The French historian François Victor Alphonse Aulard (1849-1928) was a leading authority on the French Revolution.

On July 19, 1849, Alphonse Aulard was born at Montbron. His earliest interests were literary. Admitted to the École Normale in 1867, he received his doctorate in 1877. From 1871 to 1884 he taught literature, and by 1884 he had already published three volumes, Parliamentary Eloquence during the French Revolution (1882-1884). When, in the following year, the city of Paris founded a professorship of the history of the Revolution at the Sorbonne, he was named to fill the post.

View of the Revolution

The history of the French Revolution was at this time still the subject of violent political passions, for Frenchmen saw in the political problems of the late 19th century the continuation of conflicts and crises that had first exploded in 1789. Aulard insisted that the Revolution should be considered with the same critical detachment...