Peter McPhee on the French Revolution: Robespierre, the King's Trial, and the Terror

Good afternoon.

We are here on our interview episode, and at Saturday's episode, we ended at the Pantheon or, uh, Pantheon in Paris with two writers who had spent years attacking each other in print, dug up by revolution neither of them lived to see, and laid a few yards apart.

My guest this week is a historian of that revolution.

And Peter McPhee is the emeritus professor at the University of Melbourne, where he was the university's first provost.

He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and a member of the Order of Australia.

He has written a general history of the revolution, Liberty or Death, and a biography, Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life, both from Yale Publishing.

Peter has spent his career on the revolution as ordinary people lived it, and I asked him here to make its case to an audience that mostly knows of it as the Terror.

Peter, welcome.

A- anything I got wrong there? Anything you would like to add before we get started?

No, uh, e- except that I'm also an historian of, uh, of France since the revolution, uh, as well.

Um, but as you say, a particular interest of mine has been the, the lived experience of, of ordinary people in, in France, as well as the, the life of someone as significant as Maximilien Robespierre.

Very good.

I, I definitely...

That's, that's one of the things that have really attracted me about your writing is, uh, one of the, I think, very important factors of history is understanding where everybody sits in that environment, not just the, the famous names that you hear that were, that were in Parliament or that were in the streets of Paris, but where the people were in the communities, where they were in the, in the countryside, what else was going on at that time that, that led to all of these other decisions, and I certainly hope we get into some of that today.

Uh, most of the people listening know the French Revolution as the guillotine.

I, I'd like to start a little bit before that today.

And in the spring of 1789, the crown asked the whole country to write down its grievances.

The Cahier, uh, and I, I've, uh, my son gets on me a little bit with my French, and I know he might be listening, uh, right now, but the, the, the Cahiers de Doléances, the book of complaints, what did the ordinary French people actually ask for? How much of it did they get?

And, uh, yes, well, two very important questions, and, uh- As you say, in referring to these boo- uh, books of grievances or cahiers, the, um, it's an extraordinary resource because, uh, part of the procedure for the coming together of the Estates General that Louis XVI had, had called to give him advice, uh, a, a representative body, was that communities across the kingdom needed to meet together to, uh, to work out their, their grievances and s- and suggestions for the monarch.

So there are, there are thousands, many thousands of these still in existence.

Not surprisingly, uh, what people asked for was very much a reflection of where they sat in that society, so that, of course, the, the, the nobles, the upper clergy, uh, the well-to-do middle classes of, of urban areas had very different grievances from the great mass of people who lived in the countryside.

And we need to remember that, um, maybe 85%, uh, of the French population lived in communities of 500 people or smaller, village communities, hamlets, and were peasants in the sense that they d- directly labored the soil.

Uh, their aspirations and their grievances were very much focused on local concerns, the power of the local lord, uh, the feudal system, uh, abuses within the church.

But significantly, they, uh, like, uh, the grievances of middle class educated people, they also focused on a major political question, and that was, what was to be the role of this Estates General in the future of France? Uh, Louis XVI had called this body together, uh, together for the first time in 175 years to give him advice, but the, uh, the cahiers, the books of grievances of, of, uh, ordinary people in town and country, uh, they wanted that, uh, that, uh, Estates General to effectively become a national assembly.

And even in small rural communities, a very common demand was for that to be the case.

Good afternoon.

We are here on our interview episode, and at Saturday's episode, we ended at the Pantheon or, uh, Pantheon in Paris with two writers who had spent years attacking each other in print, dug up by revolution neither of them lived to see, and laid a few yards apart.

My guest this week is a historian of that revolution.

And Peter McPhee is the emeritus professor at the University of Melbourne, where he was the university's first provost.

He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and a member of the Order of Australia.

He has written a general history of the revolution, Liberty or Death, and a biography, Robespierre: A Revolutionary Life, both from Yale Publishing.

Peter has spent his career on the revolution as ordinary people lived it, and I asked him here to make its case to an audience that mostly knows of it as the Terror.

Peter, welcome.

A- anything I got wrong there? Anything you would like to add before we get started?

No, uh, e- except that I'm also an historian of, uh, of France since the revolution, uh, as well.

Um, but as you say, a particular interest of mine has been the, the lived experience of, of ordinary people in, in France, as well as the, the life of someone as significant as Maximilien Robespierre.

Very good.

I, I definitely...

That's, that's one of the things that have really attracted me about your writing is, uh, one of the, I think, very important factors of history is understanding where everybody sits in that environment, not just the, the famous names that you hear that were, that were in Parliament or that were in the streets of Paris, but where the people were in the communities, where they were in the, in the countryside, what else was going on at that time that, that led to all of these other decisions, and I certainly hope we get into some of that today.

Uh, most of the people listening know the French Revolution as the guillotine.

I, I'd like to start a little bit before that today.

And in the spring of 1789, the crown asked the whole country to write down its grievances.

The Cahier, uh, and I, I've, uh, my son gets on me a little bit with my French, and I know he might be listening, uh, right now, but the, the, the Cahiers de Doléances, the book of complaints, what did the ordinary French people actually ask for? How much of it did they get?

And, uh, yes, well, two very important questions, and, uh- As you say, in referring to these boo- uh, books of grievances or cahiers, the, um, it's an extraordinary resource because, uh, part of the procedure for the coming together of the Estates General that Louis XVI had, had called to give him advice, uh, a, a representative body, was that communities across the kingdom needed to meet together to, uh, to work out their, their grievances and s- and suggestions for the monarch.

So there are, there are thousands, many thousands of these still in existence.

Not surprisingly, uh, what people asked for was very much a reflection of where they sat in that society, so that, of course, the, the, the nobles, the upper clergy, uh, the well-to-do middle classes of, of urban areas had very different grievances from the great mass of people who lived in the countryside.

And we need to remember that, um, maybe 85%, uh, of the French population lived in communities of 500 people or smaller, village communities, hamlets, and were peasants in the sense that they d- directly labored the soil.

Uh, their aspirations and their grievances were very much focused on local concerns, the power of the local lord, uh, the feudal system, uh, abuses within the church.

But significantly, they, uh, like, uh, the grievances of middle class educated people, they also focused on a major political question, and that was, what was to be the role of this Estates General in the future of France? Uh, Louis XVI had called this body together, uh, together for the first time in 175 years to give him advice, but the, uh, the cahiers, the books of grievances of, of, uh, ordinary people in town and country, uh, they wanted that, uh, that, uh, Estates General to effectively become a national assembly.

And even in small rural communities, a very common demand was for that to be the case.