In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy fighting in the French Army under Napoleon, purchases the chateau that once belonged to the Marquis de St. Caux. "In the Reign of Terror" was published in 1888 by Blackie and Son, a publishing company located in Glasgow, Scotland, and London, England. It was published nearly a century after the events of the French Revolution, and in his preface Henty states that the purpose of the novel is not "to impart historical knowledge, for the facts of the dreadful time when 'the terror' reigned supreme in France are well known to all educated lads." He addresses the novel to "My
In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy – much of the St. Caux family are killed for the sake of their aristocratic status. Harry, himself a middle-class English boy, "sympathizes with the oppressed peasantry but tries to protect his adoptive noble French family from the terror." The theme of class divisions is threaded with nationalistic rhetoric: Harry’s father states that "the condition of the vast body of the French nation has been terrible," and that England, in contrast, has "long conquered our liberties." "In the Reign of Terror" was well received in its time and is one of Henty's more popular works. Contemporary reviews were positive: The