Mathiez greatly influenced Georges Lefebvre and Albert Soboul in forming what came to be known as the orthodox Marxist interpretation of the Revolution.

[1] Mathiez admired Maximilien Robespierre, praised the Reign of Terror and did not extend complete sympathy to the struggle of the proletariat.

He taught at a variety of local lycèes until he completed his doctorate which he wrote under the direction of François Victor Alphonse Aulard, then the leading historian of the Revolution, who admired Georges Danton.

At first a good friend of Aulard, he broke with his mentor in 1907, founding his own society, the Société des études robespierristes, with its journal, the Annales révolutionnaires.

With its serious economic and social stresses such as shortages of food and rationing, the war prompted him to study similar conditions during the Revolution.

[5][6] On February 26, 1932, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in the presence of his students, in the Michelet amphitheater of the Sorbonne; quickly hospitalized, he died in the evening without having regained consciousness.