Before the Deluge

Ever since the French Revolution, Madame de Pompadour's comment, "Apres moi, le deluge" (after me, the deluge), has looked like a callous if accurate prophecy of the political cataclysms that began in 1789. But decades before the Bastille fell, French writers had used the phrase to describe a different kind of selfish recklessness--not toward the flood of revolution but, rather, toward the flood of public debt.

Year

2007

Language

English

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Editions

4

Pages

428

ISBN

9780691124995

Data source: Wikidata