Citizens Audiobook By Simon Schama cover art

Citizens

A Chronicle of the French Revolution

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Citizens

By: Simon Schama
Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
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From one of the truly preeminent historians of our time, this is a landmark book chronicling the French Revolution. Simon Schama deftly refutes the contemporary notion that the French Revolution represented an uprising of the oppressed poor against a decadent aristocracy and corrupt court. He argues instead that the revolution was born of a rift among the elite over the speed of progress toward modernity and science, social and economic change. Schama’s approach, weaving in and out of private and public lives in the fashion of a novel, brings us closer than we have ever been to the harrowing and seductive French Revolution.

Simon Schama is a professor of art history and history at Columbia University and is the author of numerous award-winning books; his history Rough Crossings won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. He has written and presented more than thirty documentaries for the BBC, PBS, and the History Channel.

©1989 Simon Schama (P)1990 Blackstone Audio, Inc. 18th Century France Europe Modern Military Wars & Conflicts

Critic reviews

“Lively descriptions of major events, colorful cameos of leading characters (and obscure ones too), bring them to life here as no other general work has done…Above all, Mr. Schama tells a story, and he tells it well…A delight to read.” ( New York Times Book Review)
“An immensely readable work of distinguished scholarship that guillotined many of the romantic myths about the beginning of French democracy.” ( Time)
Comprehensive History • Detailed Context • Precise Narration • Vivid Storytelling • Scholarly Research • Acquired Taste

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Davidson takes some getting used to, though eventually his presentation grows on you and eventually seems just right.

Schama’s history is scholarly, but also uses narratives to drive the story on, tracing the lives of many important figures and ordinary folk (though perhaps a fuller picture of Robespierre, who appears somewhat abruptly in this telling, would have been nice).

Schama is committed to a version of the revolution that emphasizes continuity over discontinuity. In broad strokes this seems to be the better position to take, more accurate, &c, but it at times leads to an overly rosy picture—a sentimental one, ironically—of the royal family and a lack of a true accounting with Robespierre’s argument that you cannot have a revolution without a revolution (briefly comparing the English with the French, he conveniently glosses over that the great model for popular kingslaying that presaged them all happened earlier across the channel and, at least arguably, made the later less violent reformation of English political life possible, a model that seems to fit well enough the history of the successive French republics to at least give us serious pause).

In any case, Schama’s position is reasonable, well-argued, and well-earned. Moreover, it leaves the reader with an excellent and erudite understanding of the revolution in France.

French Revolution blending erudition and narrative

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Simon Schama’s extensive work on the French Revolution is fascinating, exhaustively researched, well-written, and vastly enthralling. I wish he had been the narrator of the audiobook, though, since his personable and witty style would have made the book so much more enjoyable. Instead, the narrator manages to sound imperious throughout, and he makes all quotations sound like poor imitations of Winston Churchill.

Excellent Book

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Schama emphasizes the great personalities involved in the French Revolution: this is the place to go for full portraits of the vacillating but sometimes courageous Louis XVI; for the puritanical Robespierre; the devilish Marat, with his repulsive skin disease; and calculating opportunists like Talleyrand.

It's also the place to go for stomach-churning descriptions of mob violence. I'm writing this in the wake of recent terrorist attacks in Paris; and I hesitate to say this because of the timing, but Paris is no stranger to the savage violence of the mob on people perceived as enemies. Once killed by a Paris mob, the victim's body was likely to be torn apart - literally - with parts paraded around the city on the ends of pikes. Heads were being removed as trophies by ordinary people for years before the guillotine made the process systematic.

The king was at Versailles; a mob stormed the palace, killed and beheaded his defenders, and forced him to move to his palace in the city, the Tuilleries, where they could keep an eye on him. Later that palace was stormed by a mob, who killed and beheaded his defenders, and forced him to take refuge elsewhere. Later still, this place of refuge was stormed again, with even worse butchery, and he was tried and condemned to the guillotine.

Schama doesn't focus exclusively on this aspect of the revolution. He gives full play to the political history of the various factions: the Montagnards, the Girondins, the Jacobins; and to the successive waves of political and sometimes physical extermination carried out by one faction against another. The Revolution was self-consciously symbolic and declamatory, and it made for magnificent "scenes" of political debate.

It's a long, fascinating account, whose only fault is that it ends rather abruptly after the death of Robespierre. There's a summing up of what happened to who, but less attention to what - if anything - it all meant. Frederick Davidson gives his usual sterling performance. (Davidson, as I've said many times, is an acquired taste: IF you've acquired the taste, the book is a great pleasure to listen to. He has an unerring instinct for character, given less free rein here than in his readings of fiction, but still in evidence.)

Savage

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Would you listen to Citizens again? Why?

The United States in the 1980s is probably sufficiently distant from France in the late 1700s to provide a balanced look at the important events of that time and place. This book provides a great overview and lots of context, and Schama never looks away from atrocities committed by either side. Citizens is also obviously a product of the late 1980s in its scepticism towards economic regulations.

What did you like best about this story?

The best part of Citizens is the wealth of context it provides in explaining what made the revolution happen and how French society was affected.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Frederick Davidson?

While Frederick Davidson's tendency to come across as smug and sarcastic is certainly a flaw, his complete inability to pronounce French names and terms is almost enough to be a dealbreaker. His awful pronunciation isn't even consistent. Marat's murderer's name was Charlotte Corday, but Davidson pronounces it Cordaille just as often as Corday. Now, her name is a familiar one, but the problem becomes real when the listener can't tell if Davidson is referring to a man alternately as Beaulieu and Boileau, or if they are indeed two different men.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Since reading (listening to) Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety, Danton's execution has never failed to get me.

Great introduction, horrible narration

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long. long. long. long. long. long. long. long. long. long. long. long. and very, amazingly repeatedly detailed. educational.

detailed to a fault

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