Reflections on the Revolution in France causes and sided with the Americans in their war for independence; opponents and allies alike were surprised at the strength of his conviction that the French Revolution was a disaster and the revolutionists 'a swinish multitude.'". In 1789, soon after the fall of the Bastille, the French aristocrat Charles-Jean-François Depont asked his impressions of the Revolution; Burke replied with two letters. The longer, second letter, drafted after he read Richard Price's speech "A Discourse on the Love of Our Country" in January 1790, became "Reflections on the Revolution in France". Published in November 1790, the work was an instant bestseller:
Historiography of the French Revolution lecture was later published as "The Myth of the French Revolution", but his seminal work arguing this point was "The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution" (1963). It was published in French translation only in 1984. His main point was that feudalism had long since disappeared in France; that the Revolution did not transform French society, and that it was principally a political revolution, not a social one as Lefebvre and others insisted. Although dismissed and attacked by the mainstream journals at first, Cobban was persistent and determined, and his approach was soon supported and modified by a flood of