The French Revolution

The object of these few pages is not to recount once more the history of the Revolution :that can be followed in any one of a hundred text-books. Their object is rather to lay, if that be possible, an explanation of it before the English reader ;so that he may understand both what it was and how it proceeded, and also why certain problems hitherto unfamiliar to Englishmen have risen out of it. First, therefore, it is necessary to set down, clearly without modern accretion, that political theory which was a sort of religious creed, supplying the motive force of the whole business; of the new Civil Code as of the massacres ;of the panics and capitulations as of the victories ;of the successful transformation of society as of the conspicuous failures in detail which still menace the achievement of the Revolution

About the author:
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc French: 27 July 1870[1] – 16 July 1953) was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters, and political activist. He is most notable for his Catholic faith, which had a strong impact on most of his works and his writing collaboration with G. K. Chesterton. He was President of the Oxford Union and later MP for Salford from 1906 to 1910. He was a noted disputant, with a number of long-running feuds, but also widely regarded as a humane and sympathetic man. His most lasting legacy is probably his verse, which encompasses cautionary tales and religious poetry. Among his best-remembered poems are Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion and Matilda, who told lies and was burnt to death