Dr Rob Priest – A Novel of French Revolutionary Terror
For such an important event, the French Revolution has inspired relatively few good novels. Anatole France’s The Gods Will Have Blood is one of them. It tells the gory story of Évariste Gamelin, an idealistic young man who ends up sending aristocrats and other ‘counterrevolutionaries’ to the guillotine during the Terror. While it is a cracking read, France’s novel was written in 1912, so he can hardly be considered an expert witness. But it is still useful. What this book really tells us about, as historians, is how people tried to understand the violence of the French Revolution over a century after it had happened.
Questions to ask after reading:
- Why does Gamelin first become drawn to the cause of the Revolution? What are his ideals?
- Why does Gamelin drift into using and abusing his authority over life and death? What does this say about how good people persuade themselves to perform terrible deeds?
- What do you think the novel was trying to say about politics and violence? Why might this have been relevant in Europe in the 1910s?
