One of the least likely survivors of the Jacobin purge of the National Convention in early 1793 was Jean-Baptiste Louvet, the author of the popular eighteenth-century romance Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas. Had it not been for the upheaval caused by the revolution in 1789, Louvet undoubtedly would have continued to build his promising literary career. Few of his readers could have imagined that this frail, young man would be elected as a deputy in the national assembly, where he dared to oppose powerful Jacobin leaders like Robespierre. His limited formal education and background as a bookstore clerk set Louvet apart among his legally trained friends in the Brissotin/Girondin faction; yet his intelligence, courage, and loyalty led them to appreciate his skills and friendship. Louvet would be the only one among the group to survive the proscription of the Girondins and life as a fugitive. He returned to Paris following the Jacobins’ downfall in July 1794, to serve again in the National Convention and then in the newly elected government of the Directory.

This study analyzes the ironic nature of the social treatment of women during the French Revolution. While the allegorical figure of womanhood came to symbolize the virtues of the new French Republic, the book describes how women in France were continually repressed and down-trodden.

Just as it was not foreordained that the Terror of 1793D1794 should follow the early idealistic years of the French Revolution, neither could it have been imagined that some of those elected deputies who had helped to establish the new republic would become fugitives from their own government. Yet, in May to June 1793, twenty-nine deputies of the moderate Girondin faction were expelled from the National Convention by the radical Jacobin leadership and placed under house arrest. This action followed months of irreconcilable quarrels between the Girondin and Jacobin factions. Some of the proscribed deputies chose to remain in Paris and were subsequently executed in October 1793. Others escaped, fleeing first to Caen in Normandy, where they hoped to ignite a federalist revolt against the government in Paris. When their efforts failed, a small group of the former deputies fled to nearby Brittany and then down the western coast to the Bordeaux area, where they found refuge near St. Emilion. Hiding for several months in the home and attached stone quarry of the deputy Guadet's relatives, four of these fugitives wrote their memoirs before their presence was discovered by one of Robespierre's agents. The memoirs of Fran_ois Buzot, Jerome PZtion, Charles Barbaroux, and Jean-Baptiste Louvet, in addition to correspondence between them and Jean and Manon Roland, provide the basis for this book. This is the first book to examine the lives of the fugitives during the period of the Terror (1793D94), after which only Louvet remained alive.

The unleashing of the French Revolution in 1789 resulted in the acceleration of time coupled with an inability to predict what might happen next. As unprecedented events outpaced the days, those caught up in the whirlwind had little time to make judicious decisions about which course of action to follow. The lack of reliable information and delays in communication between Paris and the provinces only exacerbated the situation. Consequently, some fled into exile in Europe and the United States, while others remained to take advantage of new opportunities provided by the revolutionary government. Between 1789 and 1794, the government moved from a position of hopeful cooperation to one of desperate measures instigated during the Terror of 1793–1794. As a result, those French citizens who had fled early in the revolution, including many aristocrats and the king's brothers, as well as the artist Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun, could not return until many years later, while those who had remained, such as Vigée-LeBrun’s husband, the art dealer Jean-Baptiste Pierre LeBrun, as well as the artist Jacques-Louis David, the writers Sébastien Chamfort and André Chénier, and expelled Girondin deputies, chose survival strategies that they hoped would be successful. For all those concerned, timing was key to survival, and those who lived found that they had crossed a bridge between the Ancien Régime and the beginning of the modern world. It would not be possible to grasp the full import of the period between 1789 and 1795 until time had decelerated to a more reasonable level after the fall of Robespierre in 1794. Yet few could have then imagined that almost one hundred years would pass before a stable French republic would be established.

The French Revolution was one of the greatest events in world history, filled with remarkable characters and dramatic events. From its beginning in 1789 to the Reign of Terror in 1793–94, and through the ups and downs of the Directory era that followed, the Revolution showed humanity at its optimistic best and its violent worst; it transformed the lives of all who experienced it. The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics offers a fresh treatment of this perennially popular and hugely significant topic, introducing a bold interpretation of the Revolution that highlights the key role that religion and sexuality played in determining the shape of the Revolution. These were issues that occupied the minds and helped shape the actions of women and men; from the pornographic pamphlets about queen Marie-Antoinette to the puritanical morality of revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre, from the revolutionary catechisms that children learned and to the anathemas hurled on the Revolution from clandestine priests in the countryside. The people who lived through the French Revolution were surrounded by messages about gender, sex, religion and faith, concerns which did not exist outside of the events of the Revolution. This book is an essential resource for students of the French Revolution, History of Catholicism and Women and Gender.