In 1793 Jacques Rene Hebert was the publisher of the most popular journal in France. In 1794 he died on the guillotine to the taunts of a Parisian mob. Eighteen other "Hebertistes," convicted with him of conspiring against the revolutionary government of Robespierre, also perished on the scaffold.

Who were the Hebertistes - and Hebert himself - and what was their true role in the French Revolution? In this vivid and richly detailed political history, Morris Slavin examines these questions in terms of the factional struggles that tore at France as revolution turned to Terror.

Hebert wrote his journal, Le Pere Duchesne, in the rough-edged argot of the sans-culottes, the mainly urban, working-class men and women who had done much to make the Revolution and who in many cases wanted to carry it further. This was the audience to and for whom he spoke - a faction sufficiently radical that Robespierre called it "ultrarevolutionary.".

Suffering from severe shortages and inflation brought on by the Revolution and by France's European wars, the sans-culottes badly needed a coherent voice to speak for them. However, the Hebertistes - including such prominent revolutionaries as Charles Philippe Ronsin, Francois Nicolas Vincent, and Antoine Francois Momoro - had no clear economic or political programs to offer. Instead, they tended to blame the public's misery on more moderate factions such as their rivals the Dantonistes.

In the end they made the fatal error of threatening insurrection. In March, 1794, Hebert and others - including some with little or no link to the Hebertistes but marked as troublemakers - were arrested and, after a framed trial, executed.

1. Slavin addresses questions long asked about the Hebertistes and finds that, contrary to the conclusions of many historians, Hebert and his cohorts were a progressive and positive, if finally ineffective, force. Their destruction removed a vital balance of opposition, ironically leaving the victors vulnerable to the very Terror they themselves had created.