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1. Are images vital sources of historical knowledge that have been insufficiently exploited?

Images sometimes lead to misunderstanding. One example is Prieur's “Arrest of the King at Varennes.” Prieur shows a crowd breaking into an inn where the King, the Queen, and their retinue are seated at a table having an evening meal. The illustration is wrong in all ways; what Prieur shows never happened. Yet this image has been included often in histories of the Revolution, sometimes without explanation and needed corrections. Some historians have paid so little attention to images that when they include illustrations in their books they sometimes, in effect, misinform their readers. One might even say that they dispense false knowledge.

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