REVOLUTION AND THE FRENCH PEASANT
A History of France from the Earliest Times to the Treaty of Versaille. By William Stearns Davis. Illustrated. 12mo. 642 pages. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston.
PROFESSOR DAVIS has succeeded admirably in compressing the essential facts of French political history into a volume of six hundred pages. His limited space excludes detailed interpretation of separate events, and the author is also compelled to give only the most perfunctory notice to the economic phenomena which are associated with various stages of French history. On the political side, however, the work is reasonably complete, and Professor Davis shows an excellent sense of proportion in laying special stress upon what may be called the revolutionary era of French history, the period which begins with the meeting of the States-General in 1789 and ends with the suppression of the Commune in 1871.
Throughout this period France was in a state of suspended civil war. On one side stood the bourgeoisie, the large and small investors and landowners, the classes which had gained power and wealth as a result of the overthrow of the feudal monarchy. The dominance of these elements is apparent alike in the States-General, in the Directory, in the monarchism of Louis Philippe, and in the imperialism of Louis Napoleon. Against this system of perpetual conservatism under various outward forms the working-class population of Paris, the men who had been captivated by the fierce levelling doctrines of Marat and Hebert, stood ranged in sullen discontent. Omitting riots and minor disturbances, this discontent burst out in actual fighting on four occasions: in 1793, in 1830, in 1848, and in 1871. In all these outbreaks the peasants played the decisive role. Their support carried the Revolution through to triumphant success, despite the excesses and follies of the Jacobin leaders. Their indifference thwarted the republicans who fought on the barricades in 1830. In 1848 and in 1871 the peasants actively sided with the bourgeoisie in putting down the Communists. This shift of peasant psychology from radicalism to conservatism can be understood only
