Twelve Who Ruled Summary

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Twelve Who Ruled by R.R. Palmer is a book that was written with a very meticulous amount of detail. The story covers the reign of terror in France from 1793-1794. Palmer takes the Committee of Safety and individually explains each member along with their role in the Reign of Terror. The book was originally published in 1941 by the Princeton University Press, however, in 1989, a new preface was added, leading to a reprinting of the story. The purpose of Palmer’s book was to discover what led to the extreme outbreak of violence during the Reign of Terror. He sheds light on the killings, paranoia, and the well known guillotine. R. R. Palmer was an American Historian Professor at multiple high ranking universities. As a student, before he began …show more content…

Each of his books, as well as his dissertation that he completed for his Ph.D. are held in high regard. Professor Isser Woloch who is a teacher at Columbia University and specializes in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, even goes so far as to state that Twelve Who Ruled "may be the best book on the French Revolution written by an …show more content…

He walks the reader through the mess of political strife and bloodshed and he is very detailed in the inner workings of the Committee of Public Safety. He also writes as if the reader knows nothing about the French Revolution. This is a very helpful aspect of the book. Another strong point in this particular story is that there is a map of The First French Republic in the front of the book. There is also a key for the titles of the months according to the French Republican Calendar. This calendar is useful in the reading because depending on the time of year as well as the situation he is writing about, he uses month names such as Ventôse which, in current translation is around the twentieth of

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