In the book, Schama delcared, "The terror was merely 1789 with a higher body count; violence ... was not just an unfortunate side effect ... it was the Revolution's source of collective energy.

[3][4] In Hobsbawm's view, Schama failed to see the positive aspects of the revolution and had wrongfully focused solely on the horror and suffering, presenting them as gratuitous.

"[3] In his review published in Annales historiques de la Révolution française, Youngstown State University professor Morris Slavin, another Marxist historian, criticized the lack of sympathy displayed by Schama for "the revolutionaries in the real circumstances of a profound social and political crisis", arguing that he judged the events from the standpoint of royalist elites.

[5] Reviewing the book in the journal French Politics and Society, Robert Forster of Johns Hopkins University wrote that "Schama desacralized the Revolution ... by his inimitable style and wit".

[6] English historian T. C. W. Blanning, who served as Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge, wrote "This extraordinary book identifies and conveys the essence of the Revolution, the key to its appeal, the secret of its power, and the reason for its eventual failure: violence.