No class on Monday, April 6

Due to an emergency, I have to cancel class for Monday, April 6. To make up for the lecture I would have given about the civil war in the Vendée, I will ask you to read about it in ch. 9 of Arno Mayer's book, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. This is available on-line through NetLibrary. (The directions for accessing the chapter are below.)

Please take notes, as I will give a quiz devoted solely to that chapter on Monday, April 13. The information in the chapter will be part of the material for which you are responsible on the final exam. (This is especially important if you were to choose to write about violence.)

Don't worry about what Mayer has to say about historiography on the topic (though I would still give that a read) and don't get too bogged down when he starts drawing parallels to things that happened outside of France. You should walk away from the chapter with a sense of why the Vendean rebels rose up against the Revolution, the distinct phases of the Vendée militaire, and the scope of Jacobin response (in particular, why was it so brutal?). Heads on pikes will seem like child's play when you read about the hurt that Carrier brought down on Nantes.

Please check the blog on Monday for discussion questions from this week's and last's reading.

See you on Wednesday.

To access the chapter:

1. Go to www.netlibrary.com and sign in. You should have an account from when you had to read the chapter from Gary Kates. If you don't, you can create an account from the homepage.
2. Search for the book using either the title or the author's name.
3. Click on "view this e-book."
4. From the menu on the left side of the screen, look for Part III: Metropolitan Condescension and Rural Mistrust. Click on the + sign next to the section title for a drop-down menu of chapters.
5. Click on Chapter 9: Peasant War in France.
6. When the chapter comes up, you can move the line separating the text and the menu on the left in order to expand the text to full-screen. The navigation buttons for turning the pages are on the top right of the text.