Dickens Quarterly

Carlyle structures his history of the French Revolution around selected events. Arranged in three Acts–"Parts" in the Uniform Edition of 1857–this Aristotelian tragedy of epic proportion opens on 10 May 1774 with the death of Louis XV, the end of life for one sovereign and metaphorically the demise of centuries of monarchic rule. Quitting the sickroom of the Bourbon king, Volume I, "The Bastille," broadens its focus. The "eye of History" rests briefly on France left in ruins, its system of taxation broken and "all Solemnity" reduced to "Pageantry," before moving swiftly via the assembly of the States General (4 May 1789) and the refusal of the Third Estate on 20 June to dissolve in defiance of an order from Louis XVI to the fall of the Bastille on 14 July 1789. That year closed with the monarch compelled to sign the Declaration of the Rights of Man on 5 October and the royal family prisoners in Paris. Volume II–"The Constitution"–charts, among other high points, the rise of a cacophony of voices between January 1790 and August 1792. Politicians and theorists wrangle over attempts to build a constitution; bawling Hawkers and Billstickers "with pastepot and cross-staff" add to the confusion, the latter "a new Dynasty" who "new-clothe [End Page 102] the walls of Paris in colours of the rainbow" with their "magicalthaumaturgic" messages. The cumulative effect of both groups, Carlyle writes, was "great Journalism," a force which blows and blusters its way "forth from Paris towards all corners of France," already on fire with Patriotic zeal intensified by the threat of invasion, as Austria and Prussia, anxious to restore respect for France's ancien régime, prepared to invade (II, bk. 3, ch. 2). The French Revolution: A History concludes with Volume III, ominously entitled "The Guillotine." This Part covers the Revolutionary armies in action, the first day of the Republic (22 September 1792), the execution of Louis XVI (21 January 1793) and Marie-Antoinette (16 October), and the descent of France into anarchy. Terror continued throughout this period (10 August 1792–4 October 1795) before ending with the execution of Robespierre (28 July 1793) and final quelling of anarchic insurrection by Napoleon on 5 October 1795.

No brief summary can convey the energy, inventiveness, and intellectual brilliance Carlyle brought to a task of writing about an event he characterized as "A huge explosion," one which burst through "all formulas and customs" with such force as to confound "into wreck and chaos the ordered arrangements of earthly life; blotting out … the very firmament and skyey loadstars" ("Parliamentary History," Historical Essays 219). Cast the challenge in these terms and the historian faces questions. If the old order had already begun to break down as "poor Louis" lay sick in 1774 while sounds, "muffled-ominous," were heard throughout France, how is a story so seismic to be narrated? Given that "ours is a most fictile world" neither "fixable … [nor] fathomable!" where does the historian begin? What stance should the writer take to avoid "that class of cause-and-effect speculators" indifferent to the "wonderful" and intent on rendering everything "'computed and accounted for'"? (I, bk. 1, ch. 2; "On History," Historical Essays 9).

Readers interested in the evolution of Carlyle's thinking about history do well to study six essays he published about the discipline between 1830 and 1837. Read collectively they addressed issues noted above and served a double purpose. In the broadest sense they launched a sustained attack on the way historians had come to write history towards the end of the eighteenth century. On a more personal level, they provided an opportunity for Carlyle to explore ideas he had touched on elsewhere. In Signs of the Times (1829), Sartor Resartus–begun in 1830–Characteristics (1831), and in essays about German...