ping
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.
Great post. Thanks HOORAY Joel Northrup. History / education BUMP!
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...
Speak for yourself.
Ping.
“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.
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.
Anythng that delayed democracy, an evil from the pits of Hell as our Founders well knew, must be counted at least a partial success.
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.