The problem was that the political rhetoric quickly descended from the lofty heights of the brotherhood of mankind associated with 1789 into hate-filled extremes between opponents and supporters,and eventually even between supporters of the Revolution.

Within a few years,anyone"suspected"of being an enemy of the Revolution was vulnerable to being denounced by a fellow citizen wanting to prove that he or she was more"virtuous"than their neighbour,or could be killed by the mob,or get caught up in the machinery of terror that was put into place surprisingly quickly.

Some executed may have been guilty of conspiring against the Republic,but others were innocent,guilty of having said the wrong thing at the wrong time,or of simply being born into aristocracy. Others again were victims of the increased political paranoia. Take the actor Arouch,denounced in 1794 for having delivered a line in a 17th-century play,"Long live our noble king!".It was enough to see him condemned to death. He went to the guillotine insisting that he had only been playing his part.

For many millions of people,the Revolution became a very real struggle between"liberty"and"death",as the country tried to"remake"the nation into a modern,secular and"enlightened"state.

Two things complicated the Revolution enormously – religion and war. In an attempt to bring the Church into line with the modern,reformist principles of the Revolution,many millions of devout Catholics were alienated as their local churches were closed or their local priest denounced for not swearing an oath of allegiance to the Revolution. Eventually,established religions were persecuted and banned,churches all over France closed and a new religion was inaugurated – the cult of the Supreme Being.

The war resulted from revolutionaries wanting to take their principles to the rest of Europe and the world. They should have heeded the warning of one prominent radical,a Jacobin as they were called,Maximilien Robespierre,who declared that"nobody likes armed missionaries". It is advice that western governments would have been wise to heed before launching the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

By the end of 1792,every European monarchy was at war with France,the beginning of a European-wide conflict that would only end on the battlefield of Waterloo some 23 years later,and that would result in millions of dead and wounded.

All of this is lucidly and brilliantly explained by the Melbourne-based historian,Peter McPhee. One of the dilemmas for historians writing about the French Revolution is how to reconcile the two fundamental but contradictory trends mentioned above,the modernising,democratising impulse,coupled with the violence of the mob. How did the Revolution,which began in the belief people that people were innately good,descend into suspicion,denunciation and despotism?

Some historians,such as Simon Schama,have argued that the Revolution was violence. McPhee,on the other hand,approaches this conundrum in a more level-headed manner,neither condemning nor judging,but rather explaining the inner dynamics and workings of revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries alike,putting things into perspective as much as possible.

The strength of McPhee's work,the result of a lifetime of writing,thinking and teaching the Revolution,is his ability to bring the province and regions of France into the story,often neglected in histories of the Revolution,as well as his ability to weave details about individual lives into the larger historical thread,giving us an insight into the personal,the local,and the national story.

We learn that the aristocrat Lucy de la Tour du Pin never reconciled the Revolution with her personal losses,or that Marie-Thérèse Figuer volunteered to fight in the army and did so by cross-dressing like a number of other women,or that Marie-Madeleine Coutelet,who worked in a mill in Paris,was arrested in 1793 because of letters criticising the revolutionary government (she was later executed).

If the detail of the political upheavals that characterised the Revolution as one faction gained dominance and eliminated another might deter the uninitiated,my advice is persist. The depth and breadth of McPhee's knowledge is impressive and makes this book an extraordinary achievement.

The French Revolution changed the nature of politics forever. The Declaration of the Rights of Man still remains one of the highest aspirations for any democratic society. But there was also a downside to the Revolution,as one might argue there is for all revolutions,that it degenerated into intolerance,civil war and persecution.

If there is a political lesson to be learnt,it is that opposing sides will always enter a conflict convinced of the malevolence and fanaticism of the other. The Revolution thus remains a salutary lesson for all at a time when democracy throughout the world is under threat.

Philip Dwyer is the Director of the Centre for the History of Violence at the University of Newcastle and the author ofNapoleon:The Path to Power(2007) andCitizen Emperor:Napoleon in Power (2013). He is currently writing about Napoleon's exile on St Helena.