“The French Revolution: A Document Collection”, edited by Laura Mason, Tracey Rizzo

357 pages, Houghton Mifflin, ISBN-13: 978-0669417807

Laura Mason and Tracey Rizzo’s The French Revolution: A Document Collection is an academic book intended to provide students with documents that reflect both contemporary historiography concerns vs. older modes of historical interpretation. In a practical way this means they include both the kinds of political documents required to understand what the government was doing in Paris while also including information on women, slaves, peasants and artisans. Finally, a guiding principle in their selection is to choose documents that allow the student to hear the words of the actors themselves in order to better see how they experienced and lived the confusion of the Revolutionary period. This collection is divided into four sections: Part 1 covers the pre-Revolution through to the Tennis Court Oath and the royal session at the end of June, and also contains a section on popular revolt (rural unrest and the March on Versailles, primarily); Part 2 takes the reader through to the king’s trial, with chapters on the legislation of the Assemblée constituante, the continuing unrest in the countryside, the rise of political tensions (within municipalities, over the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and those created by the royal flight to Varennes), and the start of the war; Part 3 focuses on the Republican Crisis and popular movements during the period of the Terror (sans-culottes, women, slaves and counter-revolutionaries), the creation of revolutionary government, legislative attempts to create a new society and culture, and the Thermidorian Reaction; Part 4 takes us through to 1803, ending with Napoleon’s rise to power.

The French Revolution has many strengths, starting with thorough introductory chapters for each section of the readers surveyed here, in addition to a helpful chronology of events at the beginning of the book. Above all, the emphasis on the experiences of ordinary people is its greatest advantage; as a result of this emphasis the book text also has the strongest coverage of popular revolution and especially the revolts in the countryside, in addition to attempts by the National Assembly to root the new civic order in the provinces. To have three full chapters (sixty pages) on the Directory is also a definite advantage, given the neglected historiography from which this fascinating half decade is only beginning to emerge.

The main weakness of the work is its treatment of Napoleon: although the authors try to add a measure of controversy to the issue of Napoleon’s relation to the Revolution in their introductory chapter, their decision to end with the start of the Empire, as well as entitling the section “Napoleon Closes the Revolution”, leaves little doubt where the authors stand. The same point can be made by examining the author’s selection from the Civil Code, which is almost entirely limited to the sections on marriage, divorce and paternal authority, by far the most reactionary parts of the Code. One of the strengths of the Mason and Rizzo reader is its inclusion of the Haitian situation, race and the question of slavery, but the broader European context of the Revolutionary period gets very little space in the text, especially the question of governance over occupied Italy and Germany. This is unfortunate, since the war and occupation starkly reveal many of the tensions within revolutionary ideology, and between ideals and reality, financial and otherwise. How do you extend liberty to those who would use it to undermine the accomplishments of the Revolution? But in spite of this, The French Revolution, though dry and at times tedious, should be a welcome addition to any student’s library.

“The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801-1805”, by Frederick W. Kagan

774 pages, Da Capo Press, ISBN-13: 978-0306811371

I know, I know, I know…ANOTHER book on Napoleon and how he raised a whole lotta hell over a couple of decades before being forced into permanent retirement on St. Helena at the insistence of Europe. In what is intended as the first volume in a new and comprehensive four-volume study of Napoleon and Europe (which, as of this writing, have yet to be written), The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801-1805 by Frederick W. Kagan is a fresh, clear interpretation of the events that brought about the War of the Third Coalition in 1805, the flaws in the Coalition’s plans and how Napoleon exploited those weaknesses and emerged victorious. One interesting reinterpretation of the facts is Kagan’s thesis that it was the mistakes made by European nations, and not Napoleon’s brilliance, that lead to France dominating Europe in the first decade of the 19^th Century. This is just one obvious instance of Kagan refusing to fall into any sort of Napoleonic hero-worship; certainly, he recognizes Napoleon’s genius, but then again Napoleon’s faults are on full display, while all of the other Kings, Emperors, generals and diplomats are treated to equally balanced examinations, as well.

Kagan states that the distrust among Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia made them form an alliance too late to stop The Ogre; in Prussia’s case especially, as she opted out until the very last moment. Kagan is especially critical of Tsar Alexander I for alienating potential allies by his overly idealistic vision of postwar Europe in which both Prussia and Austria would have diminished power in exchange for greater influence over the smaller states in Central Europe – and a power vacuum into which Russia would step, or course. Kagan is also critical of Austrian leadership for putting too many soldiers in Italy instead of Germany, and at General Mack for not withdrawing his overextended forces from Ulm; also, Archduke Charles failed to move sufficient forces from Italy to help Mack in Germany in time. Kagan is especially harsh on Tsar Alexander I for overextending his forces in Italy, around Prussia and the Balkans while failing to concentrate them in southern Germany in order to cooperate better with the Austrians. Even the great victory at Austerlitz is examined in detail with an eye to balance and recognition that had a few chess pieces been otherwise placed the outcome could have been different. The result of the climactic battle is not just wrapped with a brief review of peace terms but, like the causes of the war, the road to Preßburg and Schönbrunn are examined in detail before being signed off and summarized in the closing pages.

Kagan does an excellent job at balancing Napoleon and his effect on the world, both for good and for ill. No hero-worshiper he who sees all that Napoleon did as good and right, neither is he a revisionist who damns Napoleon as The Ogre of British children’s nightmares. I really hope Kagen gets it together and writes the remaining volumes of his narrative; if the first is anything to go by it should be an exhaustive and balanced history of one of the most tempestuous and consequential eras in European, to say nothing of World, history…but seeing as this book was first published in 2006 and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the other three supposed books in this serious, I’m not holding my breath.

“Appleseed”, written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow

The Promethean Challenge: 178 pages, Dark Horse Manga, ISBN-13: 978-1593076917

Prometheus Unbound: 192 pages, Dark Horse Manga, ISBN-13: 978-1593076924

The Scales of Prometheus: 216 pages, Dark Horse Manga, ISBN-13: 978-1593076931

The Promethean Balance: 216 pages, Dark Horse Manga, ISBN-13: 978-1593076948

“The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire”, by Brian Crozier

848 pages, Prima Lifestyles, ISBN-13: 978-0761520573

In The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire author Brian Crozier paints quite a dismal portrait of the collectivist powers that squashed all forms of dissent and pushed forward their grandiose vision for the world. This book lays out in plain view for all the world to see that, after decades of debates, the anti-Communists were right: Marxists the world over were fomenting revolution, terror, war and a plethora of inhumane practices through their ideology, their satellites and their allies, knowing and otherwise. Comrades and fellow travelers at home, similarly, were not the humanitarians they prided themselves on claiming to be; instead, they were vicious thugs with no minds of their own who were obediently following the orders barked at them by the mad dogs of the Kremlin, despite knowledge of Communism’s crimes against humanity, peace and culture – indeed, they turned their backs on all these because it is the Marxist nature to put ideology before all else. But don’t just take my word for it, for the best indication of the blinding truth this book lays bare – which is backed by nigh-irrefutable evidence such as documents from the archives of the fallen Communist regimes themselves – is the response it engenders from the far leftist crowd.

You see, Marxism is in a most twisted sense the “intellectual” religion of modern times: otherwise quite rational people who surrender to its totalitarian charms abandon all earthly rationality and participation in logical discourse; instead, everything in life is placed into two categories – “progressive” (good) and “reactionary” (bad! bad!); to put it more bluntly: if you’re not with us then you’re against us. How odd, then, that these self-described nihilists should bemoan such a philosophy on the part of the free-marketers and the true democrats. This is why their best prepared and unified defense against this book is to point out that it is written by a right-winger – and one that used to work for the British government, no less – and that this somehow makes the book false and untrustworthy, or that it has been praised by other right-wingers, such as William F. Buckley, Jr., Edwin J. Feulner, Henry Kissinger, Richard Pipes, Herbert Romerstein and Margaret Thatcher. One can only ask what they would say to a book that is similarly condemning of the Soviet system and all fellow travelers, yet written by leftists (in fact, this book has already written: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, an equally damning look at the reality of Communism – and also reviewed by me on September 16, 2013).

Leftists criticize Crozier for his introspection and “bias”, but I’m apt to question their own biases considering they ignore Soviet Stalinist atrocities, repression in Eastern Europe and the Third World, as well as their state-sponsored terrorist campaigns. Crozier finds no fault with the CIA for whatever hand they may have had in Augusto Pinochet’s coup to overthrow the Marxist Allende, for Pinochet did, after all, bring stability and prosperity to Chile and saved it the perils of economic hardship from collectivization (it must be said, however, that a light must be shed on his own brutality in doing so). American interests were served in stopping the spread of communism. Crozier poignantly chronicles the turning point of the Cold War where the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan is foiled and becomes their own Vietnamese quagmire; thereafter, Ronald Reagan stifles the Red takeover of Grenada and then comes the period of glasnost (publicity) and perestroika (restructuring; that is, as Crozier goes at great pains to point out, restructuring “the whole vast apparatus of propaganda and ‘Active Measures’”, the KGB term for political warfare) and thence the waning years of Soviet hegemony, all covered with amazing clarity.

My own perusal of the hate directed at this book shows that it is mostly launched by embittered leftists, American college-campus Marxists and fellow-traveling liberals in denial about Communist crimes and the inhumane nature of Communist systems the world over. Crozier is blunt and finds no fault with West and the United States for efforts to thwart Soviet expansion, a government Ronald Reagan was right in calling an “evil empire”. So, in the end, anyone can go through the book and find points where they disagree with the conclusions that Crozier has drawn…such is human nature. But, similarly, they know that he has the facts on his side: the documentation; the statistics; the reasoning…this is what makes them hysterical, and it is only to their utter disgrace.