Armed with the insights of the scientific revolution, the men of the Enlightenment set out to free mankind from its age-old cocoon of pessimism and superstition and establish a more reasonable world of experiment and progress. Yet by the 1760s, this optimism about man and society had almost evaporat[...]
Saint-Just was probably the most powerful man in revolutionary France after Robespierre. This book traces his career, and his part in the transformation of the revolution from an attempt at a new liberal order to a ruthless dictatorship. Saint-Just was 22 at the outbreak of the revolution in 1789. T[...]