Essay --

In Defence of Terror and Liberty This essay is a summary of the first two chapters of â€Å"In Defence of Terror and Liberty.† It takes into cognizance important points raised by the book in regard to the French Revolution. The first part of the summary deals with chapter 1 of the book while the second one summarizes chapter 2 of the same book. The first chapter to discuss is â€Å"The Emotions in the Demand for Terror.† To the French people, the Revolution was a national project which was to be undertaken by all bonafide citizens of the country. Also, they viewed the Revolution as a fight to defend their basic rights. This chapter of this book presents a lot of points in connection with the Revolution. The first point is that the people’s feelings are closely tied to events which further elicited more reactions. One of such events happened in 1793: the death of Marat. In the quotation, â€Å"the death of Marat aroused a feeling of dread in the people of Paris. This dread was initially sublimated in the form taken by Marat’s funeral ceremony, before being turned into a popular demand for vengeance and terror.† In the quotation above, the events that was closely tied to the demand for vengeance is the manner Marat’s death. Apparently, Marat was a revolutionist who died while fighting for what they believed in. The way Marat died elicited dread, which is one of the basic ingredients that unified the people to request for the addition of terror to their defense when defending themselves against their enemies. To have a firm grip of why dread was a stimulus, it is essential to understand the people’s belief in regard to freedom. The second point highlighted by this chapter is that the death of a martyr is considered as a tragedy which demands ve... ...t not be desecrated by anyone. Attempts to do so were met with a fight. These are highlighted by skirmishes among revolutionists. Having read through the book, I find it both technical and interesting to read. It is technical because the choices of words and sentence structure were top-notch and efforts were not spared at making the paper interesting. Further, after reading the book, it seemed as if I was reading the French Revolution for the first time because it gave detailed analysis of facts which could easily elude the public. Conclusively, I did have ‘enough’ knowledge of the Revolution before reading this book. However, I had not read these parts of the Revolution before in any book. The first few facts I encountered in chapter one whet my appetite to read further. Eventually, I read the book and feel more knowledgeable on the Revolution which shook France.