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The French Revolution is generally regarded as a good move. It did get rid of a lot of rich people.

by vdupras 1y ago

CamperBob2 1y ago
Wow. What in the world are they teaching kids in school these days?
- vdupras 1y ago
  Do you know of a french person who wants to return to the Bourbon rule? me neither. They like that they live within a republic. A revolution was necessary to achieve this. Hence my parent comment.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    And naturally, you expect to come out on the winning side of this "revolution," right?
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    But the revolution didn't achieve this. The revolution achieved the Terror, and then Napoleon, and then back to the Bourbon monarchy! (I mean, I guess they did at least get constitutional limitations on the monarchy...)
    - vdupras 1y ago
      ... and then the second republic, and then the second empire, and then a republic again. All part of the same movement.
everfrustrated 1y ago
And yet there have been 5 French Republics since then.
ThrowawayR2 1y ago
I would genuinely love to hear more of an explanation from French people about why the French Revolution was considered a success. As best I understand it, the French Revolution of 1789 did succeed in removing the monarchy but devolved into le règne de la terreur where the leaders were guillotining each other and various political enemies for about ten years(?) before Napoleon became the new monarch. Perhaps it can be viewed as a stepping stone in the decades long process to modern France but the short term outcome of the French Revolution seems pretty objectively terrible to me.
- vdupras 1y ago
  I stated this as a matter of course (as in, we'd see broad support for absolute monarchy in France if that wasn't the case), I have no insider information, I'm not even French. It seems I need to clarify "good move". If your question is "was the Terror awful?", I'm sure you'll have a near totality of french people agreeing with you. If you ask "in retrospect, was the Terror awful enough so that the French nation would have been better off without its Revolution?", then I don't think you'll get many agreement. The deaths associated with the Terror were plentiful, that's true, but this period was also carefully framed by the bourgeois class who took power afterwards. In terms of deaths, it's around 40k people. The american civil war was 700k deaths. Before Trumpism, would any american say out loud that abolishing slavery wasn't worth it?
  - ThrowawayR2 1y ago
    Thank you for the explanation.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    The revolution/terror only killed 40,000 people? Great. Now do Napoleon, who was a direct and immediate follow-on. That was a million people.
    - vdupras 1y ago
      I agree that the way I framed the comparison of the american civil war and the french revolution might appear disingenuous because of the omission of the napoleonic wars. It crossed my mind to include it, but because the parent comment was specifically about the Terror and because it doesn't change the core or outcome of the argument, I left it out to avoid the fluff. I would also be tempted to begin arguing that it might be reasonable to leave out the napoleonic casualties out of the "what good has ever come from getting rid of rich people as a society?" question and I think I could make a case that stands, but I prefer to yield right now :)

The French Revolution is generally regarded as a good move. It did get rid of a lot of rich people.

CamperBob2 1y ago

Wow. What in the world are they teaching kids in school these days?

vdupras 1y ago
Do you know of a french person who wants to return to the Bourbon rule? me neither. They like that they live within a republic. A revolution was necessary to achieve this. Hence my parent comment.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  And naturally, you expect to come out on the winning side of this "revolution," right?
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  But the revolution didn't achieve this. The revolution achieved the Terror, and then Napoleon, and then back to the Bourbon monarchy! (I mean, I guess they did at least get constitutional limitations on the monarchy...)
  - vdupras 1y ago
    ... and then the second republic, and then the second empire, and then a republic again. All part of the same movement.

everfrustrated 1y ago

And yet there have been 5 French Republics since then.

ThrowawayR2 1y ago

I would genuinely love to hear more of an explanation from French people about why the French Revolution was considered a success. As best I understand it, the French Revolution of 1789 did succeed in removing the monarchy but devolved into le règne de la terreur where the leaders were guillotining each other and various political enemies for about ten years(?) before Napoleon became the new monarch. Perhaps it can be viewed as a stepping stone in the decades long process to modern France but the short term outcome of the French Revolution seems pretty objectively terrible to me.

vdupras 1y ago
I stated this as a matter of course (as in, we'd see broad support for absolute monarchy in France if that wasn't the case), I have no insider information, I'm not even French. It seems I need to clarify "good move". If your question is "was the Terror awful?", I'm sure you'll have a near totality of french people agreeing with you. If you ask "in retrospect, was the Terror awful enough so that the French nation would have been better off without its Revolution?", then I don't think you'll get many agreement. The deaths associated with the Terror were plentiful, that's true, but this period was also carefully framed by the bourgeois class who took power afterwards. In terms of deaths, it's around 40k people. The american civil war was 700k deaths. Before Trumpism, would any american say out loud that abolishing slavery wasn't worth it?
- ThrowawayR2 1y ago
  Thank you for the explanation.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  The revolution/terror only killed 40,000 people? Great. Now do Napoleon, who was a direct and immediate follow-on. That was a million people.
  - vdupras 1y ago
    I agree that the way I framed the comparison of the american civil war and the french revolution might appear disingenuous because of the omission of the napoleonic wars. It crossed my mind to include it, but because the parent comment was specifically about the Terror and because it doesn't change the core or outcome of the argument, I left it out to avoid the fluff. I would also be tempted to begin arguing that it might be reasonable to leave out the napoleonic casualties out of the "what good has ever come from getting rid of rich people as a society?" question and I think I could make a case that stands, but I prefer to yield right now :)