[1] The work argues that revolutionaries who overthrew the Ancien Régime believed that sacrifice, defined as "a public spectacle of ritual violence", was necessary for the foundation of a new regime.

"[1] The categorization of the violence during the French Revolution as "sacrificial" was not made by the revolutionaries themselves: instead, this was done by intellectuals responding to it (in particular the execution of Louis XVI).

[2] The specific episodes of violence that Goldhammer regards as sacrificial are the regicide, the insurrectionary events of August 10, 1792, the September Massacres in the same year, the Terror, and the execution of Robespierre.

Goldhammer argues that the revolutionaries made reference to ancient Roman and Christian traditions of sacrifice in order to guide their "sacrilegious plan to end the French monarchy.

The author is aware that a mix of policies and rationales can be subsumed under the rubric of sacrifice and that, as in the case of the al Qaeda suicide bombings, the distinction between self-sacrifice or martyrdom and the killing of others as a political strategy can become confused and perverted.