Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution » (1st Edition)

R. R. Palmer (1909-2002) was Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and a guest scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study. Isser Woloch is Moore Collegiate Professor of History at Columbia University.

In its fifth year (1793-1794), the French Revolution faced a multifaceted crisis that threatened to overwhelm the Republic. In response the government instituted a revolutionary dictatorship and a "reign of terror," with a Committee of Public Safety at its head. R. R. Palmer's fascinating narrative follows the Committee's deputies individually and collectively, recounting and assessing their tumultuous struggles in Paris and their repressive missions in the provinces. A new foreword by Isser Woloch explains why this book has been, and deserves to remain, an enduring classic in French revolutionary studies.

New York Times

Praise for Princeton's original edition: "[E]xcellently documented. . . . [O]ne of the best pictures that has ever been put together of the twelve men who made up [the] Committee of Public Safety. . . . There is fine scholarship here.