Letters from Revolutionary France

This work presents an annotated version of the letters of Major Watkin Tench, who was held on parole in the town of Quimper in Brittany between 1794-1795.

Tench was writing in the period between the fall of Robespierre and the massacre of invading emigres south if Quimper in June 1795, a tense period in which deep-seated conflicts over religion and language were fuelling counter-revotionary uprisings in rural Brittany.

His account illustrates and analyzes the volatile relationship between languages (English, French, Breton) and socio-political codes (republican and monarchist, genteel and plebian, Catholic and anticlerical) during the French Revolution.