AULARD, FRANÇOIS-VICTOR-ALPHONSE. - Historian of the French Revolution, b. at Montbron on 19 July 1849, d. at Paris on 23 Oct. 1928. Professor of history at the Sorbonne from 1885 to 1922, director of the journal La Révolution française, he rendered distinguished service by training able specialists, by the critical publication of documents, and by particular historical works concerning the French Revolution.
Worth recalling are: L'éloquence parlementaire pendant la Révolution Française (3 vols., Paris 1882-85); Le culte de la raison et le culte de l'Être suprême (ibid. 1892); Etudes et leçons de la Révolution Française (9 vols., ibid. 1893-1925). He also translated well the poems and moral essays of Leopardi, Poésies et oeuvres morales de L. (3 vols., ibid. 1880). A textbook for schools, published in collaboration with A. Debidour, is on the Index: Histoire de France à l'usage des écoles primaires, etc. (decree of 9 Sept. 1897).
In this work, as in his others, he was unable to free himself from a strong Jacobin spirit, which led him to maintain that religion is an instrument of oppression and an obstacle to all progress; that revolution is the sole means of concretely applying the rights of man, the only event that gives us true history in its fullness and coherence.