The French Revolution, in Two Volumes: Volume I. From Its Origins to 1793; Volume II. From 1793 to 1799

xviii, 365; xiv, 429 pp. Two volume set. Internationally renowned as the greatest authority on the French Revolution, Georges Lefebvre combined impeccable scholarship with a lively writing style. His masterly overview of the history of the French Revolution has taken its rightful place as the definitive account. A vivid narrative of events in France and across Europe is combined with acute insights into the underlying forces that created the dynamics of the revolution, as well as the personalities responsible for day-to-day decisions during this momentous period. Georges Lefebvre (6 August 1874 – 28 August 1959) was a French historian, best known for his work on the French Revolution and peasant life. He is considered one of the pioneers of "history from below". He coined the phrase the "death certificate of the old order" to describe the Great Fear of 1789. Among his most significant works was the 1924 book Les Paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française ("The Peasants of the North During the French Revolution"), which was the result of 20 years of research into the role of the peasantry during the revolutionary period. Lefebvre began writing in 1904, but it was not until 1924, at the age of fifty, that he was finally at the point in his career - no longer preoccupied with supporting his family - that he was able to finish his doctoral thesis: Les Paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française. This work was a detailed and thorough examination of the effects of the French Revolution on the countryside. Lefebvre's work on this thesis was "based on a thorough analysis of thousands of tax rolls, notarial records, and the registers of rural municipalities, whose materials he used to trace the effects of the abolition of feudalism and ecclesiastical tithes, the consequences of property transfers, the movement of the bourgeoisie onto the countryside, and the destruction of collective rights in the peasants villages". He often wrote from a viewpoint which he felt the peasant of the time would have held. His "the Coming of the French Revolution" identified four key champions: the aristocracy (which prevented monarchical reform), the bourgeoisie, the urban revolution (storming the Bastille), and the peasant revolution. Fellow historians tend to examine the last 35 years of Lefebvre's writings (1924–1959). This period is chosen because it is when he wrote his most influential and "much more complex interpretation of the Revolution than had hitherto prevailed amongst historians". Peter Jones elaborates that Lefebvre's take on the Revolution has three major emphases: the idea that the countryside peasantry actively participated in the Revolution, the idea that this participation was not significantly influenced by the bourgeoisie, and the idea that the peasants largely agreed on an anti-capitalist way of thinking in the 1790s.