Revolution - The Jacobins and the French Revolution

Medium ^ | March 25, 2020 | Joel Northrup

[babylon_times]

While we hope to never experience a revolution in our lifetime in America, it is important that we understand and learn from the revolutions of history. For part 1 of my series on revolutions, we are going to look at one of the defining revolutions in history — The French Revolution of 1789. Many today wrongly believe that the French Revolution was a success. By all measures, it was rather an abject failure, delaying France’s adoption of Democracy by more than one hundred years. This movement, which in many ways began as a noble cause in support of liberty and the freedom of man, brought about France's notorious reign of terror. This was the direct result of the Jacobin movement of the revolution, led by Maximillian Robespierre. The immediate legacy of ensuing chaos was the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the death of millions of Frenchmen.

In order to understand the Jacobin movement, it is necessary to examine its context within the French Revolution as well as the philosophical origins of the Revolution. This is not an easy task. It would take many volumes to fully record the events in France in 1789. But it is my hope that the following concise history of the French Revolution and Jacobin movement will give us a new filter to look at revolution and its consequences in a society:

The Revolution officially began with the Storming of the Bastille on July 14th 1789.....

[zeestephen]

ping

[yarddog]

I am not particularly knowledgeable on the French Revolution. There are a couple of things which are obvious. One is that they were surprisingly well organized.

Another is how similar it was to the Russian Revolution.

[PGalt]

Great post. Thanks HOORAY Joel Northrup. History / education BUMP!

[SuperLuminal]

"They proceeded to declare war on the Christian church, which they sought to replace with a new state church. This was dubbed by Robespierre as The Cult of Supreme Being. That the state was that very Supreme Being, was exactly their intention. With Christianity out of the picture, which deemed men as fallen and perfection in this present life as unattainable, the “new man” was possible. The nation, finally devoid of the God of the Bible, could now reach the ideal “perfection” that the Jacobins had long wanted. "

Yep! Reads like a page out of all of the histories of those Marxists masquerading as "progressives" or "socialists", when they are, in fact, the final evolution of those ideologies as "communists"...

For "Jacobins" one should, in hindsight, refer to them as they actually were... Just as today when the same "Jacobin" mentality (as espoused by the democrats/socialists/progressives) is close to victory in the U.S. by creating the essential aspects of the former Soviet Union...

The only thing left, in the U.S., is to decide, during the next couple of years, who is going to control the guillotines when the inevitable shooting starts...

[A strike]

The Left enemedia/academe/’progressive’ Democrat cabal shriek as the scalded demons they are at being thwarted for the last three years.

The absolutely have murder in their plan.

[Paal Gulli]

"While we hope to never experience a revolution in our lifetime in America, ..."

Speak for yourself.

[ProgressingAmerica]

If there were ever a revolution, the first thing to go would be the United States Constitution.

Between Antifa thugs, the establishment, the media, and more, the Constitution wouldn’t stand a chance.

[Publius]

Ping.

[aquila48]

“The Revolution officially began with the Storming of the Bastille on July 14th 1789.”

The revolution started before then. It started when the king called for the election of representative to the assembly and specifically told the people to express their grievances against the crown.

It was this “magnanimous” act by the king that awoke the passions of his subject who up to that point accepted their lot and wouldn’t have dared complain to the king. All of sudden they were told that it was OK and it opened a floodgates of grievances and expectations to get them addressed.

From that point it snowballed, and with their newly representative feeling empowered and armed with endless grievance, the die was cast.

Moral of the story - leave sleeping dogs lie. The king made a huge mistake in planting the seed of discontent in people’s head.

[Stepan12]

I read "Demonic" and got an idea of the French Revolution. I hear "Citizens" (Citoyens) is a good read of a revolution that killed half a million people.

[Publius]

Excellent read.

[Tench_Coxe]

"It didn’t take long for the Jacobins to begin adopting more radical methods. Their policy eventually advanced into lèse-nation — imprisoning any figure whose speech was deemed ‘offensive’."

This I see in various social media. They haven't gotten to imprisioning part yet, but that's why they're the same ones wanting to grab the guns.

[Billthedrill]

Thanks for the ping! We have seen this one before, I think, on 26 March. Since that time I have been reading Yuval Levin's The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, which I strongly recommend. Paine had his own input on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and like Lafayette, it nearly cost him his head. That tends to happen a lot when radicals fall into doctrinal squabbles.

That book proposes a model that you and I have discussed before: Paine's concept of a structure of government based on immutable rights and Burke's of a more organic growth that respects traditions despite their obvious flaws. Those two interpretations of government came to a titanic clash in the French Revolution and the result was, first madness and murder, then a strongman and order, then that strongman attempting to conquer the world, and then a rather unsatisfactory return to a more controlled monarchy that was Lafayette's conception in the beginning. That was not unprecedented - the English civil wars ended up following a very similar arc a century before that and provided a historical template for Burke's thought.

And then it happened again in 1917-23 in Russia. What happened, from a Burkean perspective, was that theory ran afoul of custom and tradition, only that time there was no return to any semblance of what went before (unless you try to fit the events of 1991 into that mold, and it may be too soon go judge that one). These appear to me to be structural problems with revolution in general.

Enough of that for now. I look forward to the next installment.

[IronJack]

Between Antifa thugs, the establishment, the media, and more, the Constitution wouldn’t stand a chance.

Once the Constitution goes, the next things to go would be antifags, the establishment, and the media.

[IronJack]

The French Revolution, for all its professed antipathy toward absolutism, was absolutist to the core. Its end goal was the complete destruction of the ancien regime. No consideration given to those institutions and values that had proven useful and valuable over time. Everything had to go. Even the calendar and the language had to change.

Ironically, in rejecting the abolutism of monarchy, all the revolutionaries did was replace it with far more bloodthirsty absolutists.

The same is true of the Bolshevik Revolution that overthrew the Czar and replaced him with the Terror of Joe Stalin.

[JungleGoat77]

As in Orwell’s Animal Farm

[otness_e]

“The same is true of the Bolshevik Revolution that overthrew the Czar and replaced him with the Terror of Joe Stalin.”

Heck, the terror of Vladimir Lenin in fact (as a matter of fact, Lenin practically set UP a large part of the terror, including Holodomor, if not implemented them himself, before Stalin took power. Molotov even indicated that Lenin was even MORE ruthless than Stalin).

[Jim Noble]

delaying France’s adoption of Democracy by more than one hundred years.

Anythng that delayed democracy, an evil from the pits of Hell as our Founders well knew, must be counted at least a partial success.

[otness_e]

Pretty good article, though I do have some issues with it.

1. The article claims that democracy was delayed as a result of the French Revolution. I however would argue that it if anything is the TRUE face of democracy, and I mean that in a bad way, since the true face of democracy is in fact an unruly mob of malcontents.

2. Believe it or not, Thomas Jefferson also supported the revolution, and in fact was even closer to being a Jacobin than his contemporaries. Unlike Lafayette or even Paine, Jefferson actually gave FULL support for the king’s death, and even compared liberty to soaking trees with blood, and even echoed Lenin later on about being willing to kill almost the entire human race if survivors embrace Liberty. It also doesn’t help either that Jefferson, unlike most of his contemporaries at the time, paid direct witness to the events of Bastille.

And while the Jacobins were definitely ruthless and radical in their goals, ALL of the revolutionary factions were not much better, either. The Girondists, mentioned to be the moderate faction, wanted to turn Vendee into a cemetery. And believe it or not, the Cordeliers Club and the Enrages factions were even MORE radical than the Jacobins.