Desk Revolutionaries - by Biancamaria Fontana (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A character-driven, insider's view of how the French government was rebuilt between the Revolution and the rise of Napoleon.

The French Directory is often dismissed as an uninspiring interlude between revolutionary fervor and Napoleonic legend, yet its story is far richer than its reputation suggests. This book shifts the focus from the regime to the remarkable men who shaped it--a cohort of jurists, engineers, and administrators who survived the Reign of Terror and set out to safeguard the Revolution's most important achievements. Working not on battlefields but in offices and council chambers, they built durable laws and institutions that still underpin modern France. As the first English-language study on the topic in fifty years, Desk Revolutionaries offers an engaging, character-driven narrative that also sheds light on the enduring power of technical experts in government, inviting reflection on how democracies are made--and maintained.

Review Quotes

"Desk Revolutionaries does for the overlooked period of the French Revolutionary Directory (1795-9) what R. R. Palmer's classic Twelve Who Ruled did for the Terror. Fontana's riveting group biography of the men who found themselves in power between the guillotining of Robespierre and the coup that brought Napoleon to power shows us ordinary politicians and bureaucrats in extraordinary times. She reconstructs the personal and professional pasts of her cast and explains their contributions to the lasting achievements and disappointments of the Revolution. This is a new, historically and politically astute portrait of a group that has too often been unfairly dismissed or even ridiculed. Fontana has transformed and humanized our understanding of the Directory."

--Ruth Scurr, professor of politics and fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and author of "Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows"

"Beautifully written by a leading authority on the politics of the French Revolution, Desk Revolutionaries focuses on its later phase, between the end of the Terror and the coming of Napoleon. Through studies of the leading figures in government as they struggled to make the new republican constitution work, Fontana shows that they achieved underestimated successes as well as the failures highlighted by later Napoleonic propaganda. In fact, the regime established by Napoleon could scarcely have worked without patient and unrewarding groundwork by these men, who had sought in vain to bring a successful end to an unfinished revolution. This is a book that nobody interested in the French Revolution, or the ideals and pitfalls of republicanism in general, should miss."

--William Doyle, emeritus professor of history, University of Bristol, and author of "Napoleon at Peace"

"In a series of shrewd and finely etched depictions of political figures during the French Directory (1795-9), Fontana's Desk Revolutionaries deftly rehabilitates the unjustly neglected years that followed the Terror. These backroom boys may have failed to stop the rise of Napoleon, but by their unglamorous commitment to Enlightenment rationalism, bureaucratic paperwork, and republican values they showed that the pen was equal to the sword in shaping the long-term legacy of the Revolutionary decade."

--Colin Jones, emeritus professor of cultural history, Queen Mary University of London, and author of "The Fall of Robespierre"

"The history of the French Revolution often centers on the Twelve who Ruled, or the dozen members of the Committee of Public Safety who headed the first French Republic between 1793 and 1794. Fontana's Desk Revolutionaries is the first major study of the Five who Ruled, and offers an original examination of the Executive Directory that governed France between 1795 and 1799."

--Michael Sonenscher, fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and author of "Jean-Jacques Rousseau" and "Before the Deluge"

About the Author

Biancamaria Fontana is emeritus professor of the history of political ideas at the University of Lausanne. Her books include Montaigne's Politics and Germaine de Staël.