François Victor Alphonse Aulard

François Victor Alphonse Aulard (19 July 1849 – 23 October 1928) was the first professional French historian of the French Revolution and of Napoleon. His major achievement was to institutionalise and professionalise the practice of history in France. He argued:

He was born at Montbron in Charente. He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1867 and obtained the degree of doctor of letters in 1877 with a thesis in Latin on Gaius Asinius Pollio and a French one on Giacomo Leopardi (whose works he subsequently translated into French.) Moving from literature to history, he made a study of parliamentary oratory during the French Revolution, and published two volumes on Les orateurs de la Constituante (1882) and on Les orateurs de la Legislative et de la Convention (1885). With these works he established a reputation as a careful scholar well versed in the primary sources of the French Revolution.

Applying to the study of the French Revolution the rules of historical criticism which had produced such rich results in the study of ancient and medieval history, Aulard devoted himself to profound research in the archives, and to the publication of numerous important contributions to the political, administrative and moral history of that period. His masterwork was a Histoire politique de la Revolution française (4 vol, 3rd ed. 1901). He championed Georges Danton, as opposed to Maximilien Robespierre, seeing in Danton the true spirit of the embattled Revolution, and the inspiration of the national defense against foreign enemies.

Appointed professor of the history of the French Revolution at the Sorbonne in 1885, he formed the minds of students who in their turn did valuable work.

To him we owe the Recueil des actes du Comité de salut public (27 vols. 1889-1923); La Société des Jacobins: Recueil de documents sur l'histoire des club des Jacobins de Paris (6 vols., 1889-1897); Paris pendant la reaction thermidorienne et sous le directoire: Recueil de documents pour l'histoire de l'esprit public a Paris (5 vols., 1898-1902), which was followed by a collection on Paris sous le consulat (2 vols., 1903-1904).

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