Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

From Enlightenment to Revolution

By: Maximillian Robespierre, Edmund Burke, William Pitt
Narrated by: Charles Featherstone
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £9.99

Buy Now for £9.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

History is often concentrated into short bursts of change, with long periods of shifting before and waves of alteration afterwards. Nowhere is this more obvious than the thirty year interregnum between the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. In this period, three figures stand tall; Pitt, the elder stateman who saw the need for genuine constitutionalism; Burke, the consummate parliamentarian, speaking for the glory of empire; and Robespierre, the legendary and controversial frontman of the French Revolution.

William Pitt The Elder speaks about the need for key changes to the body politic. The first speech here predates the interregnum, being from 1738, when he was merely thirty, and covers a key factor in Britain’s colonial problems for the next two centuries, being the complete internal corruption of the army.

Edmund Burke represents the height of Royalist sympathy as the age of revolution gets underway. He speaks on the need for conciliation with America after the disaster of the Stamp Act and revolution, on the need to punish Warren Hastings for treating his Asian holdings as his own empire to fill with his own corruption, and on the end of an era with the passing of Marie Antoinette.

Finally, the age of revolution, both industrial and political, has begun. Robespierre argues for the dignity of man; for rejecting the divinity of royal authority in favour of that of the human spirit; against the death penalty, as being below the dignity of a truly humanist state; on enemies, internal and external, who push the people to reject their own interests for those of the powerful. This is but a small selection of the man’s incredible output - in 1791 alone, he gave three hundred and twenty-eight speeches.

Spitting bile and flame in his last speech, which closes this volume, Robespierre truly inaugurates the era when revolution against centuries-old powers brought their end, and their nations found their renewal.

Public Domain (P)2024 Brimir & Blainn
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about From Enlightenment to Revolution

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.