Murder in Aubagne

This book is a study of faction lynching murder terror and counter-terror during the French Revolution. It examines factionalism in small towns like Aubagne near Marseille and how this produced the murders and prison massacres of 17958. Another major theme is the convergence of lynching from below with official terror from above. Although the terror may have been designed to solve a national emergency in the spring of 1793 in southern France it permitted one faction to continue a struggle against its enemies a struggle that had begun earlier over local issues like taxation and governance. It uses the techniques of micro-history to tell the story of the small town of Aubagne. It then extends the scope to places nearby like Marseille Arles and Aix-en-Provence. Along the way it illuminates familiar topics like the activity of clubs and revolutionary tribunals and then explores largely unexamined areas like lynching the sociology of faction the emergence of theories of violent fraternal democracy and the nature of the White Terror.