The Revolution Against Christendom:
A History of Christendom, Vol. 5 by
Warren H. Carroll
The Saga Of Christendom Reaches 1815
This series is the only comprehensive narration of Western history written
from the orthodox Catholic perspective still in print. How would a historical
narrative read if the author began with these first principles: Truth exists;
the Incarnation happened? This series is essential reading for those who
consider the West worth defending.
Personal Review: The Revolution Against Christendom: A
History of Christendom, Vol. 5 by Warren H. Carroll

*The Revolution against Christendom* is the fifth installment of a series
which began publication more than twenty years ago, in 1985. Comprising
almost 3,000 pages of small print, not counting the superb annotated
biographies and the indexes, the series has apparently reached here its
penultimate volume : though it was at one point to have spanned seven of
them (as listed in *The Glory of Christendom*), references to volume 6
now mention a chapter 18 devoted to World War II, which goes way
beyond the 1918 end date initially set for it.
The period covered in the present book ranges from the reign of "Grand
Monarch" Louis XIV (1643-1715) to the campaigns of Napoleon and his
ultimate defeat at Waterloo in 1815. The topics dealt with include the
Stuart succession in the late 17th century, the reign of Maria Theresa,
British colonial expansion including the Founding of America, the
suppression of the Jesuit order and, of course, the French Revolution.
Contrary to what an earlier reviewer suggests, very little is said of the
missionary activity of the period, unlike previous volumes.
Of the nine chapters devoted to the French Revolution, no less than six
(about 100 pages, or less than a fourth of the book) are an avowed
reworking of Dr. Carroll's own *The Guillotine and the Cross*, being either
"taken and edited", "mostly taken", "largely taken", "adapted" or simply
"taken" from that 1991 book, also published by Christendom Press.
Unfortunately, some of the small mistakes of that earlier volume have not
been corrected, such as the author's mistranslation of the famous "ca ira"
(from the revolutionary "Ah ca ira" song) as "here [it] goes", when "ca ira" is
simply the future tense of "ca va" and actually means "all will be fine"; and
the misquoting of Danton's famous phrase, "toujours de l'audace", as
"toujours l'audace", an inaccuracy which is all the more annoying as the
phrase is used as a leit motiv throughout the book (even more curiously,
the Declaration of Independence itself is misquoted p103, "connected"
being replaced with "constrained"; an oversight certainly from someone
who wrote his PhD thesis on John Adams.)
I was a bit disappointed to discover that Mr. Carroll has apparently not
read some very important French Catholic historians that have studied the
French Revolution in detail (such as Augustin Cochin, Gustave Gautherot,
Bernard Fay and, more recently, the late Jean Dumont.) This might have
prevented him from presenting the Revolution as a rather unexplainable
phenomenon ("Why, then, did the French Revolution come ? Honest
history is silent" p 128), there having been "no organized opposition, no
group which had dedicated itself to revolution" (p127) prior to 1789.
Though he has apparently not read Augustin Barruel (unlike Dr. Stanley
Jaki, also published by Christendom Press, who introduced the English
translation for Real View Books), Dr. Carroll does list Nesta Webster in his
bibliography, which should have opened his mind to the more
conspiratorial underpinnings of the Revolution. But he seems to be more
suspicious of conspiracy theories than he is of miracles, and the reader will

have to content himself with his admission that the Jacobin club of Paris
did serve as a "chief nursery of the Revolution"(p179.)
One might also be disappointed by the lack of any mention of St
Alphonsus Liguori (whom my godfather, who knows his history, considers
to be the towering figure of the XVIIIth century, together with Voltaire, his
polar opposite) nor of any of the intellectual opponents of the so-called
Enlightenment, though given the author's lack of interest for intellectual
history, the latter is not surprising.
Most of the time *The Revolution against Christendom* reads like a military
history of Europe that roots for the good guys, i.e. the Catholics (such as
the Vendeans, for whose royalist ideals the author does not seem to have
much sympathy, believing as he does that the failure of monarchy had
been demonstrated and its time had passed) or, failing that, any nation
rising against the Revolution in the name of the natural law, even if it does
persecute Catholics on its own soil (hence his enthusiasm for Wellington
and the British.) The whole series is very much concerned with what one
might call the geopolitics of Christianity, i.e. the contractions and
expansions of Christendom, which is why Waterloo gets eight pages
(Napoleon being "one of the deadliest enemies the Catholic Church has
ever faced") and Louis Marie de Montfort, half a paragraph.
Fans of Dr. Carroll know that he suffered a stroke on Labor Day week end
in 1999, and the completion of this volume was in itself a miracle, only
partly explained by the collaboration of the author's wife, who is discreetly
recognized as co-author in the introductory pages. Let us pray that God
grants Dr. Carroll the strength to complete his series, which is a welcome
addition to any good Catholic library and, if you pay any attention to his
bibliographies, an invitation to a lifetime of reading.
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