What Charles Dickens's 'A Tale of Two Cities' Gets Right About the French Revolution

First published in 1859, A Tale of Two Cities is both one of Charles Dickens' shortest novels and one of only two that he didn't set in his own time (the other being Barnaby Rudge). Instead, the story takes place in the late 1700s, set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, and explores its effects on the book’s titular two cities—Paris and London.

Ever since the book's publication more than a century and a half ago, historians and readers alike have continued to question the accuracy of Dickens' novel. As a work of fiction, understandably Dickens plays a little fast and loose with some of the facts and figures surrounding the French Revolution—in particular by overplaying the use of the guillotine and mob rule, focusing on almost nothing except the murderous Reign of Terror, never mentioning any of the Revolution's major players, like Robespierre, by name, and seemingly jumping straight from the Storming of the Bastille (in 1789) to the bloodthirsty executions of the September Massacres (in 1792). But that's not to say that Dickens was making his story up.

In fact, in writing A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens borrowed considerably from the acclaimed Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle's meticulous three-volume retelling of The French Revolution, which had been published in 1837. (Carlyle, in return, was a fan of the novel, which made Dickens "heartily delighted.") As a result, amid all of his poetic and artistic license and questionable historical accuracy, Dickens' novel—in some aspects, at least—remains vividly and remarkably true to life.

Dickens Captured the Inequality Behind the Revolution

As well as being one of the most famous opening lines in all English literature, for instance, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" is the perfect encapsulation of the inequality that was rife in France in the lead-up to the revolution. It has been estimated that before 1789, as much as 90% of the entire wealth of France was controlled by only one-tenth of the population—while the top 1% of the people held almost two-thirds of the wealth.

This staggering inequity paid for the lavish lifestyles of the French upper classes, while burdening the working classes and "Third Estate" with heavy taxation and poverty. Dickens' opening lines and chapters illustrate this inequality in typically colorful detail, setting a backdrop against which an unhappy and hard-pressed population could easily rebel.

Dr. Manette's Imprisonment Wasn't Just Fiction

Another driving force behind the Revolution was the overreach of royal and aristocratic power in 18th century France, and Dickens used one particular aspect of this as a major plot point in his novel. Dr. Alexandre Manette, the father of the novel's romantic heroine Lucie Manette, we discover, had been imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 years following the issue of an official lettre de cachet.

In pre-Revolutionary France, the king essentially had the power to have whoever he wished imprisoned in the Bastille without trial, by issuing an official royal letter countersigned by the secretary of state. These lettres de cachets, as they were known, soon came to be symbolic of the abuses of power that helped to trigger the Revolution, as anyone whose actions, views, or lifestyle was considered counter to, or troublesome to, the established order of France could fall victim to the king's whims at any moment. Understandably, these rules were quickly suppressed following the Revolution, as royal power began to crumble.

The fact that Dickens makes such a big deal of the lead-up to the Revolution, and the inequality and abuses of power that fostered it, is matched by the fact that much of its actual events don't take place until the final act of the book. If you've not read A Tale of Two Cities, for instance, you might be surprised to find that the iconic Storming of the Bastille—the great public overthrowing of the prison in central Paris that had become symbolic of the pre-Revolutionary era on July 14, 1789—doesn't take place until Chapter 21, almost two-thirds of the way through the book.

Dickens Got the Bastille's Bloody Ending Right

Nevertheless, although Dickens overplays some of the Revolution's gruesomeness and the role of the mob, his descriptions of the Storming of the Bastille and the later September Massacres are arguably far more true to life than they might be assumed—with even his (unnamed) governor of the Bastille suffering the same grim fate as that of the prison's real-life governor, Bernard-René Jordan de Launay.

On the actual day of the Storming of the Bastille, there were in reality just seven inmates in the prison (including one who was sent there at the request of his own family). While Dickens presents the Storming as a brutal instance of mob rule, in truth, miscommunication between the crowds that had gathered outside the prison and the skeleton crew of guards and officials inside led to several moments when the protests could have been peacefully de-escalated being missed. The bloody episode that unfolded instead, however, is matched by Dickens' descriptions of it.

In total, almost one hundred protestors from a crowd of around one thousand were killed in the Storming of the Bastille, while several guards were summarily lynched by the crowds in return. Of all, however, it is the treatment of the prisoner's governor, Bernard-René Jordan de Launay, that proved particularly brutal both in real life and in Dickens' novel.

Cornered by protestors, de Launay was marched up the steps of the nearby Hôtel de Ville, where his fate was to be decided. But on the way there, the crowd—supposedly enraged by de Launay kicking a protestor in the groin, and jeeringly provoking that they put him out of his misery already—summarily pounced on him, and began raining down so many knives, bayonets, and blows that his life was ended there and then. Once dead, however, de Launay's head was cut off, carried through the city on a pike, and eventually thrown in the Seine.

Dickens doesn't mention de Launay by name, but the governor's fate in A Tale of Two Cities is no less bloodthirsty. Once Dickens' governor has been pummeled to death by the mob on the steps, it falls to the grim Madame Defarge to finish the job. "She stood immovable close to the grim old officer," Dickens writes, before, "suddenly animated, she put her foot upon his neck, and with her cruel knife—long ready—hewed off his head."

More Like This: