Opinion of the French Revolution

[Cassius]

HR

[opebo]

Love the guillotine, but dislike the bourgeois revolutions.

[TNF]

Freedom Revolution by far.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Had its good and its bad.

[Leftbehind]

Freedom Revolution by far.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Love the guillotine, but dislike the bourgeois revolutions.

Still far superior to the aristocracy, and they did end feudalism. Freedom Revolution.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Mixed as a historical period of itself, but absolutely wonderful for its legacy.

[TDAS04]

Mixed.

[Mechaman]

I will say it once, I will say it again:

It was one of the greatest events in the history of western civilization.

[windjammer]

Horrible Revolution

[TNF]

Horrible Revolution

Counter-revolution sucks. But this of course was first and foremost a bourgeois affair, so it's unsurprising that they'd do their best to take out the guilds and the proto-unions of the time. Either way, the revolution itself was a massive step forward. Louis XIV and his awful wife got what was coming to them, as did the rest of the French aristocracy. The only regrettable thing about the Revolution was that it eventually fell to reaction (and that it left too much of the aristocracy alive and able to come back into power, of course)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Important.

[H. Ross Peron]

FR until the Mountain seized power, HR afterwards

[Lief 🗽]

FR.

[The Mikado]

Which one?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Burke had it about right.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I'm annoyed that I'm the first person to reference Zhou Enlai in this thread.

[TNF]

FR until the Mountain seized power, HR afterwards

That's when it became a Freedom Revolution.

[DC Al Fine]

Burke had it about right.

FR until the Mountain seized power, HR afterwards

That's when it became a Freedom Revolution.

Because nothing says freedom like mass executions of political opponents.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Burke had it about right.

FR until the Mountain seized power, HR afterwards

That's when it became a Freedom Revolution.

Because nothing says freedom like mass executions of political opponents.

The post-Robespierre executions of the Jacobins were actually worse in total number than the executions the Jacobins committed [/themoreyouknow]

[TNF]

Burke had it about right.

FR until the Mountain seized power, HR afterwards

That's when it became a Freedom Revolution.

Because nothing says freedom like mass executions of political opponents.

As opposed to allowing them to organize and come back into power? The Jacobins did only what was necessary. "Political opponents" is too kind a word for the people who literally enslaved the French people for centuries and ruled without their consent.

[RogueBeaver]

What shua said.

[Cassius]

Anyway, expanding upon why it was a horrible event, apart from the obvious reason that I would most likely have been sent to the guillotine, at least during the terror, the revolution has a horrific legacy. The start of it, with the tennis court declaration, might have been the only point at which it could have been transformed into a positive development, leading to a more effective constitutional monarchy and so forth. After that the revolution progresses into a downward slide of terror, corruption, mob rule and anti-clericalism.

I mean, the revolutionary government was probably less effective than that of the late Ancien Regime, which is saying something given the incompetence of that government. However, the latter was starting to evolve along less absolutist lines, in the direction of a slightly more British style system (though obviously not the same as). The period after late 1789 essentially threw all of this out of the window, and led to a quarter of a century of carnage and death, mostly sparked off by the belligerence of the revolutionary government, and later on its product, Bonaparte. I mean, France was a total carcrash at the end of the revolutionary/Napoleonic period. More to the point, even in more leftist terms the revolution was in a sense a failure, as it didn't achieve its objectives (the Republic fell apart after 5 years, and the Bourbons would soon be back). On top of that, it made existing governments much more authoritarian and reactionary because they were scared witless of a repeat in their countries of the lawless terror that had existed in France.

If the utter failure of the revolution isn't enough to condemn it, perhaps the countless revolutions that it inspired are. It essentially provided a more 'attractive' model to the English concept of gradual governmental change, namely violent uprisings where lots of people got killed and the existing social system was ripped to shreds. I mean you could well argued that the Chinese cultural revolution has its roots in the persistant efforts, at least during the mid stage of the revolution, to destroy the culture that had existed prior to 1789.

So, in short, the revolution really has nothing to recommend itself to me at all. I mean, whilst many of our posters would probably have been quite happy sitting on the Committee of Public Safety, they should remember that they might very well have been executed in the early 1790's, when you could be denounced and killed for just about everything. Do people really think rule by the blood-crazed mob and their hacks in government represented an advance from the late Bourbon government?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Burke had it about right.

'Swinish multitude'?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Horrible Revolution