substack is I find it quite difficult to make my points understood without writing a whole essay lol, I don't think I'm very good at summing up my ideas in shortform and I feel like it often comes across wrong. I definitely don't think our (anti)heroes were particularly principled, or that APoGS presents them as entirely cynical (well I think Max and Danton are quite far apart on that scale but in a human way), nor am I saying that Cromwell is just a cynical henchman. But I also don't see them as straight up evil or amoral like some people have commented, or Cromwell as entirely a good person as I've seen some people (not here) argue. I think the whole point of what Mantel writes about them is that they're morally grey, they're people not characters even though of course they are characters, if that makes sense. They act according to what their values and morals are, how they can best get ahead, how they can protect themselves and the people they care about, and their personalities dictate how they compromise and how they justify themselves when faced with impossible - or difficult - decisions. In a way I think it's a really large part of the genius of Mantel, that her characters aren't just black or white like so many fictional characters are, and I think a huge amount of both books/series are lost without that kind of greyness and humanity.
Nothing wrong with a whole essay! Just this morning someone sent me a message saying how much the comments enrich the reading and I totally agree!
I think we pretty much agree on the moral greyness of all these characters, and I do find myself pushing back against readings that seem to flatten the characters and dispel the ambiguity, one way or another.
In a way, Mantel can't win. She came under flak for making Cromwell seem "too nice" and gets criticised for making the Jacobins "too horrid." Of course, she does nothing of the kind. But critics who ardently want to believe French Rev = good ; Henrican Reformation = bad, are going to have a hard time with Mantel's books.
"Flattening" the characters is absolutely correct. I'm not sure if it's a recent trend in fiction or if I've simply been noticing it more recently but it does seem like people are less accepting of grey characters, and want to put them in either "good" or "bad" which I'm not sure works well for fiction or life generally, but certainly works badly for Mantel. I've spent quite a lot of time arguing with a few friends who say that Mantel is glorifying Cromwell and viewing him as entirely perfect or something. Like you've pointed out many times, it ends up being a very shallow reading of her works & I think it does her a disservice: i suspect there's far more nuance in her books than I've spotted!
Interestingly I don't think many English-speakers view the French Revolution as a good thing, I think they're far more likely to see it and its protagonists as a negative thing and imo that's partly why even at the beginning of APoGS when Max is very ethical and principled and not at all murdery people tend to view him as evil or horrible. (I do tend to view the FR as overall a good thing for the world, excluding the Terror ofc and the many other negatives, but I suspect that's because I read French sources first: perhaps that's why I find it easier to see the revolutionaries as flawed & grey humans who achieved a lot of good and a lot of bad than as simply evil or immoral).
But I do also think Mantel succeeded much more in making Cromwell sympathetic than the APoGS people, and that is reflected in how people respond to the characters. Another theory is that perhaps she was simply wasn't trying to.
Haha I think perhaps I should leave the essay-writing to people who are more eloquent than me. I also love the comments though, I find them really valuable, particularly with Wolf Crawl as I actually know very little about the Tudors (although I know more now!). You've made such a great thing here with these slow reads with your information, commentary and the comments too, and it's always a highlight of my week!
In Wolf Crawl, Cromwell speaks directly to us (almost), so we are seeing his point of view. Although, he presents what he wants us to see - presumably the best - he doesn’t shy away some of the less than perfect aspects of his actions.
It reminds me a bit of 'Richard III' where he gets us on side, even though he is doing appalling things. Without the sililoquies, he'd just be an out and out villain.
I think you're absolutely right! If you think about what Cromwell is doing - choosing to follow someone as frankly evil as Henry VIII, executing people over religion because it meant he had more power and more money and so on - he is a villain. But Mantel writes his perspective so cleverly that it feels almost justified, you barely even notice, he's just shades of grey like everyone else. Which I suppose is the point!
It's all such a mess! Who's sure if who is doing what with whom? I thing Mantel manages to give us the sense of chais brilliantly, but I'm feeling a bit lost with the events. (I think that may be deliberate on Mantel's part.)
I really enjoy the confident writing that allows Mantel to put in a very funny confessional scene in the midst of the drama. And Manon's farewell to her husband is just heartbreaking.
Tangent: a journalist I used to know has published something about a new metro mayor possibly doing things off his own bat without (possibly) getting the right permissions and (allegedly) inappropriately involving his party. I couldn't help thinking that that is exactly what's going on here.
Quick! Send for some decent administrators and governance experts!!
The confessional scene was indeed a welcome relief with an injection of dry humor!
Both the conversation with Louise’s parents and the confession were my favourite parts this week 😅
"There are periods in revolution when to live is a crime, and people must know how to yield their heads if they are demanded."
The slow, steady march of Max's tone towards darkness has been really well executed throughout this novel, and this was a set-the-book-down-for-a-second line for me. It also sets up a fascinating juxtaposition with Camille and his increasing skepticism: "It is a sort of blasphemy to make human reason contradict itself and advise in the name of policy what it forbids in the name of morality."
When Camille is speaking most wisely and admirably of our trio, it cannot bode well for him, I'm sure...
Really enjoyed the whole discussion about how we react to the key figures here compared to how we react to Cromwell. I honestly think it does boil down to the singularity of viewpoint, which works so brilliantly in the Wolf Hall series. You really feel you're in that person's head, and though you might not always like what he's doing, you totally get why he's doing it. I've struggled a bit all through APOGS with the multiple perspectives, and have definitely ended up feeling much less forgiving... (Apart from Camille... It's illogical, but I do have a soft spot for Camille, partly because he gets so many of the best lines, and partly because Jonathan Keeble gives him such a good voice.)
I'm putting my hand up as confused this week, I think I need to read over it again. So much takes place off the page. Did I just miss Manon's arrest/capture, or did we not actually see her again after she farewells her husband? A tragic scene if there was one!
I've also realised I've been confusing my Antoines - Saint-Juste is NOT Camille's cousin, just the object of his murderous fantasies. Am I right in thinking that both Saint-Juste and the other Antoine, Fouquier-Tinville, both end up fairly central to Terror-related activities? Are they part of the same faction?
Despite missing some of the key moments, the growing dread is palpable. Robespierre taking out his little notebook and writing "Danton" at the top of the page was chilling. There is such a sense of events piling irrevocably upon one another, so that even the most principled person is backed into a bloody corner. And who wouldn't try to fight their way out and take their political enemies down in the process? Maybe I'm too sympathetic to the bloodthirsty, but Mantel gives us such a human story. I can condemn it, but I also see how it happens!
Hang on, I've just gone back to your very helpful character summaries, Simon, and seen that in fact both Antoines might be related to Camille! I'm surrendering myself to Antoine-based confusion, all Antoines are someone's cousin 🤯
Feeling the dread! Yes, Manon has been arrested – her husband has fled. And although Fouquier is definitely related to Camille, Camille thinks he is also related to Saint-Just in some way. Perhaps yes all Antoines are our cousins.
They are not members of the same faction. Saint-Just fill sit on the Committee of Public Safety when Camille is arrested, and Fouquier will be the public prosecutor at the Revolutionary Tribunal. Saint-Just definitely wants Camille dead, but Fouquier is just doing his job! 😬😬
Poor Camille, persecuted by so many Antonines. I can’t remember what happened to Antoine Barnave (is he dead yet? I assume like pretty much everyone he will be soon) so perhaps the Antoines are just getting their own back!
Yes, he's been in prison since the 10 August insurrection last year. I doubt Barnave would want to be associated with the other Antonines.
Yes I suspect not! And if the Antoines can’t find consensus, what hope does the national convention have?!
😱😱
This made me feel better, I had a sudden moment of clarity earlier today when I realised that Saint-Juste & Fouquierre-Tinville weren't the same person!
This section gave me a queasy feeling, it's hard to feel on solid ground when there are so many ominous references to the future. ("In April there were seven executions; undramatically, the numbers will increase." & "The Tribunal often acquits: in these early days, at least.")
I've been listening to the Revolutions podcast & although I haven't got very far yet, I did pick up one point that really hit home: he mentions that an unusual aspect of the French Revolution was the constant presence of an audience: "the leaders of the French Revolution always had a crowd to play to, and the impact of turning governance into theatre would play a major role in how things would unfold". This felt very true in this chapter: Danton's endless list of concerns includes the public gallery and the press, Marat is acquitted at a trial that is "packed with Maratists from the streets", and at the new home of the National Convention, the president looks down warily as "three thousand insurrectionists pour from the Faubourgs and mill about on the floor below him".
I'm always on the lookout for points of connection between APOGS & Wolf Hall, and this section seemed particularly full of them.
- Robespierre comments on the importance of being seen and heard: "I can't afford to be ill."
- Robespierre's approval of erasing the Brissotins from political life even if the specific charges are untrue reminded me of Cromwell in Bring Up the Bodies, finding men who are guilty "Though perhaps not guilty as charged";
- Manon thinks that Danton values "cynics with strong stomachs";
- Robespierre feels obliged to take notes on things that Camille has told him in a private conversation, reminding me of Cromwell’s reminder to Wyatt, "You know I am not a man with whom you can have inconsequential conversations";
- & Lucile/Cromwell's little knife makes another appearance when Camille fantasises about killing Saint-Just with "a small knife, the kind you would hardly know that you were carrying".
Finally, I found it a little unsettling that Robespierre, a man previously known for believing everything he says, is now distinguishing between his personal views and recommendations to the nation, leaving dissolute Camille as the voice of integrity who claims "My public views and my private views are the same".
I think that point about everything happening with an audience is a really important one.
In these chapters, Europe discovers totalitarianism. The French Revolution, for all its Enlightenment origins, becomes the prototype, the model, and the inspiration for what Hannah Arendt later identified as the modern authoritarian state: centralized, ideological, and ultimately murderous. The Mountain Jacobins didn’t just seize power—they redefined the nature of governance.
Robespierre’s insistence that only “a strong central authority” could save the Revolution laid the groundwork: “The ministers are ciphers, the Convention is factious, so it must be the Committee.” Advocacy for American-style federalism—once considered a legitimate political stance—became grounds for execution. “They are for the provinces and against Paris—they are federalists,” Robespierre warns. “They want to split the nation into little parts. If they get their way, what chance have the French people against the rest of Europe?”
By this logic, internal dissent became treason, and the Revolution began devouring its own. Even the aesthetics shifted: the Convention, relocated to the Tuileries, now sits in brutalist geometry—right angles, blank plaster, immense tricolor banners, and the bust of Lepelletier as memento mori. The stage is set for ideological purification, not democratic deliberation.
The Revolution’s version of January 6 succeeded. On June 2, 1793, the Convention was surrounded by 80,000 armed citizens and National Guardsmen. Their demand: the expulsion of twenty-nine deputies—Buzot, Vergniaud, Pétion, Louvet, Brissot among them. These men were arrested, convicted in kangaroo trials, and guillotined not for conspiracies, but for disagreement.
A lingering injustice of the Reign of Terror is how poorly these liberal martyrs have been remembered. The Girondins are rarely held up as heroes. Why? They stood for process, legality, and constitutionalism. They admired the American and British models. They opposed the September Massacres. They believed in Enlightenment values and hoped to preserve the Revolution without descending into tyranny. Meanwhile, the Mountain Jacobins centralized power, built a surveillance state, and eliminated dissent under the guise of revolutionary virtue.
The Girondins weren’t crushed because they failed the Revolution. They were crushed because they stood in the way of an authoritarian current that no longer tolerated opposition. The Jacobins were the forerunners of the Bolsheviks. Like Stalin’s regime, they executed not only aristocrats and monarchists but also their former comrades—those who remained loyal to the liberal promise.
And yet, popular history still insists on ambiguity. “Both sides were flawed,” we’re told. But were they equally so?
Part of the reason for this moral flattening lies in 20th-century historiography. Academics, particularly in France, often treated the Jacobin phase as the Revolution’s heroic apex. Anyone who opposed it—like the Girondins—was branded reactionary, bourgeois, or irrelevant. Even writers who themselves favored the Enlightenment’s liberalism, like Carlyle and Mantel, often reduce them to vain talkers or naive idealists, while the Jacobins get all the charisma and tragedy.
Harvard professor Jonathan Israel, in his book Revolutionary Ideas, tries to correct this. He writes: “But in terms of the philosophique values of 1789, and eagerness to champion freedom of press, individual liberty, and racial and gender equality, it was the Brissotin Jacobins, not the Maratiste or Robespierre Jacobins, who were France’s democratic radicals and republicans.” His defense of the Girondins as the true standard-bearers of Enlightenment republicanism was not well received—perhaps because it punctures the romance of revolutionary violence.
I agree to an extent. It’s unfortunate that in an age of polarisation they became quickly associated with Royalist counter revolution. There was no room for dissent. Perhaps some of the history you speak of is explained by the fact that the Left in Europe took many years to accept the crimes of Stalin? Even in the 80s there were many fellow travellers who swallowed the Soviet propaganda whole, and so would have glorified Danton et al less critically than otherwise. And the monarchist position quickly deteriorates to Burke. The middle - the grey - is murky and harder to defend.
I could not help thinking about the Russian bolshevik revolution as the narrative progressed to the execution of anyone of “wrong provenance”, committee activities, intolerance of other points of view, surveillance, pandering to the ultra violent stances, provinces versus capital, also just the plain rhetoric of the proclamations and speeches, and even the evidence of possible foreign sponsorship of the revolution - all of it gets repeated and repeated again. Ironically, November 7, formerly the official holiday of the Bolshevik revolution, singled out by parades and appropriate pageantry, is now rebranded as a national unity day, with appropriate celebrations and tricolor decor. This does not have anything to do with Mantel’s writing per se, but the historical context is enormously important for the modern era …
Agree with all this. The pernicious Jacobins, driven by abstract ideals, failed to deliver a viable model of government. Just as in the Russian Revolution, they couldn’t accept a plurality of approaches. There was only one option: dictatorship in the name of the people. What a shame that HM bought into the myth and makes the Girondins look weak and ineffective.
I disagree that Mantel has bought into a myth about the Girondins.
It is fairly clear from reading A Place of Greater Safety that they were the principled republicans, brilliant orators and consummate politicians. Their destruction is part and parcel of the tragedy that Mantel is telling, but she is telling it from the narrative focal point of the Mountain.
It is difficult to read A Place of Greater Safety and conclude that it romanticises or glorifies revolutionary violence. I'm sure such novels exist, but this ain't that.
I think we should amicably agree to disagree. I accept HM is not writing history, but as you’ve said many times there is a multiple narrative viewpoint, not just a Jacobin focus. Even then I just don’t see the evidence for a positive view of the Girondins. I guess the enormous crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Jacobins are always going to be more interesting to write about for a novelist.
Agreed, we'll just have to disagree about that – the beauty of fiction is there are as many interpretation as there are readers. This isn't a novel about the Gironde, and I'm sure if it was we'd get a much different picture from Mantel. She's staying true to her goal of holding the camera from the Jacobin POV (admittedly with less success and control as she does with Cromwell... but hey, that's the difference of several decades of writing experience).
Thank goodness we have Simon and each other to go through this rollercoaster…🫣I also found the moment when Max writes “Danton” on his notebook absolutely chilling, and how he tries to convince himself that nobody else will read it. And so disturbing and infuriating that this act is the consequence of Camille’s jealousy of Louise and Danton’s marriage! He is very clever, so I think he could be aware of the implications of his words if he would stop looking at his own navel… On the other hand, it’s true that he also shows the same impulsive character when he decides to defend Dillon publicly, and only later does the penny drops about Saint Just’s reference to Saint Denis…
Regarding Manon Roland, I just wanted to drag her out of her rigidity and France and her unfair destiny… My heart wrenched both when her husband cried, in a previous chapter, as she confessed she wasn’t in love with him; and when she said farewell to him and decided to stay in Paris and face whatever was to come 💔
As always, thank you for your analysis and tangents, Simon, and everybody for your comments.
And a burning question: do we think Lucille ever slept with Danton? I’m inclined to believe she didn’t…🧐
I suspect she didn't either. And every time someone leaves Paris for a bit, I'm mentally screaming JUST STAY AWAY DONT GO BACK!
Very much echoing her later Cromwell novels in this chapter selection - the hunters become the hunted, mistakes have been made, wealth accumulated. Lawyering still to be done … “Sunlight glides narrowly through deep windows; on winter afternoons, faces loom, indistinct from hostile benches. When lamps are lit, the effect is ghastly; they deliberate in catacombs, and accusations drip from unseen mouths.” It could be equally a backdrop for one of Cromwell’s legal sessions. The characters rush from one meeting and convention to the next, papers scatter, dialogues switch from present to past tense quickly, events pile on top of each other (thank you, Revolutions podcast for keeping me orientated). People get arrested, crimes of thought become routine. New religions get invented. I really think it is Mantel’s foundational writing through and through…
Also family - all these characters in both sagas maintain an elaborate home, they want a home, they need to be running from city to cottage, visiting relatives, remarrying, managing a household, as if normal life could go on in between the sessions of some committee or court or tribunal. That makes these characters so close to the reader because in the end they are human and they are only as alive as their interactions on a personal level. Mantel magic, what else can we call it?! Favorite phrase - of Camille “… the power of words moving through his bloodstream like a drug.” Words is what saves, incriminates and ultimately destroys in both narratives… it is fascinating to me how the narratives start to converge. Mantel said she did not write historical novels for decades after APOGS was finished and not immediately published but the progression in her thinking, narrative structure and style, to me, is quite remarkable. Am I wrong?
You're not wrong!
Like many others have noted, Hilary Mantel's writing style, focusing on Camille, Danton, and Robespierre, and limiting the narrative to Paris, makes it challenging to grasp the broader context of the revolution's progress.
I have done a couple of things that have helped. First, I am simultaneously reading Timothy Tackett’s “When the King Took Flight,” which focuses on the attempt to flee the country by the King and Queen in June 1791. Although it also has a particular focus, it does provide a bit more of a tick-tock of the events at least related to that event, as well as a feel for what was going on in the provinces.
A second step was to ask the various free versions of AI large language models to give me a tick-tock. Here’s the cue I used:
“I am reading Hilary Mantel’s “A Place of Greater Safety,” about the French Revolution. It is terrific, but because of its focus on Paris and three individuals’ role in the Revolution, it is easy to lose sight of the overall events of the French Revolution. It would be helpful to have a moderately comprehensive, but not exhaustive, tick-tock of key events. I would like to get a sense of what was going on overall as I read Mantel’s work, without being too swamped with all the details, if that makes sense.”
That produced moderately good results, although with a couple, I asked for a more detailed version, saying I thought I had perhaps limited the AI too much with my “moderately comprehensive, but not exhaustive,” instructions, and got results which were more what I was looking for.
In that process, I also got a reference to the very comprehensive chronology in Wikipedia (Timeline of the French Revolution). It is 25 printed pages front and back, but it certainly adds a lot of detail.
For example, here are events in the month following the attempted escape of the King and Queen in June 1791:
June 20–21: The Flight to Varennes. In the night of 20–21 June, the King, the Queen and their children slip out of the Tuileries Palace and flee by carriage in the direction of Montmédy.
June 21–22: The King is recognized at Varennes. The Assembly announces that he was taken against his will, and sends three commissioners to bring him back to Paris.
June 25: Louis XVI returns to Paris. The Assembly suspends his functions until further notice.
July 5: Emperor Leopold II issues the Padua Circular calling on the royal houses of Europe to come to the aid of Louis XVI, his brother-in-law.July 9: The Assembly decrees that émigrés must return to France within two months, or forfeit their property.
July 11: The ashes of Voltaire are transferred to the Panthéon.
July 15: National Assembly declares the king inviolable, and cannot be put on trial. Louis XVI suspended from his duties until the ratification of a new Constitution.
July 16: The more moderate members of the Jacobins club break away to form a new club, the Feuillants.
July 17: A demonstration sponsored by the Jacobins, Cordeliers and their allies carries a petition demanding the removal of the King to the Champ de Mars. The city government raises the red flag, the sign of martial law, and forbids the demonstration. The National Guard fires on the crowd, and some fifty persons are killed.
July 18: Following the events in the Champ de Mars, the Assembly forbids incitement to riot, urging citizens to disobey the law, and seditious publications, aimed at the Jacobins and Cordeliers. Marat goes into hiding and Danton flees to England.
The above has been helpful, but certainly not necessary to my enjoyment of this book.
I’m reading William Doyle’s Oxford History of the French Revolution and it’s very helpful indeed. Depressing though.
I think a minor detail that I liked about this section is there is a subtle arrogance to Manon Roland. I feel a lot of empathy for the women revolutionaries, where there was an opening for women's involvement in politics, it is now almost firmly shut. But there's a little snobbish in how almost aristocratic her flight through the streets is, that she takes a carriage (which were pretty universally hated in Paris) and then when she receives some desert treat without even perceiving who has provided it. An odd parallel to Danton, who in the early chapters is dodging carriages, now himself taking one everywhere, barely noticing his servants. She is obviously a far more likeable character, but given the Girondin's war is where things tipped so far, she isn't without blood on her hands.
Overall thoughts on these chapters I feel most sympathetic to Camille. Danton is distressing. Robespierre almost strikes me as less paranoid than he has been in the prior chapters, but his public/private split in his ethical thought is I think, is almost where he seems to be scrambled.
I've only read bits and pieces of Marx but he had a comment on the french revolution that sticks in my mind. Paraphrasing, along the lines that appealing to the roman republic for ideals of virtue and democratic governance was stunting their thought by idealising an imaginary idea rather than acknowledge it as a slave owning society, Rome only ever meant "Vertu" and equality for the few! Though I know Roman philosophy hardly at all, my sense is that's where the idea of separate private and public virtue comes from, and probably how Robespierre justifies himself - Maintaining a private aversion to executions, while aiming for public actions "virtuous" within the bounds of the revolution / war government.
Yet at times Mantel almost seems to put an argument about history in his mouth - the more I learn about the era the more it does seem like there is an inevitability about the revolution.