Welcome to 1789...

Thank you so much for this - I will try to get hold of this book and see for myself, as you suggest! : ) I absolutely agree with you on the need to think first before jumping to the defense of revolutionaries. And I am, without doubt, very guilty of not doing so enough. But perhaps it is always when somebody seems to gets bad press all the time, or very frequently, (such as Barère, or Saint-Just for that matter) that one is more easily led to defending them without evaluating the arguments against them. I certainly have done so, in both their cases. Also, I often think that they all - or many of them - deserve better treatment, simply because of the difficulties they were facing, which we cannot possibly relive or fully comprehend. Thank you so much for bringing this book to my attention - I am hoping that there will be a better argument/evidence than in the one that I read, and who knows, perhaps it will really change how I see Barère!