Explanation: “We should bring back the guillotine” or similar is a common internet quip in response to billionaires doing billionaire things, when in reality the guillotine was invented to provide equal and humane deaths to people of all classes, and from there it was always a tool of the state rather than the people. Not the best euphemism for “we should depose the bourgeoisie.” In fact plenty of Revolutionary justice folks were themselves offed by the guillotine during the Terror.
The most radical proponents of the Terror were not the wealthy bourgeoisie, though, but the urban proletariat of the sans-cullotes, and while the Terror was an authoritarian government, it was also an authoritarian government directed largely against foes it considered reactionaries. Not to ignore left-infighting like the guillotining of the Herbertists or the shattering of the titular Enrages (who were, themselves, advocates of the guillotine even towards moderate revolutionaries like the Girondins), but it was not the main thrust of the regime. Under the revolutionary French government, including the period of the Terror, countless men who had considered themselves immune to retribution by a popular government by their association with the established ruling class were given a close-shave with the National Razor, which is what most people are thinking of when they mention Madam Guillotine.
This is not to say “holsum Terror justified 😊” - on the contrary, the Terror was rather counterproductive to its stated goals - but rather that as an expression of the potential for violence against established ruling powers, including deeply entrenched classes like the French aristocracy, it maintains symbolic and factual legitimacy.
As Marx once noted, the revolution of the bourgeoisie is a necessary class struggle that must be won before the revolution of the proletariat. The guillotine was absolutely part of that class struggle. That generally in the modern day people are thinking of moving one step closer to equality than a bourgeois revolution doesn’t change that.
Wasn’t the main thrust of the regime disposing of political opposition of all kinds? I don’t think the Federalists were killed because they were reactionary, and the victims of the immediate aftermath of the Lyon revolt alone outnumber Terror victims in Paris.
I mean, setting aside that for the most part the Terror didn’t target the aristocracy in any significant way (sans the final month or so period not so aptly known as the Great Terror), were the aristocracy or clergy really the established ruling powers? In 1789 sure, maybe even 1790, but by late 1793, let alone early 1974, I think these guys were clearly the former established ruling powers, so I still think alluding to the Terror doesn’t imply a threat to still-in-charge ruling powers. The credit for actually deposing the aristocracy, which was an almost entirely peaceful affair, goes to money (or the lack thereof), the aristocracy (and not in a “bad decisions” kind of way) and the liberal bourgeoisie, respectively.
… the Federalists and Lyon revolts were literally reactionary, though.
Considering that the aristocracy and clergy still held immense power, to the point of rallying a continent-wide coalition to reinstall them as well as a civil war to help them along?
I feel very comfortable saying that their execution was the execution of an established ruling power, and that “Government offices are no longer officially monopolized by them for a whole two years” doesn’t really change that.
I mean… no? They erupted in response to the purge of the Girondins, which wasn’t very revolutionary. Unless you define the revolution to mean Paris, fighting against authoritarian centralisation of power seems very in line with the Revolution even if the leadership of the revolts did tend to have conservative sympathties.
That’s… uh… wow. You should revisit the French Revolution and surrounding wars, seriously. For reference, though, the civil war was based in pretty legitimate grievances against Paris authoritarian overreach, the purge of the Girondins for the Federalists and religious oppression+conscription for the Vandee folks. As for the Revolutionary wars, France literally declared war first; everyone else wanted it to collapse in silence so they could focus on Poland. Neither of these were significantly affected by the aristocratic sour grapes.
The Girondins who were purged for being too far-right for the Jacobins’ tastes? The Girondins who promptly made common cause in the Federalist Revolts with literal royalists?
Interpreting the French Revolution, an incident sparked by the demands of a national congress for national standardization of representation in a centralized system, as anti-centralization is a very curious take; dismissing the conservativism of the leaders of the opposition is even more curious.
Are we going to ignore the deep interconnected nature of both the European aristocracy and the monarchist regimes of each polity?
The overwhelming objection was not that Paris’s power was centralized - a matter they were more than happy to support when it suited them - but that the regime in Paris was too radical for their tastes.
Like Confederates barking about “States’ rights”, all it ever really meant was “We aren’t in power and we don’t like that”.
The purge of the Girondins was a triggering event, but not the basis of the Federalist revolts, which occurred overwhelmingly by the support of the wealthy bourgeoisie which felt the Revolution had gone ‘too far’, in concert with royalist counterrevolutionaries.
“Religious oppression” here meaning “Not allowing theocracy to continue”. Sadly something a great many people regard as religious oppression - as seen in Christofascists in the US, and Islamists in Turkiye.
The threat to declare war was openly and freely made first by the anciens regimes, and armed bodies of emigres not only allowed, but supplied and supported as they built their forces on the borders of France.
Yeah, those guys. Even if they were royalists themselves, the central principle of the French Revolution until that point was democracy and opposition to tyranny. Purging democratically elected representatives was a complete break with everything that had come before it during the Revolution; the fact that the party getting purged was right-leaning doesn’t change that. Being opposed to something done by a left-leaning faction doesn’t automatically make one a reactionary.
“Authoritarian” is the keyword here. Authoritarianism was literally the one thing all revolutionaries could agree was bad.
That’s because the stated goals of the revolts (restoring the freedom of the Convention) weren’t reactionary, and people of various political views supported—or even fought for) those goals.
By “Paris” I don’t mean “Paris from its position as the capital;” I literally just mean Paris the city. The purge was Paris sans culottes enforcing their will over the Convention—and by extension, over the whole country. It was like if DC residents were extralegally deciding who gets to sit in Congress. Would opposing that be reactionary if the people doing the deciding were Marxists? Up until that point the Revolution had put power in the hands of a group of people elected (not 100% democratically) by all of France; the shift from that to a Convention controlled by Paris radicals was very real and not more of the same.
It was the triggering event that defined the revolts’ stated aims; they can’t be seriously evaluated without taking it into account.
No? The Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the treatment of refractory priests (overwhelmingly poor parish priests, not rich bishops) were grade A religious oppression. This was the thing that pushed the Vandee towards revolt, and it’s no coincidence that revolt only really ended when this oppression was ended. You could replace Catholicism with any religion and this stuff would still be messed up.
- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/French_Revolution,_The
This link also dispels the idea that the “anciens reigmes” (which, BTW, these guys were not united at all) wanted war with France in the next section. The Girondins wanted war (and yes, it was the Girondins that wanted war; Robespierre for example was not impressed with the idea) not to protect France, but to further the Revolution and their own power. It’s ironic that war would prove to be the undoing of both. Also the arguments they made for war did include nebulous Austrian support for monarchism (which, again, was nonexistent; there was no “Austrian Committee”), but also that war would expand French power, export the Revolution, root out counterrevolutionaries, unite the country and cure cancer or something Idfk. This stuff was pure, unadulterated warmongering.
See the link above.