Bosher situates the revolutionary struggle not in an atmosphere of sharp class alignment, but instead with socially mixed and transient groupings. He goes deeply into the pre-Revolutionary period, examining the stresses in the social and political order of the ancien regime, as well as the ideas of the wealthy that circulated in the salons and permeated the journals and leaflets read by the populace.

Central to the account is Professor Bosher's argument, novel and fully documented, that behind the tumult was a generation of revolutionaries whose revolution was not premeditated and a series of events that were anything but inevitable even once the powder keg was ignited.