The article analyzes the understanding of the crowd by the French thinker H. Taine. Particular attention is paid to the characterization of his historical and psychological work “The Origin of Modern France” (1876-1893), as well as to the description of the key properties of spontaneous social associations during the period of revolutionary events, the interpretation of the images of leaders of the rebellious crowd and the presentation of tactics of their influence on the followers. The peculiarities of H. Taine 's perception of spontaneous groups are compared with the theories Of S. Sighele, G. Tarde, G. Le Bon, H. Fournial and L. N. Voitolovsky. It is noted that H. Taine had a significant influence on the content of theories of the crowd, which appeared in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. At the same time, it is stated that under the influence of his ideas, the first researchers of the phenomenon made several methodological errors. In particular, they wrongly extended the properties of the revolutionary crowd to other types of spontaneous associations, uncritically borrowed from their famous predecessor techniques of pathologizing the rebellious crowd and stigmatizing its leaders, incorrectly from a scientific point of view used the concept of race to explain the destructive activity of the masses.