What a difference a day makes! In this eminently readable, riveting account, Jones brings his archival acumen and masterful style to bear on one of the most consequential but least understood moments of the French Revolution. The events of 9–10 Thermidor, Year II (July 27–28, 1794), brought a sudden end to the life and career of Maximilien Robespierre, the dominant political persona of the period, whose name remains synonymous with the Terror. Historians have too often regarded this seismic shift as a coup from above that sounded the death knell of the popular movement in Paris. Drawing inspiration from contemporaries, especially Louis-Sébastien Mercier—while also telegraphing influential scholarship, both classic and more recent—Jones proposes to retell the story “up close,” hour by hour, from the fractured perspectives of the leading figures of government down to disgruntled consumers waiting in line for foodstuffs. Given that the revolutionaries regarded themselves as inaugurating not...
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