Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/312

 304 SHORT NOTICES April In the eighth series of his Etudes et Lemons sur la Revolution Franqaise (Paris : Alcan, 1921) M. Aulard has printed, recentiores priores, six lectures delivered since the outbreak of the late war. They are frankly popular, and deal with the annexation of the left bank of the Rhine by the First Republic, the relations between the American and the French Revolutions, and the claims of Landau and Sarrelouis to be considered French. Except for unpublished letters from Hoche on French policy in the country which it was proposed should form the Rhenish republic, these lectures contain little that is new, and where he touches on matters outside the French Revolution the touch is not as sure as we are accustomed to expect from M. Aulard. In his anxiety to prove the identity of the aims of the French Revolution and the American rebellion, M. Aulard surely obscures the differences between Locke and Rousseau ; it is probable that the amount of religious toleration maintained in Maryland by the 'demo- cratic' constitution of that colony is less than M. Aulard supposes; while it is surely anachronistic to speak of the Pilgrim Fathers as independents or levellers. The essay on Landau and Sarrelouis is a plea for the retention of these towns by France, and is a good illustration of the difficulty of settling frontier questions by an appeal to history. The case for Sarrelouis is easy ; down to 1815 the city, which had been founded by Louis XIV, had never been other than French ; not so Landau, which before its annexation to France had been in the empire. M. Aulard has therefore to face the problem of rinding a principle which will defeat the German claims, but allow the French. Pure history would probably settle the question in favour of Germany ; imperialistic motives, as may be imagined, are emphatically repudiated byM. Aulard, so force is ruled out as a principle ; and eventually we are told ' qu'il faut seulement reparer les injustices commises depuis 1'avenement du droit moderne, c'est-a-dire depuis la Revolution fran9aise ' (p. 29). The formula is interesting and even convenient ; it comes naturally to a student steeped in the cataclysmic ideas of the French Revolution ; but one is tempted to ask what light it throws on the position which ought to be assigned in the new Europe to Avignon, Montbeliard, and the lands of the dispossessed princes of Alsace. L. G. W. L. Mr. Sidney Herbert's book, The Fall of Feudalism in France (London : Methuen, 1921), is a clear and exact summary of the work of that school of historians of which MM. Sagnac, Caron, See, Kovalesky, Loutchisky, are the most conspicuous representatives. It will render useful service to students by showing them an aspect, too frequently neglected, of the French Revo- lution, viz. the part played by the peasant class in the destruction of the old regime. Chapter i, ' Feudalism in 1789 ', depicts the feudal regime in France on the eve of the Revolution ; chapter ii, ' The Peasants and their Programme ', gives a summary of the principal complaints and needs of the peasant class ; the next five chapters, ' The First Peasant Revolt ', Rural Revolution, 1790-1 ', ' The End of Feudalism ', show how this programme was carried out by the assemblies, in spite of themselves, from fear of a peasant rebellion. Though the material of the book is not
 * The Night of 4 August ', ' Legislation and Insurrection, 1789-90 ', ' The