It’s annoying because I’m sure I came across this quote a couple days ago and now I can’t find it - but yes, there’s an opinion piece out there that contrasts the Terror with the abuses of the nobility and the plight of the French peasantry (which, at that point in history, represented some 90% of the population).
The author said that while the “short Terror” was shocking and sudden and ostensibly very violent, the “long Terror” had lasted for hundreds if not thousands of years and was no less extremely violent, but it’s seen as less shocking because the deaths were spread out over time and were often results of other policies - as in, there wasn’t any direct intention by e.g. grain speculators to starve people to death (they only wanted to enrich themselves) but said speculation throughout the Middle Ages has now been proven by historians as being a very strong cause for the periodic famines and food shortages that punctuate the period, including the very big one that kickstarted the (Parisian) French Revolution. Not to mention all the poor fuckers who got summarily hanged who’d dared to poach to feed their kids - the exclusive right to hunt was, for some reason, one the aristocracy defended tooth and nail and took extremely seriously, to the very end - that’s for example one of the few items raised during the Etats Generaux that they wouldn’t budge on. Some were OK with paying taxes or giving up some privileges or giving back some of the public lands they had confiscated ; but even the most progressives among the landed gentry put a hard veto on letting anyone but themselves hunt.
Yes and no. The Revolution ultimately only really profited the bourgeoisie who had coopted the popular anger and wound up steering the show. For example, the Revolutionary government nationalized the lands of the aristocrats it had killed or condemned to exile as well as that of the monasteries, then sold those lands to private farmers in order to fund itself. So some people did demonstrably saw their private property grow - but in the vast majority of cases the only ones who had the means to buy nationalized land were already wealthy. Same goes for every former privilege of the aristocracy - for example the Revolution opened the doors of military academies and officer schools to anyone, but only the bourgeois could take advantage of that fact in practice.
So life probably didn’t really change for Joe Six-Sabots, who in effect only traded one hereditary master with another ; and any putative improvement on quality of life or life expectancy of that leadership change is hard to quantify, because any long term statistical effect is just noise compared to the huge variations caused by the Revolutionary then Napoleonic wars.
(cont.) that being said, this is to be expected because while ostensibly the blokes who went to the States General to represent the Third Estate were representing the poor and farmers ; there wasn’t a single farmer among them nor among the parliamentarians of the Revolutionary period. The overwhelming majority of them were lawyers, notaries, parish priests, physicians, journalists, bankers… common people, but not commoners, if you follow my meaning
Eh, yeah, but what had he done for them *lately *?
I mean they’d just finished a rebellion against their own government, which had sent troops and ships to protect them from French encirclement and incursions not that long prior, when said government asked them to mayyybe kick in a little bit to cover the debts incurred doing that.
They never paid us back the loans granted or all the guns and powder we’d “loaned” them during the Revolutionary War, either. Say what you will about the Founding Fathers, but gratitude wasn’t exactly their forte :D. I’m half surprised the Louisiana Purchase didn’t end up a “check’s in the mail” situation.
Well, instead of wildly speculating about it on a message board, we could always look it up. We’re not dealing with some obscure corner of history here. (But fortunately, I am here to save the daaaaaaaay!)
In fact, there was both pro- and anti-French Revolution sentiment in the United States, which was then just under Pres. Washington’s term in office. Broadly speaking, the Federalists were somewhat skeptical and Jefferson’s Democrat-Republicans were enthusiastically behind it. This didn’t necessarily mean that Hamilton and the Federalists were 100% opposed to the Revolution and the D-R party seriously supporting it. The American view changed as the French Revolution went from its more idealistic early years, to the Terror and war scorching half of Europe, and then into the carnage of the Napoleonic wars.
As a specific policy objective, Federalists were more aligned with England despite the Revolution. They wanted to stay neutral in world politics and focused on internal development and tariffs. D-R’s agreed in some ways but wanted to orient towards France; they also had a strong focus on commerce and trade. (This split, in part, is what eventually caused the war of 1812.) You can sort of see the divide in The Marquis de Lafayette on the one hand and Thomas Paine on the other; they were idealists, but in different ways and with different political views that led them in radically different directions in two separate Revolutions!
As a specific example of politics in this period, we have the Citizen Genet Affair. Genet was the abassador from Revolutionary France to the United States, and was received cordially and accepted as a legitimate representative of his government. However, he soon began to involve himself in some very questionable scheming, such as overstepping diplomatic boundaries in order to try to create a state of war between the U.S. and Great Britain - and trying to set up a similar system of Revolutionary societies as existed in France. He ended up so far on George Washington’s bad side that he was expelled - only to have to beg Washington for mercy as he was likely to be executed.
Of course, this is the really short verison of history and we could discuss a great deal more. I may come back and post something more about the Terror, because while it may pale in comparison to the body count of later Revolutions, the revisionist view that it was relaly a nice, gentle affair is an absurdity.
