Histoire de la Révolution Française

Louis Blanc (1811–82) was a French historian and politician whose writings had a considerable influence on the development of French socialism. In his famous Organisation du travail (1839) he called for social reform by action of the State, an unusual position at the time. As a member of the provisional government established after the 1848 Revolution, he campaigned for workers' rights, advocating the creation of cooperative workshops. His twelve-volume Histoire de la Révolution Française (1847–62), most of which he wrote while in exile in England, combines years of thorough research with Blanc's characteristic socialist and republican enthusiasm. Volume 3, first published in 1864, focuses on the immediate aftermath of the abolition of feudalism by the National Constituent Assembly. It describes the Women's March on Versailles, which took place in October 1789, and the subsequent forced relocation of Louis XVI to the Tuileries Palace in Paris.