Table of Contents

Political Identity and the Jacobin Leaders
1: The Eighteenth-Century Man of Virtue
2: 'How the Face of Things Has Changed!'
3: New Men for New Politics: the First Jacobin Leaders
4: The Ascendancy of the Girondins and the Path to War
5: Choosing Sides: Friends, Factions and Conspirators in the New Republic
6: A Conspiracy of Girondins
7: Being Cincinnatus: The Jacobins in Power
8: The Enemy Within
9: The Robespierrists and the Republic of Virtue
10: Final Choices: Thermidor
11: Achieving Authenticity
Conclusion

About the Author

Marisa Linton is a leading historian of the French Revolution. She is currently Reader in History at Kingston University. She has published widely on eighteenth-century France and the French Revolution. She is the author of The Politics of Virtue in Enlightenment France (2001) and the co-editor of Conspiracy in the French Revolution (2007).

Reviews

`Marisa Linton's new book is in the best traditions of such careful, detailed, biographically-conscious evaluations.'
Dr Dave Andress, Reviews in History
`Marisa Linton's book covers five years of the revolution and integrates a great deal of recent research into an interpretation of the terror which will fascinate the general reader and encourage specialists to extend research into some of the areas she covers.'
Hugh Gough, Dublin Review of Books
`Linton manages to provide a very convincing account of her topic of choice. One of the key strengths of the book is that Linton is never prescriptive; likewise she presents a balanced account throughout, weighing the ideological, strategic, emotional and personal inclinations of the protagonists at every turn.'
Aurelien Mondon, Modern & Contemporary France
`Linton's rigorously researched and documented work renders in intricate detail the personalities, motives, and interrelationships of revolutionary figures caught up in the writhing landscape of the great French political experiment ... Recommended.'
J.I. Donohoe, CHOICE
`Linton's chronological approach allows her to offer many insights into the politicians' personal experience of the Terror'
Lynn Hunt, French History
`an extremely detailed and illuminating account.'
Aurelien Mondon, Modern and Contemporary France
`Marisa Linton's book has the great advantage of humanising the principal actors of the Revolution, by restoring their emotions, their friendships, and their virtues, as well as their anxieties and enmities. More than this, it puts forward a new reading of the slide into 'terrorism' produced by the fear that stalked them. Her compelling narrative is distinguished by fair judgement and subtle analysis.'
Annie Jourdan, La Vie des Idées
`In this important book, Marisa Linton shows with insight and care how [Jean-Marie] Roland's self-image as a man of virtue and honesty was shared among nearly all revolutionary politicians on the Left.'
Gary Kates, American Historical Review
`Linton has given us a potent account of how individual revolutionaries faced the Terror ... Linton offers a finely texted and compelling play-by-play, as figures like Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Georges Danton, Robespierre, and Jean Tallien wrestle over each other's fates and the future of France.'
Suzanne Desan, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
`In her valuable and authoritative book on the Terror, Marisa Linton focuses on why individuals engaged in acts of violence. Her title, Choosing Terror, encapsulates her interpretation. She reframes her question to ask why individuals who first chose revolution later chose Terror.'
Jack R. Censer, Journal of Social History