Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/646

 636 Reviews of Books there important ideas are obscured by unskilful language (pp. 40, 590, etc.). In many other places, however, his style rises to remarkable adequacy, originality, and force. This is true in his treatment of the personalities of Kant (pp. 357 et scqq.), Beethoven (pp. 683 et seqq.), in his delineation of the position of Thuringia in the culture-life of Germany (pp. 503 et seqq.), in the sketching of large movements in a few words (pp. 583 et seqq., 598 et seqq., 623 et seqq., etc.). In conclu- sion we may say that this work with its original point of view, based on enviable knowledge, will prove stimulating and maturing to all interested in the cultural development of the eighteenth century, from whatever point of view. Camillo von Klenze. Essai stir I'Hisfoire de la Revolution a ]vdiin (i/8q-I/Q^). Par Edmoxd Pionnier, Professeur d'Histoire ati College de A'erdun. (Nancy: A. Crepin-Leblond. 1905. Pp. xix, 565, cxxxviii.) This is an excellent local history of the useful type which Professor Aulard has been urging upon the younger school of French historical students. The author presented it at the University of Nancy as his thesis for the Doctorate of Letters. He has renounced all effort to produce literary efifects and has sought to exhibit, in detail and with abundant analysis of documents, a special development of a great national movement. The student of the Revolution will find either in his narrative or in the appendixes and pieces jiistificatives a mass of in- structive illustrative material. Some of this is unique, because Verdun was almost the only town of importance which was occupied by the Prussians during the invasion of 1792. The short time which had elapsed since the overthrow of the king made the position of the royal- ists very delicate. The Duke of Brunswick understood this, and assured the officials, in his first summons to surrender, that the armies under his command were engaged solely in vindicating the authority of the king and that no conquests would be made. The faint-hearted and reluctant defense of the town was the beginning there of the tragedy of the Revolution, for the people seem to have passed through the earlier crises without suffering any harm more serious than violent speechmaking or pamphleteering. The only phase of the Revolution upon which M. Pionnier does not dwell at some length is the development of the economic or industrial situation. The question of subsistence interests him, and he gives several pages to the varying cost of wheat or bread, and to the enforce- ment, in these particulars, of the maximum legislation. Among other phases illustrated in the experience of Verdun is the municipal revolu- tion. At first nothing more serious happened than the destruction of the barriers, preventing the collection of the octroi from July 25 to October 14. A " permanent committee " was appointed, although not until the middle of August, and this committee did not, as in Paris, supersede the old municipality. The organization of a national guard was all that was distinctively new.