The School of the French Revolution: A Documentary History of the College of Louis-le-Grand and its Director, Jean-François Champagne, 1762-1814

The College of Louis-le-Grand, now the premier lycée of France, is the only school with a connected history of education from the ancien régime to modern times. It was the only school never to close during the French Revolution, and its experience offers a new perspective on the fate of educational institutions in times of revolutionary change. In this book a noted historian describes the French college of the ancien régime and tells how it withstood crises of dissolution and reconstruction, dispersion of teachers and students, academic radicalism, loss of endowments, war, inflation, and political terror, to emerge in 1808 as a key element in Napoleon’s Imperial University.

R. R. Palmer’s introduction illuminates the original documents, which are here translated for the first time. These documents supply valuable insight not only into the school’s history, but also into the origins of the modern French educational system. From them emerges a portrait of the school’s remarkable director, Jean-François Champagne, who guided his institution through the calamitous years of the Revolution.

Originally published in 1975.

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