Fatal Friendship: The politics of Jacobin friendship

[sibylla-oo.livejournal.com]

http://fhs.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/31/1/51.pdf

A download-able article by Marisa Linton, one of the historians who participated as talking heads in THAT BBC docudrama, on the importance of networks of friendship in revolutionary politics.

1) Do you think filling public posts with friends and countrymen can be qualified as nepotism or it would be an unhistorical interpretation disregarding the context of those times?
 

2) What was the role of friendship in your opinion?

3) Were Desmoulins and Robespierre really such close friends? And Robespierre and St.Just? Wasn't Robespierre closer to Couthon? What are the historical proofs of the friendship ties between the revolutionaries?

4) Why do British historians of French revolution seem so obsessed with "fatality"? :D 

 

Quotation help wanted...

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

On page 792 of the hardback US Edition of Schama's 'Citizens', he winds up his chapter 'Terror is the order of the day' with the lines "Commenting on the Revolution of the 10th August, Robespierre had rejoiced that 'a river of blood would now divide France from her enemies'"

Leaving aside that horrific 'rejoiced' - cos, yeah, he did it for the lulz! - I've only ever heard those 'river of blood' words attributed to Danton. Did Robespierre ever use the same words?