num_pages: 308
description: One of the Western worlds most epic uprisings the French Revolution ended a monarchy that had ruled for almost a thousand years. George-Jacques Danton was the driving force behind it. In the first biography of Danton in over forty years David Lawday reveals the larger-than-life figure who joined the fray at the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and was dead five years later.To hear Danton speak his booming voice a roll of thunder excited bourgeois reformers and the street alike; his impassioned speeches often hours long drove the sans culottes to action and kept the Revolution alive. But as the newly appointed Minister of Justice Danton struggled to steer the increasingly divided Revolutionary government. Working tirelessly to halt the bloodshed of Robespierres Terror he ultimately became another of its victims. True to form Danton did not go easily to the guillotine; at his trial he defended himself with such vehemence that the tribunal convicted him before he could rally the crowd in his favor.In vivid almost novelistic prose Lawday leads us from Dantons humble roots to the streets of Revolutionary Paris where this political legend acted on the stage of the revolution that altered Western civilization.
language: English
title: The Giant of the French Revolution: Danton, A Life
publisher: Grove Press