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Featured Review
| Howard G. Brown. Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression from the Terror to Napoleon. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. 2006. Pp. xii, 461. $45.00.
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| Howard G. Brown's challenging and controversial book examines the period of French history from 1795 to 1802—years that witnessed the end of the National Convention, the government of the Directory (1795–1799), Napoleon Bonaparte's seizure of power in the Brumaire coup of 1799, and the opening phase of his initial regime, the Consulate. The author proposes an interpretation of these years that will, in his words, "alter our vision of the revolutionary period." Using chiefly military and judicial archives as well as sociological and political theory, Brown maintains that the Directory's repeated and "heavy-handed" use of military repression undermined its own version of a liberal democracy and laid the foundations for what he calls the "security state" of the Napoleonic period. Indeed, for Brown the French Revolution failed in its effort to establish liberal democracy chiefly because the government resorted to a range of exceptional measures that infringed on civil liberties and violated the Constitution. Readers of his previous articles will be familiar with his notion of liberal authoritarianism and his emphasis on strong-armed military policing as an essential insight into the regime. The author also proposes to re-periodize these years, asserting that the French Revolution ended in 1802, not in 1799. |
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Brown's research focuses on the repeated attempts by the French state to repress the violent civil strife that prevailed in much of the country from the mid-1790s through the turn of the century. Like many other scholars, he argues that it was ultimately the army that provided the state with its most powerful and effective tool in the struggle against brigandage and rebellion. Military tribunals in various incarnations—tribunaux militaires, then conseils militaires in 1795, then conseils de guerre after 1796—not only tried soldiers for misconduct but also targeted chouans and other rebels, and in 1798 were empowered to hear cases of brigandage. But a far more daunting prospect for bandits and other enemies of the state was to be apprehended and sent before a commission militaire. Brown analyses the military commissions that, as historians have noted, appeared in two main waves. Following the political coup of Fructidor (September 1797), the Directory established several temporary military commissions and directed them to arrest and try counterrevolutionary suspects: rebels, émigrés, and nonjuring clergy. The second main wave came after the Directory's fall, when Bonaparte created new military commissions. Charged with repressing brigands and bolstered by "flying columns," these commissions dispensed a "Consular Terror," pursuing their targets aggressively in the field and staging executions. Indeed, the author submits that it was ultimately the summary justice of the military commissions, and the support they received from the members of local communities, that broke the back of brigandage in the south. |
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