第一章：法国大革命的回响
原书及其作者
法国大革命，在中国的历史感知里仿佛总是遥远而浪漫。它确实留下了系统阐述的普世人权，留下了欧陆法系的一大基石《拿破仑民法典》，但它也是激进思想引导下的无序破坏，是竞逐权力真空中产生的动荡和恐怖统治，头颅滚滚中最终站出了一个拿破仑，以军事独裁告终。这是我读的第四本牛津通识读本书系，在简中环境里，常识需要重载，这个书系的质量可以确认，不过这本通篇的英语有股法文味，读起来可能比较难受。
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Chp1 Echoes
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>p1-2 But probably even he would have had some idea of what the worst excesses of the French Revolution had been, and of how they had affronted life’s ordinary decencies. He would have known that there had been a popular uprising leading to mob rule, the overthrow of monarchy, and persecution of the nobility. He would have known that the chosen instrument of revolutionary vengeance was the guillotine, that relentless mechanical decapitator which made the streets of Paris run with royal and aristocratic blood.
>p2-3 Nobody who knew anything of France even at second hand (if only through learning what was still the first foreign language of choice throughout most of the world) could fail to imbibe some sense that this country had been marked by a traumatic convulsion only just beyond living memory. Many believed, or felt, that this must have been for the best and somehow necessary. …… Few countries have failed to experience some sort of revolution since 1789, and in all of them there have been people looking back to what happened in France then and subsequently for inspiration, models, patterns, or warnings.
1. Cross-Channel perspectives
当法国大革命还正在发生的时候，英语世界对它的主流评价疏离而冷漠，因为当时这些国家大多早已完成君主制下的革命，认为法国人求自由的反抗来的既晚，手段上又显得混乱不堪。而再过几年，这种看法干脆直接变成了全盘的厌恶，旧的君主因为其专制而罪有应得，群众是被愤怒所主导的暴民，领导这场革命的不是自以为是者就是愤世嫉俗者。
>p3 With caution, and respect for the wisdom of their ancestors, they might have corrected the few and venial faults of their former institutions, and come to run their affairs as freely and peaceably as the British ran theirs. But they had chosen to follow the untried dreams of rationalizing, self-styled ‘philosophers’ who had sapped faith in monarchy, the social order, and God Himself.
>p4 But Thomas Carlyle did more than anyone else to fix the popular idea of what the French Revolution was like. In his wild, inimitable style, The French Revolution: A History (1837) painted a vision of mindless and vengeful chaos. He did not follow Burke in trying to defend the ancien régime, the order that the revolutionaries destroyed. He thought it was rotten, and deserved its fate. …… The Revolution was an explosion of popular violence, understandable if scarcely defensible resentment. Those who attempted to lead or guide it were mostly simpletons or scoundrels, all to be pitied for their presumption.
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2. Dramatic depictions
>p7 卡莱尔描绘了一个残酷而压迫的旧秩序的可怕画面，一个“贪婪的放纵和压迫”的世界，无辜的受害者可以因权贵的突发奇想而被关进阴森可怕的巴士底狱，未经审判就被关押多年；贵族可以认为，一个死在马车车轮下的孩子的生命可以用一枚抛出的金币来偿还。
>p8 每天，在石子铺就的街道上，囚车沉重地颠簸着，车上挤满了死刑犯。美丽的姑娘、聪明的女人，棕发、黑发和灰发；青年、健壮的男人和老人；绅士和农民，都是为断头台女神准备的红酒，每天都从令人厌恶的监狱的黑暗地下室里拿出来，穿过街道，为她解渴。自由、平等、博爱或死亡——最后一种，最容易实现，断头台女神！
>p9 男人们都戴着红帽子——款式各异，但都带着三色帽徽…他们的脸上现在总是带着狡猾的怀疑神情。如今每个人都是监视自己同胞的间谍：开玩笑时说出的最无辜的话随时都可能被当作贵族倾向或背叛人民的证据。
我用谷歌翻译把一些段落翻成了中文，读这些的时候既视感实在太强了，感觉就像在说文革。如果中国的民主化演变成和法国大革命类似的权力真空角逐，这种景象会不会在中国重演？不知道
3. Twentieth-century parallels
>p9-10 Even the unique horror of the guillotine has been dwarfed by the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the millions of victims of Stalin’s terror and the organized brutality of the Gulag, the mass intimidation of Mao’s cultural revolution, or the killing fields of Cambodia. And yet many Russians in 1917 saw themselves, and indeed were widely seen, as re-enacting the struggles in France after 1789. Subsequent revolutionaries, if less conscious of the French precedents, have nevertheless sought legitimacy in doctrines of popular sovereignty all traceable to claims first explicitly made in 1789. Many, even those like the Nazis who professed to despise traditions now especially revered by Communism, celebrated their power with rituals and ceremonies redolent of the great set-piece festivals organized first in France between 1790 and 1794.
- 实在是开万世革命恐怖之先河。
4~6. The Corsican contribution
- 法国产生的革命和狂热撕裂了整个欧洲，终结于拿破仑和他的失败，留下了公制单位、《拿破仑民法典》，和《人权宣言》，首次提出了普世的、系统阐述了的、上升到基础原则地位的人权概念。
- 但法国大革命首先还是“that unfortunate movement”。
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| Code civil des Français (1804) |
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原书信息：Doyle, William, The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd edn, Very Short Introductions (Oxford, 2019; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Nov. 2019), https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198840077.001.0001
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