By 1815, memories of the 1790s were fragmented and confused, varying greatly according to the divergent memories of individuals, families and regions. Some of the most famous mythical symbols of the Revolution had yet to be propagated. Building barricades – the ritual signal of nineteenth-century Paris revolt – was practically unknown during the Revolution. The tricoteuses – those notorious women sitting at the foot of the guillotine – only appeared generations later, a cross-Channel re-import via the lurid imaginations of Carlyle and Dickens.

Robert Tombs, “France: 1814-1914”.