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Part 1:

Everyone loves an underdog story, when the people, the normal guys, you and me, rise up and take control from the despots, the gluttonous, oppressive overlords who have abused their power for far too long. It makes for a great story because it’s something for people to rally behind, justice, liberty, long overdue and finally won against all odds. This is why Americans are so passionate about the fourth of July, because we freaking did it right? Things were unfair and we put our foot down and, although the odds were incredibly stacked against us, we gave it everything we had and we won our freedom, right, revolution, a fresh start, a chance for the every man to claim his rightful place in society at last. But what if that fresh start isn’t at all what people had in mind? What if it’s actually way worse somehow than things were before. Unlike the American Revolution, the French Revolution, which broke out roughly 6 years later, was complicated. Ultimately, it led to a better France, with fairer laws, better representation in government and a more unified country, ultimately. But at first, it was an absolute disaster with many, many lessons to teach us. Lessons that apply today more than I wish they did. Let’s fix that.

Hello I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Ah the French Revolution, a veritable Pandora’s box for history lovers. I could create an entire podcast series about the French Revolution, there’s so much meat to this thing. But I’m going to pack it into just two episodes, a two weeker, a tweeker. That’s what, when I went to summer camp back when I was like 11, 12, I just went for one week each summer but there were kids there for two weeks, God bless them, and they were called tweekers so that’s just engrained in my memory forever. So this is a tweeker. Kind of a tweeker and a half actually because there will be an associated mini fix, more on that later.

There are people who are like really obsessed with the French Revolution and honestly I’ve always found it pretty boring to be honest. Like, start researching it you guys, it’s really boring. Lots of politics and economy stuff, lots of names you can’t pronounce. Lots and lots of boring stuff to weed through to actually get to the story. And I’m like super short on time right now, I’m trying to finish up this huge project for my real job and I somehow got roped into hosting Thanksgiving at my house this year which I’d never done before and literally the morning before I started researching this episode, I was making breakfast for my kids thinking “okay, I gotta pick a really easy topic this week, short and sweet, easy to research, cause I have like no time” and I’m thinking this as I’m buttering a piece of brioche toast. And then I’m thinking about brioche and how “Let them eat cake” was actually “Let them eat brioche” and how Marie Antoinette never even said that and it’s all just an urban legend and how unfair that is to her because it was very damning although completely false and then I’m going down a rabbit hole of fake news media fueled revolutions and the recent election and the French Revolution and the food prices and inflation and by the time I’d finished buttering the toast I had made up my mind. I was doing the French Revolution. The literal hardest most time consuming topic I could have possibly picked for this week oh and next week too and a mini fix to top it off. So you’re welcome. I’ll sacrifice myself for the cause. But I won’t make it boring, I promise. Only the good stuff.

So what was France like in the late 1700s? Well it was an absolute monarchy, ruled completely by a king. This is the type of monarchy where the monarch, the king or queen has all of the power. They can do whatever they want. I mean they’re supposed to listen to people they have like advisors and committees and stuff but at the end of the day, they can do whatever they want. There’s no constitution, no legislators, no parliament making the decisions, no checks and balances whatsoever, just the king. So this is different from a constitutional monarchy which is what the UK is now, right, they have a king but he doesn’t really make any decisions, he’s more symbolic. Parliament makes the decisions. France was an absolute monarchy and it was ruled, at the time by King Louis XVI.

Louis was born in 1754 in the Palace of Versailles into a very royal family, the Bourbons. Yes the whiskey is named for them, sort of. Indirectly, I mean it’s named after places that were named after them. Louis was the grandson of the current king Louis the 15th. He was also the great great great grandson of Louis the 14th who was known as the sun king. This is the guy who built Versaille. And you might be like, now wait a minute, that's a lot of greats to jump from only the fourteenth to the sixteenth. Well, that’s because Louis the 14th ruled France for a whopping 72 years and 100 days. The longest reigning monarch in the history of all of Europe and possibly the world. He ruled for so long that by the time he died in 1715 at the age of 76, yes he became king when he was 4, only his great grandson was left to take the throne, Louis the 15th who was also 4. And then Louis the 15th ruled for almost 60 years so that when he died, only his grandson was left to take the throne, yes that’s our guy Louis the 16th. So between just those two guys, Louis the 14th and Louis the 15th, we’re talking about a 130 some year reign of absolute monarchy. Just those two guys controlled France for 130 years starting when they were toddlers. I mean they had regents that like helped them rule until they were old enough but still. How absolutely insane is that?

So Louis the 16th is born in the royalest of all palaces. His grandfather is king of France, his dad is the Dauphin (doo-fan) which is the heir to the throne. Oh by the way I am going to butcher the French words. I’ll try but my mouth doesn’t do French so bear with me. And his mother is the daughter of the king of Poland. Louis was the fourth of 8 children, I think. I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t know what the confusion is, it seems like this would be very well documented and easy to find out but every single source I found had different information about Louis XVI’s siblings. Some say he had three older siblings who all died as babies, making him the oldest surviving child with two younger brothers and two younger sisters. Other sources claimed that his older brother also named Louis did not in fact die as a baby but lived until he was 9 years old. And then a handful of other sources listed Louis the 16th’s children as his siblings. So, I don’t know, the internet is very confused on this. But it kind of matters because what I want to know is was Louis the 16th raised as the next king or not. Was it always going to be him or did he really have a surviving older brother in line for the throne? Biography.com says quote “Louis' parents paid little attention to him, instead focusing on his older brother, the heir apparent, Louis duc de Bourgogne (bor-gun-ya), who died at age nine,” end quote. But then multiple other sources say this older Louis died as a baby so I don’t know. But it matters to me. It matters if Louis the 16th was raised as the next king or not. Because, if he was, they didn’t do a very good job. So maybe he wasn’t. And that would explain a lot. It reminds me of Henry VIII who also wasn’t supposed to be king. He was the second son and so he was basically left to his own devices, hunting and galavanting around until his older brother Arthur died and everyone was like oh crap we forgot to train the spare.

So Louis the 16th is the oldest son now at least at some point and he’s often described as very healthy like hearty stock, good physical health. But part of me wonders if he was maybe just average but all three of the first children were sickly and weak so to his parents he’s like this miraculously strong healthy child. I don’t know. Biography.com says quote “Louis XVI grew up strong and healthy, though very shy. He was tutored by French noblemen and studied religion, morality and humanities. He excelled in Latin, history, geography and astronomy and achieved fluency in Italian and English. With his good health, Louis enjoyed physical activities including hunting and wrestling. From an early age, he enjoyed locksmithing, which became a lifelong hobby,” end quote. A regular Henry VIII except much less charismatic. He was quite introverted, shy, not very outspoken.

When Louis was 11, his father died of tuberculosis and he became the dauphin (doo-fan), the heir to the French throne. His mother died two years later, also of tuberculosis, as one does in a pre-antibiotics world. Biography.com says quote “Louis… was ill-prepared for the throne he was soon to inherit. Following the death of his parents, Louis' tutors provided him with poor interpersonal skills. They exacerbated his shyness by teaching him that austerity was a sign of a strong character in monarchs. As a result, he presented himself as being very indecisive,” end quote. Austerity meaning like sternness, severity, not lighthearted or charismatic. He was not a smchoozer and he was also not a go getter. He was sort of weak and slightly socially weird. Probably not his fault, over half his family died by the time he was 11. I think we can retroactively factor that trauma in.

When he was 15 years old he married the then 14 year old Marie Antoinette. She was the 15th child, yes 15th, of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and empress Maria Theresa who was part of the very powerful Hapsburg family. Marie Antoinette was from Austria which was part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, which is a confusing name and, in the words of Voltaire neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. It was basically a collection of city states in central Europe, mostly what is today Germany, Austria, and Italy that often fought each other and eventually dissolved. The Hapsburgs though were a very powerful family that ruled Europe for hundreds of years really. Super inbred but super powerful. And Marie Antoinette was a Hapsburg. She was also Louis’ second cousin once removed. So this was an arranged marriage, a political marriage. Louis and Marie never even met each other before they were married. And the marriage, while a strategic union of two powerful ruling families much like Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, was a bit controversial. A previous union with the Hapsburgs had gotten France wrapped up in the 7 years war or, what we call in America, the French and Indian War, which Winston Churchill would later famously refer to as the real World War I. So the French were wary of Marie’s Hapsburg ties.

Now, luckily, Marie Antoinette is everything Louis wasn’t socially. She’s very charming, very charismatic, very Anne Boleyn really. She’s electric. She walks into a room and heads turn. And it’s not even just her looks although she was stunning with ash blonde hair, pale gray blue eyes, and a radiant complexion. But it’s not just that. It’s just her energy. But, much like Anne Boleyn, we all know how that ended, Marie quickly becomes someone everyone loves to hate. There’s something about an intelligent, independent, outspoken, powerful woman that everyone seems to like the idea of but hate in practice. That’s just a patriarchy thing I’m pretty sure. She challenged the natural order. And so the French eventually came to absolutely despise Marie Antoinette. And some of that was her own fault no doubt and some of that was the patriarchy dealing with a challenge to the natural order. And she was kind of silly honestly. Her tutor described her as smart but lazy, frivolous, and hard to teach. After marrying Louis when she was 14, she had very few official duties and so she mostly just socialized extravagantly. According to a History.com article about her quote “she had a model farm built on the palace grounds so that she and her ladies-in-waiting could dress in elaborate costumes and pretend to be milkmaids and shepherdesses,” end quote. So weird. But also, she’s a child. Can we really blame her for playing make believe with her friends? She’s a child, but she’s also now married to the heir to the French throne and soon to become queen of France.

When Louis’ grandfather, Louis the 15th dies in 1774, Louis becomes Louis the 16th, king of France, at the age of 20. Biography.com says he was quote “immature and lacked self confidence.” Plus he’s been married for 4 years now and there are no children yet, no heirs and people have noticed and they care very much about this. And actually Louis and Marie will not have any children until 8 years after their marriage. And people take great offense to this for some reason. This is a problem and it’s of course all Marie’s fault. Biography.com says quote “The first few years of marriage for Louis and Marie were amicable but distant. His shyness kept him distant from her in private, and his fear of her manipulation made him cold to her in public. It is believed the couple did not consummate their marriage for some time, having their first child eight years after their wedding. Historians debate the cause, but most likely, Louis suffered from a physiological dysfunction that took time to rectify,” end quote. But France blamed Marie claiming that she was unfaithful and adulterous. History.com says quote “Widely circulated newspapers and inexpensive pamphlets poked fun at the queen’s profligate behavior and spread outlandish, even pornographic rumors about her. Before long, it had become fashionable to blame Marie Antoinette for all of France’s problems,” end quote. And, while yes she did possibly have at least one affair that we know of with a Swedish diplomat named Axel von Fersen which like, really, is that really his name? That is like straight out of a romance novel. But really she was not the floozy they made her out to be. Her husband was just shy and weird and super intimidated by her and possibly had something physical going on down there and also they were children so there’s that. Marie was probably like, “Oh thank God, I’m gonna go play with my friends now.” I’ll get more into the Axel Von Fersen allegations and other Marie Antoinette scandals and such in that mini fix I promised. Look for that over on the Patreon on Wednesday, little mid week treat for you. Anyway, despite France being all up in their personal business, Louis and Marie eventually do at some point consummate their marriage and have 4 children together, only one of whom will survive to adulthood, sadly.

So Louis the 16th, just based on his personality and demeanor alone, is not a great king. He’s not inherently a great king. Henry kind of was, at least in his early years, you have to hand it to him. He was decisive and charismatic and confident and he owned it. Louis is not owning it. He’s weak and indecisive and he gives in to whoever wants to push their own agenda on him. He’s spineless. Now looking back through a modern lens, according to Biography.com quote “Modern historians attribute this behavior to a clinical depression that left him prone to paralyzing indecisiveness,” end quote. And it doesn’t help that things already aren’t great in France when he takes the throne. The system is failing and it’s not really Louis’ fault. He didn’t come up with the system.

So what is the system? Well, France at the time is a feudal system which is like a super strict social hierarchy and it’s all based on land ownership. In France there are 3 social classes which are called estates. The first estate is the clergy, Catholic church guys, priests and such because the church owns the most land. The Catholic church has all this land in France and so people who are part of that, part of the church, that puts them in the top tier of the social hierarchy. The second estate is the nobility, they own the second most land. And the third estate is everyone else, from the middle class down to the peasants. Most of France is in the third estate but it’s the first and second estates that have all the power. Now this system had worked in the past but by the time Louis took the throne in the 1770s, it wasn’t working anymore. Same reason the American revolution broke out. People were sick of it. They were sick of being controlled by the 1%. And they were sick of it because the scales had finally tipped for a few reasons. Between 1715 and 1800 the population of Europe doubled. This was mostly due to higher standards of living, better hygiene, new innovations, the enlightenment, right, people are thinking again and mortality is dropping. The population doubled during the 1700s. And by 1789 France was the most populated country in Europe. So more people obviously puts more strain on a country, more competition for resources and whatnot. But with that enlightenment also came this emerging group of wealthy commoners. They aren’t clergy, they aren’t nobility, they’re just regular guys. But they also aren’t poor anymore. This is kind of new. They are professionals, many of them are merchants who have profited immensely from all of the colonialism and slave labor really if we’re honest in the Americas. They are self made men and they don’t really fit into the old social hierarchy of clergy, nobles, and peasants. This is the bourgeoisie (bor-zhwaa-zee), the middle class emerging, and they want a taste of the power. But even the peasants are wising up. They aren’t just living in squalor and dying now like they used to do. Higher standards of living mean they are surviving, they are getting an education, they are owning land, and they are thinking too. They are thinking you know “hey, feudalism is kind of the worst.” They didn’t really have time to think like that before, you know, they were just surviving. But now the middle class, the bourgeoisie, and the peasants, these third estate guys, they’re starting to question the way things have always been done. And this third estate, just so you know, comprises 98% of France’s population and yet, they can still be overruled by the first and second estates, the clergy and the nobility, because everything is based on land ownership, not majority, not population.

So the system’s starting to fail but, to make matters worse, the economy starts to tank too. New gold mines discovered in Brazil in the 1730s had led to an economic boom but by about the 1770s, that boom started to bust. As booms are wont to do. And what else happens in the 1770s? The American Revolution. And who comes to our aid against their own archenemy Great Britain? France. Thank you Louis, preciate it, really got us out of a jam there. But France does not have the money for this war. They’re Brazil gold mine boom is busting and their population has exploded. And so Louis goes into debt, serious debt, to fund France’s involvement in the American Revolution, like brink of bankruptcy debt. Oh and then cherry on top, serious crop failures in 1788. So booming population, busting economy, plus crop failures. And Louis is just a spineless jellyfish up there just not really doing much. Not taking charge. Marie is off pretending to be a milkmaid or whatever. France is in trouble.

So the controller general of finances, Monsieur de Calonne, hatches a plan in 1787. He’s like “hey, I’m all enlightened, I’m with the program, I read Voltaire, I read Rousseau, I’m with all these new philosophies and I know what to do.” And he proposes a universal land tax from which the nobility will no longer be exempt. Because they were exempt before. They didn’t have to pay the land taxes that commoners were paying even though they owned most of the land. Make that make sense. He wants to tax the upper classes finally, which like, duh. But the upper classes also still have all the power so, you know, how do you get them to agree to tax their own selves. He calls a group of noblemen together and a few bourgeoisie but mostly noblemen, he’s like “what do you guys think about paying those land taxes you didn’t have to pay before to get us out of all this debt?” And, predictably, they’re like “I mean we’d rather not.” So they do something they haven’t done since 1614. They call on the Estates General. This was like a convening of delegates, representatives from all three of the estates, all three of the social classes - the clergy, the noblemen, and the commoners. They elected these guys from the different regions to represent each estate - 300 from the first estate, the clergy, 300 from the second estate, the nobility, and 600 from the third estate, the commoners. But by the time they actually met in May of 1789, things had gotten worse. There were those 1788 crop failures between then and now which had caused the price of food, most notably bread, to skyrocket. And, at that time, in 1788, Louis thought it was a good idea to grant freedom of the press. Actually someone was probably just like “hey you should grant freedom of the press” and he was like “roger that.” But, I mean, does seem like a good thing right? We're all for freedom of the press in the US. But it will turn nasty there as it has here recently and it will contribute to the division and paranoia that leads to a very bloody revolution. Fake news is nothing new.

So the Estates General finally meets in May of 1789 but they immediately run into a problem. Should they go with a popular vote, like a vote for each guy regardless of class? Or should they vote by estate where those who own more land have more say, meaning that the first and second estates could outvote the third estate despite being the major minority. This is how it was done the last time the Estates General met back in 1614, so like 175 years ago. So of course the two higher classes, the first and second estates, are like “well this is how it’s always been done, we get more votes than you, and we vote no land taxes for the rich, and we always win so ha.” And the third estate is like “well that’s not fair, cause we’re not stupid anymore, and we deserve an equal vote and we vote land taxes for the rich cause y’all can afford it anyway.” And so they’re sort of at a standstill. By June 17th, the third estate has had it with these pompous jerks. They separate from the first and second estates and declare themselves the National Assembly and they're just going to make the decision on their own. When royal officials lock them out of the meeting hall, they go meet at the king’s indoor tennis courts where they swore an oath called the Tennis Court Oath to stay until they had drafted a new Constitution for France. Louis’s like “actually we kind of just wanted you to weigh in on the universal land tax thing.” They’re like “we got this, we’re gonna rework the whole government, it’s fine.”

But Louis is not loving this for obvious reasons so he goes to the other two estates and he’s like “go get in there, go to the tennis courts or whatever and balance those guys out. Why do you guys think I brought you here? Get in there. I mean, you know, if you want. I guess.” And some of them go join the national assembly tennis court peasants by July and they change the name to National Constituent Assembly. But even though Louis urged them to do that, he’s still not loving this assembly and he starts gathering troops to dissolve it. I’m telling you, he is nothing if not wishy washy.

Now, meanwhile, okay so de Calonne, the finance guy proposed the universal land tax like 2 years ago. This committee finally came together in May of 1789 to weigh in on it, now it’s July so two months have passed and they have accomplished absolutely nothing. The people are getting more and more restless. It feels like they're stalling. It feels like they are avoiding dealing with this problem. And the problem is worse than ever. By the summer of 1789, the food problem had reached its peak. The price of a loaf of bread had skyrocketed to almost an entire day's wages for most people. Can you imagine working an 8 hour shift or more and only barely being able to afford a loaf of bread with what you earned. That is not sustainable. But also, the media is in a frenzy. Louis opened the newspaper and pamphlet floodgates when he granted freedom of the press and they are stirring up some mess throwing out rumors of an aristocratic conspiracy. The sensationalized media has everyone believing that the king and the upper classes are intentionally trying to overthrow the third estate and this led to the Great Fear of July 1789. The peasants are panicking. They’re starving and no one is doing anything about it. Not only are they not doing anything, they’ve now been led to believe by the media that the King is actively working against them. And, I mean, troops are gathering around the capital. Louis is gathering troops, hoping to disband this tennis court assembly that isn’t going his way. Whatever his way even is because even he doesn’t seem to know. Panic and paranoia take over and this leads to an insurrection led by the commoners, the peasants. The people storm the Bastille which was a medieval fortress that was currently being used as a prison. But it was really just a symbol of everything that was wrong with the monarchy. The despotism of the monarchy, tyranny, that’s what the Bastille represented. They storm it, they bust in hoping to arm themselves with the gunpowder and weapons that are stored there. And this event, the storming of the Bastille has since come to be viewed as the start of the French Revolution. They also burned and looted the homes of tax collectors, landlords, and aristocrats during this Great Fear summer of 189. These actions would prompt the national constituent assembly to finally take action, abolishing the feudal system on August 4th and introducing the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on August 26 which proclaiming liberty, equality, the inviolability of property, which is like security, it’s safe, it can’t be violated and also the right to resist oppression. But of course Louis was like heck no, what even are we if we can’t violate property and oppress people, or his guys whispered that in his ear at least so he refuses to sanction these decrees which in the past might have worked. This was an absolute monarchy, if the King refuses to sanction the decrees, that’s it, no decrees. Well that’s not how things work now. Not since the peasants stormed the Bastille. In their minds, that was the end of the old order, the ancien regime (on-see-on ray-jeem), so they aren’t taking no for an answer. Parisians marched to Versailles on October 5th. Versailles is about 9 miles outside of Paris. So they march to Versailles which is where the royal family is and they force them back to Paris. They’re like we’re doing this, get your but back to Paris and make it happen. And the National Constituent Assembly carries on drafting this new constitution for the new France.

Now at the time, the rest of Europe is too busy for this mess. They aren’t paying much mind to what’s happening in France. They don’t really care. France can do whatever it wants as long as it leaves them alone. In America, a fledgling country fresh out of its own revolution, people are initially into it. They’re like “yeah France, rise up and stick it to the man like we did,” but, that excitement, that stokedness shifts pretty quickly. Because not long after the storming of the Bastille by the common man and the abolishing of the feudal system by the tennis court guys, and marching the king back to Paris to get everything straight, things take a turn and get real radical and real violent and real, real scary. America is like “Yeah France, let’s go, oh, oh, oh, no, nope, nevermind, not, nope,” And before long the rest of Europe is forced to acknowledge what’s happening in France too because, turns out, the new France has no intentions of leaving them alone. What goes boom soon must bust and as the fervor, the patriotism, the jubilation of the Bastille insurrection and the common man rising up and overthrowing the tyrannical overlords, as that fades, what’s left standing when the dust clears is something rather horrifying indeed. What happens when a revolution leads to something even worse than you had before? Join me next week to find out.

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.

Information used in this episode was sourced from biography.com, history.com, Encyclopedia Britannica, the US Office of the Historian, and Chateau de Versailles. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.

Part 2:

Let’s go back to France, late 1789. Dissatisfaction with the ancien regime (on-see-on), the old way of doing things, with nobles and peasants and not much in between has reached a breaking point. A poor economy, failing harvests, and no relief from a weak and spineless king has led the third estate, the commoners, to lose faith in the system entirely. Inflammatory news articles and pamphlets stir up paranoia and fear, prompting drastic measures. With the storming of the Bastille prison, a 4 hour insurrection led by French peasants in July, 94 people are dead. But that’s a small price to pay to overturn a corrupt, tyrannical government. That’s a small price to pay for liberty. And it is a small price really when you consider that over the next four years, as many as 50,000 more would die for the cause. Let’s fix that.

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. If you’re listening to this right now, you should know that it is part 2 of a two part episode on the French Revolution. So if you missed last week’s episode, part 1, go back and listen to that first. This one won’t make a ton of sense unless you listen to part one first. Last week, I talked about the climate leading up to the revolution, figuratively. The situation, what was happening in France that led to such drastic measures - a failing social hierarchy, a wishy washy indecisive king, a plummeting economy, crop failure, skyrocketing bread prices, and of course a runaway, sensational media pumping out doom and gloom paranoia stories and drumming up public fear and panic. And I ended last week’s episode right where this one began, with the storming of the Bastille, and the destruction of the ancien regime (on-see-on), the old order. And so that is where we will pick up today. But first, as promised, I released a mini fix on Wednesday about Marie Antoinette. There’s so much more to her that I’m not able to cover in these two episodes so I needed to give her her own fix. Here’s a sneak peek:

“If you lived in late 18th century Paris and you picked up a newspaper or pamphlet from a street vendor as you made your way home down the Champs-Elysees (shom-zay-lee-zay), you’d very likely see one name in particular printed on it - Marie Antoinette. And I can almost guarantee you that the news would not be good. After marrying the heir to the French throne, the future King Louis XVI in 1770, all of France pretty quickly came to loathe their new future queen - sort of. They love/hated her. They followed her fashion trends and they hungrily gobbled up any news of her. She was an influencer before that was a thing. But, as with many influencers today, people also loved to hate her. And, also like today, a love/hate relationship this strong, this hungry, is fed, fueled and fanned by sensational media willing to print anything at all about her that readers will gobble up, didn’t matter if it was true, didn’t matter if it was damaging, didn’t matter if it caused the very country to come crashing down around them. Let’s fix that.”

You can listen to the rest of that over on Patreon.com/historyfixpodcast. The link is always in the description. Lot’s of awesome extra content there.

So the Bastille has been stormed, the king, Louis the 16th, has been marched to Paris, they’ve abolished the feudal system, they’ve put forth this declaration claiming liberty and equality and the protection of private property, the right to stand up to oppression. All good things. And they’re working on reworking the government entirely. And it’s going well at first, sort of, I mean it’s not too crazy at least. They have some good ideas. It needed to be reworked. It was a broken, failing system and while different social classes had different ideas about how to fix that, they did all agree that it was obviously a broken, failing system. They’re down to keep the king. They basically just want to switch it from an absolute monarchy where the king has all the power to a constitutional monarchy where the king is more of a symbolic figure and the country was actually controlled by elected assemblies who represented all the people, more democratic. So they didn’t like storm the Bastille and then chop off Louis’ head the next day. No. They were down to let him stay and be part of it. For a few years actually. For a couple years they are trying to work this out and make this work with a king still but just a fairer form of government, equal representation, checks and balances, all that. And even though that all sounds very reasonable, Louis is having a really hard time with it. Encyclopedia Britannica says quote “This regime might have worked if the king had really wanted to govern with the new authorities, but Louis XVI was weak and vacillating and was the prisoner of his aristocratic advisers,” end quote. He actually tries to flee the country in June of 1791 but they stop him and bring him back to Paris and this is a huge blow to whatever remnants are left of his authority in France. But they still don’t chop off his head. They just kind of put up with him for now.

One solution they come up with for the financial problems is to take the land that had been owned by the Roman Catholic Church, remember the clergy was the first estate, they held most of the land. They decide to take this land from the church and sell it to the people. This is how they are going to pay off their debt and climb out of the financial hole they’re in. But they weren’t selling the land fast enough to pay back the creditors, duh, cause everything is super expensive and no one has any money. So to remedy this, to stimulate these land purchases, they start printing a new type of paper money called assignats (ah-seen-yahs) which means assignment and it’s basically a bond backed by the value of the land they took from the church. So they are putting these assignats into circulation, this new paper money and the hope is that the people will use the assignats to buy the land from the government. And then afterwards, after they sell the land, they’re going to burn all the assignats to get them out of circulation, they are just a temporary measure. But then they don’t. They don’t burn them a lot of the time and they keep circulating and this leads to a lot of public mistrust and the public mistrust leads anyone with assignats to try to spend them as fast as they can because who knows if they’re even going to be worth anything soon. So the assignats are flying around and this causes what economic history professor Dr. Louis Rouanet calls “hyperinflation.” The first modern hyperinflation. Which like, duh. You print more money, you introduce more money, more bills, the value of each of those bills is going to go down. So now the money’s worth less. Now you need more of it to buy things. So the prices go up. According to Dr. Rouanet, prices start to go up by 50% each month. They thought they couldn’t afford bread before. By 1795, inflation is at 3500%. For some context, US inflation is at 2.6 percent right now.

On top of that, they’ve taken all this land from the church, now they try to reorganize the church which the Pope in Rome and the French clergy are not into. They’re like no way. And this begins a divide between the church and the new revolutionary government that will rear its ugly head very soon. A lot of the clergy leave France, along with some nobility who aren’t feeling this upheaval of the old way. It was great for them before, right? Why mess with a good thing? They flee the country and hole up near the northeastern border where they arm themselves and seek help from the rest of Europe, prepared to go back in with support and reclaim what was once theirs. But, like I said last week, Europe’s not interested in getting involved in this mess. France can do whatever, just leave them out of it. That is until this new France starts overstepping its borders. It reclaims the territory of Avignon in 1791 and Europe is like “eh, okay, that’s we don’t like that.” And then France declares war against Austria in April of 1792. Now remember, Austria is where Marie Antoinette is from. And what’s interesting about this declaration of war is that it’s sort of supported by both sides in France. The revolutionary government thinks all these counterrevolutionary runaway clergy and nobility are holed up there gathering support to storm back in and retake France. And so they want to squash that. They also hope to spread their revolutionary ideas to the rest of Europe. But even Louis and Marie are down with a war on Austria. They are hoping Austria will come in and set things right, restore his authority as king. Either that or rescue them and get them the heck out of there. Marie’s brother Leopold II is the current Holy Roman Emperor after all. Certainly he will rescue them if they force him to get involved. And although France started this war, it’s not going well. To the delight, I’m sure of Louis and Marie, Prussia gets involved and together Prussia and Austria invade France quite handily and start advancing towards Paris.

So, I mean at this point, July of 1792, three whole years after the triumphant storming of the Bastille, I have to say that things are kind of worse than ever. The economy is somehow even worse than it was before, hyperinflation. And they’re losing the war they picked with Austria and Prussia. The new government is floundering. None of their ideas are working. The king is not cooperating with their idea of a constitutional monarchy. And a particular group of revolutionaries called the Jacobins (jac-o-bans) decides that they have had enough. And this is a much less reasonable group. These guys are radical revolutionaries and they will stop at nothing to forge the France that they want. In August of 1792, the Jacobins storm the Tuileries palace where the royal family is and arrest them. The Tuileries palace is gone now, it was burnt down in the 1800s but it used to be right next to the Louvre in Paris. So this radical revolutionary group rises up and arrests the king. They are done messing around with this dude. They imprison the royal family and then they start doing their thing. And their thing is scary. This part of the revolution is referred to as the reign of terror, and for good reason.

After imprisoning the royal family, they abolish the monarchy altogether. He had a chance, he blew it, he’s done. Then they round up the remaining clergy and the nobility and throw them in prison too under suspicion of being counterrevolutionary, against the revolution, whether they actually were or not, just for being in the first and second estates pretty much. And the journalists, the press is having a field day. They are fueling this new radical pandemonium, spreading rumors that the aristocrats and the priests are now hatching anti-revolutionary plans from prison. The journalists start rallying people to action. One in particular named Jean-Paul Marat (Ma-rah) urged his readers to quote “go to the Abbaye, to seize priests, and especially the officers of the Swiss guards and their accomplices and run a sword through them,” end quote. And it was incitement like this from the media that led the Jacobin radicals to go to the prisons and start massacring the clergy and the nobility they had imprisoned there starting on September 2nd, 1792. According to history professor Christine Adams at St. Mary’s College of Maryland quote “The first people murdered were counterrevolutionary priests in the process of being transported to the Abbaye prison, the place Marat (Ma-rah) had singled out. Priests, associated with counterrevolutionary forces because of the Catholic Church’s implacable opposition to the Revolution, would be among the major victims of the attack. The killings quickly spread to other prisons, where self-styled “patriots” sought to eliminate those involved in treasonous plots against the nation. By the time the slaughter ended on September 6, somewhere between 1100-1400 people had died. Only about 1/3 of those killed were political prisoners or conspirators against the government; the majority were common criminals, many locked up for minor offenses,” end quote. Quite a few of those were also innocent women and children. She goes on quote “However, the “Septembriseurs” who carried out the massacres, many of them National Guard troops and Fédérés from the provinces preparing to head off to the war front, considered themselves true patriots. They were firmly convinced that they were performing work essential to the safety of the country. A number of journalists and politicians praised their actions in the immediate aftermath of the murders. But complicity in the September massacres eventually became a source of shame… A number of… French politicians would be accused of either encouraging the massacres or not doing enough to stop them. Even today, historians find it difficult to determine exactly what role certain politicians played in the massacres, in some cases because they took steps to hide their role from history as it became more problematic to be associated with them,” end quote. But at the time, it was not problematic. It was praised and encouraged. These people were saving France. They were killing innocent priests and unrelated bystanders but they thought they were saving France. And people rallied over this. Nationalism grew and men flocked to join the army fighting Austria and Prussia on the front lines. And these new forces, spurred on by the September massacres, start to turn things around. They start to push Prussia and Austria back. Leopold is no longer coming to the rescue. Louis is put on trial, convicted of treason, and executed by guillotine in January of 1793. This is like a bomb has gone off in Europe. France has clearly lost its mind. England, Spain and Portugal get involved in the war. Meanwhile civil war breaks out all across France because not everyone is on board with this, understandably. They are massacring mostly innocent people now.

One woman in particular, Charlotte Corday from Normandy, is so horrified by the September massacres and the fact that they were prompted by journalists, specifically Jean-Paul Marat (Ma-rah), that she decides to pay him a visit. This is nuts you guys. Charlotte goes to Paris for an interview with Marat (Ma-rah) about a year after the massacres. She’s agreed to tell him the names of some counterrevolutionaries she knows. So she goes to see him for their interview. He’s in the bathtub when she gets there. Like legit, he shows up to the interview naked in the bathtub. Um, what? And I find this infuriating because you know this dude would not be interviewing a man while naked in a bathtub. This is some weird patriarchy BS right here. But Charlotte is not rattled. She sits next to the tub and she tells him the names she promised. He jots them down and assures her they will be guillotined and then she proceeds to pull out a knife and stab him in the heart while he sits naked in his bathtub. Why do I love this story so much? She’s arrested on the spot and is guillotined herself.

The radical government does not stop after chopping off the king’s head or Charlotte Corday’s head. They start chopping off everyone’s heads. Anyone who could be even halfway seen as a threat, as counterrevolutionary, they chop off their heads, a documented 300,000 people are arrested and 17,000 of them are executed this way over the next 10 months but tens of thousands more die in prison and during other random massacres that are taking place. Marie Antoinette is still alive for now, she’s imprisoned, her husband has been executed, her best friend the Princesse de Lamballe gets dismembered in the street. They chopped her up into pieces and paraded her body parts through Paris. And you guys, I don’t care how great you think your cause is, that is messed up. No great noble new government would ever do that. That’s a serious red flag. Another red flag, they change the calendar. They get rid of Christianity so therefore they need a whole new calendar. Cause, we, the whole world, we use a Chrisitian calendar. The years are counting up from the birth of Jesus. It’s the year of our Lord 2024 right now. So they have to do away with that. They start it over from September 1792, when the revolution was officially proclaimed, when the radicals took over and massacred the priests. That is no longer 1792, it’s now year 0. 1793 is year 1, 1794 is year 2 and so on. Bold move. They also change it from a 7 day week to a 10 day week. So there are 3 ten day weeks or decades each month. And they change the names of the days, no Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it’s now primidi, duodi, tridi, and so on. They also change the names of the months. And they get a poet to do this actually so they’re kind of eerily pretty: floreal, fructidor, thermidor, brumaire, vendemiaire. They’re just redoing everything and they’re fighting half of Europe and they’re chopping everyone’s heads off including Marie Antoinette in October of 1793. She was 37 years old. And, fun fact, her last words were “Pardon me sir, I did not do it on purpose.” But she’s not talking about the treason charges. She says that because she accidentally stepped on the executioner’s foot as she walked up to the guillotine. Her last words she’s being polite, apologizing to the man who’s about to chop off her head. And I think that says a lot about her. Not about the Marie Antoinette people thought she was, the Marie the newspapers created, but about the real Marie Antoinette, the one who takes the time to apologize to her executioner for stepping on his foot.

So this radical revolution, the reign of terror phase, gets started with a lot of popular support and nationalism but by the summer of 1794, after they’ve been chopping off heads for a while, support starts to wane. Professor Adams says quote “it had come to be seen by opponents, and even some earlier supporters, as too brutal and too indiscriminate,” end quote. And this was especially true after the passing of a law, the Law of 22 prairial which is June 10th on the new calendar that limited the ability of the accused to defend themselves. So it made it a lot easier to arrest people and chop off their heads and there wasn’t a whole lot they could do about it even if they were innocent. And it led to a major increase in the number of people who were being executed. So this was a scary law, for obvious reasons, even for some supporters of the radical Jacobin government. Now, one of the main guys who passed this law and a key player during the Reign of Terror was committee of public safety member Maximilien Robespierre. Robespierre often gets blamed for the whole Reign of Terror, probably unfairly so, but also, he made his bed.

At this point, by the summer of 1794, a lot of the original members of the new government who helped usher in the revolution have had their heads chopped off. Even they have had their heads chopped off, usually because Robespierre and co accused them of not being committed enough to the cause, as if that’s a measurable thing. So, as one would expect to happen when you start chopping off your own side’s heads, they start getting paranoid amongst themselves. When is Robespierre going to accuse them of not being committed enough and chop off their heads? And now they can’t even fight it because of this law he passed that says they can’t fight it. Professor Adams writes quote “This fear was heightened on July 26, when Robespierre gave a speech before the National Convention in which he suggested (ominously for those listening) that there were traitors within the National Convention itself whom he was ready to expose. This brought together a group of legislators, fearful for their own lives, who put aside their own differences to take Robespierre down… These men, called the “Thermidorians” (drawn from the name of the month Thermidor in the Revolutionary calendar), launched their offensive in a series of dramatic speeches before the National Convention on July 27 (9 Thermidor). Their accusations led to the arrest and swift trial of Robespierre, his two closest associates, and his brother. The four men went to the guillotine the next day, done in by the laws that they themselves had helped pass,” end quote.

So, I mean, can we all agree that this is an absolute disaster so far? They’re at war with half of Europe and themselves, the economy is worse than ever, and they’ve just executed one of their main guys. And their reason for executing him was that he had gone too far with the reign of terror. But to say that, to admit that Robespierre was wrong to support the executions of 17,000 people, they couldn’t avoid the dangerous fact that they were complicit in it too. How do you condemn your own leader, execute him, and not go down with him? Welp, very carefully it seems. Professor Adams writes quote “Now, with Robespierre out of the way, the men who brought him down needed to find a way to convince the French public that it was Robespierre and his small group of followers who were responsible for the excesses of the Terror, not them, and, at the same time, to re-establish a stable government—no easy task,” end quote. But the media, the press, the very thing that helped spur on their revolution is not helping. Adams says quote “A pamphlet called La queue (coo) de Robespierre (Robespierre’s Tail) suggested that while Robespierre’s head had been cut off, his radical Jacobin followers were still active. French legislators continued to investigate and condemn those responsible for the worst excesses of the Terror. Some of them were exiled, others executed. Those held accountable included some of the men responsible for taking down Robespierre… But many more evaded responsibility and helped shape the next government,” end quote. But this is why history has painted Robespierre as the villain behind the reign of terror because these men, his own men who turned on him and took him down, went to great lengths to try to paint him as the sole villain behind the reign of terror in order to save their own necks.

So the Jacobins are dunzo and they’re followed by a group of moderate republicans. But, while these guys are definitely not trying to reinstate the monarchy or anything like that, they also haven’t fully bought into the idea of democracy. They don’t really trust it. They don’t trust the democratic process. And this causes them to overturn what they thought of as problematic election results in 1797 and again in 1798. And that’s a problem. When you start questioning democracy, when you start questioning whether or not, for example, elections are rigged, and you start poking holes in the process whether warranted or not, that’s a problem. And we know this because it happened in France. Adams explains quote “These actions lessened the French public’s commitment to democratic institutions, convincing them that all politicians were corrupt and self-serving. The cynicism and distrust of the Directorial regime opened the path for the young and charismatic general Napoleon Bonaparte to come to power in a coup on the 18th Brumaire [which is] November 9, 1799,” end quote. Okay. And if you aren’t drawing parallels yet between that situation and current politics in the US then I won’t draw them for you but my mind certainly goes there. Who do we know who pokes holes in democracy, convincing the public that elections are rigged and politicians are corrupt and self-serving? Napoleon Bonaparte. Who did you think I was going to say? But guess who's really corrupt and self serving? Yeah… Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon, Napoleon, where to even start? He was an incredibly complicated historical figure and he deserves his own episode for sure which he’ll probably get some day. But ultimately, he was the end result of the French Revolution. So, was he what they wanted? Was he what they were hoping to get out of all that upheaval and bloodshed? Was he worth it? Sort of. Like I said, Napoleon was very complicated. Historians are pretty split on whether he was a hero or tyrant. Incredibly dynamic character.

On the one hand, he did a lot of really great things for France, things that shaped what France is to this day, what the world is today. When he rose to power, France was in absolute shambles without a leader and he filled that power vacuum as men like Napoleon tend to do. He got rid of feudalism in France once and for all. He established legal equality and religious tolerance. He legalized divorce and he introduced what’s come to be called the Napoleonic code of laws that have been adopted in many other countries around the world since. The Napoleonic code basically got rid of birthright privilege, don’t care who your daddy is, you work for it like the rest of us. It said that government jobs should be awarded on merit alone. So he’s really cracking down on nepotism here. It also granted religious freedom and it just established laws in general, a system, because France was basically lawless at this point. He also did a lot for education, establishing the modern public education system that is still used in France. He established the bank of France and a tax code that finally brought that 3500% inflation under control and eliminated the national debt within a year that they had been grappling with for decades. And he was undoubtedly a military genius, considered by most to be one of the greatest military commanders of all time. His campaigns are still studied in military schools worldwide. They’re like what the heck was this guy doing? We need to do that. According to a 5 minute history article, Israeli military historian and theorist, Martin van Creveld, described him as quote “the most competent human being who ever lived,” end quote. And I know I listed a lot of great things that he did but you should know that he also reintroduced slavery in the French colonies, allowed rich people to dodge military conscription, and did nothing at all to promote gender equality.

So, yeah there’s a dark side and the real dark side is that he was kind of a tyrant. The reason he was able to achieve all of these things, good or bad or whatever, is because he seized complete control of France in a pretty dangerous way and, while he did some good with it, it was still dangerous. Professor Rafe Blaufarb, director of the Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution at Florida State University says quote “He was a political animal. He loved power. He was motivated by the quest to have power, to hold power and to exercise power. He liked to dominate everyone around him. This is a bit of his downfall in foreign policy, because he wasn’t very good at coming up with compromises — you know, giving a little to enemies in order to live in peace in the future. He had to dominate everything that got in his way. It was Napoleon in charge or no one. And that’s because he loved power. He was consumed by the desire for power and he wanted to exercise it. How do we know? We have 70,000 letters that he wrote in which he expresses some pretty harsh, dominating sentiments, sometimes toward conquered people and opponents. We also have memoirs and testimony from people who were in his life, for example, generals and the people in his imperial court. And they talk about this. Napoleon was in charge. He was incredibly dominating and powerful. He exuded a kind of influence. He could look at people apparently, give them a piercing look, and they would crumble. He was a man of power,” end quote.

After Napoleon rigged an election in 1804 in order to make himself emperor, he attempted to portray Roman emperor Julius Caesar at his coronation with a golden laurel wreath crown. He also wears a Roman toga in the relief carving of him in his tomb. So, um, a bit grandiose. He used propaganda to spread this grandiose image of himself and censored any media that would tarnish it, bringing the number of newspapers in Paris from 60 down to just 4. He spied on people, like big brother style. That five minute history article says quote “The grandiose image Napoleon created for himself, as well as the tightly controlled society that he established once in power, was a model for a totalitarian state that Hitler and Stalin would follow with such ruthlessness in the next century. Those who deified him were crushed under his iron hand. Joseph Fouche (fu-shay), the head of the secret police, extended Emperor Napoleon’s reach into every aspect of French society through a vast network of spies. Jean-Paul Bertaud, a Professor Emeritus of History at La Sorbonne in Paris, and a specialist on the French Revolution and military history explained what life was like under Napoleon’s iron rule: quote

‘You go to a salon, there’s a spy. You go a brothel, there is a spy. You go to a restaurant, there is a spy. Everywhere there are spies of the police. Everyone listens to what you say. It’s impossible to express yourself unless Napoleon wants you to,’” end quote. And what about all those military victories? Well on the flip side of that, a lot lot lot of people died for him, over a million Frenchmen and double that if we’re counting throughout all of Europe. An ill-advised invasion of Russia in 1812 alone cost the lives of some 500,000 of his men. During his Egyptian campaign, he ordered plague stricken men in his army to be poisoned because they were slowing him down and then abandoned 30,000 of his men in Egypt after a failed siege and secretly headed back to France where he was given a hero’s welcome. And while these men would do anything for him, he famously once said quote “I care only for people who are useful to me - and so long as they are useful,” end quote.

So was Napoleon a hero or a tyrant? British historian Andrew Roberts sides towards hero, writing in his book Napoleon, A Life, quote “The ideas that underpin our modern world–meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on–were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman Empire,” end quote. But former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin seems to feel differently saying in a Newsweek article quote “Napoleon was “an obvious failure”—bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was shown the door, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What’s more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies,” end quote. Pretty crazy that you can be both. Yet another reminder that things in this life are not so black and white.

So that’s what happened to France. But what happened to the Bourbon family? I mean we know Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette were executed. But what about the rest of the royal family? Well, they had 4 children. Two of them died in childhood of like natural causes before all of this. The other two Louis and Marie Therese, were imprisoned when the radical Jacobans took over. Louis died of medical complications in prison at the age of 10 after being subjected to abuse and mistreatment and forced to make false allegations of incest against his mother that directly led to her execution. Marie Therese, the oldest child, was released from prison after the madness of the reign of terror ended and went to live with family in Austria where she would go on to do what her family does best and marry her cousin named, you guessed it Louis. She would live out most of her life in exile. Louis the 16th’s two younger brothers, Louis and Charles escaped and survived and each had a turn to rule France after the fall of Napoleon in 1815 during the Bourbon restoration that temporarily revived the monarchy but that would not last very long.

So now we come to the part where I try to make some sense of all this. I told you at the start last week that the French Revolution is a Pandora's box for history lovers. Good and bad just kind of go out the window entirely. It’s an ethical nightmare. Is it okay to do bad things to get good results? Is it okay to spread false information if it helps you achieve ends that you feel are better for the world? Is it okay to kill people to achieve those ends? Where do we draw the line? I obviously can’t answer that for you. But I will point out some takeaways from the French Revolution, some things we could possibly learn from it that might help us come to grips with our current situation today and moving forward. And these 4 takeaways come from that article by Christine Adams, professor of history at St. Mary’s college. It’s linked in the description. The first is disinformation, rumors, fake news. This was a huge part of the French revolution. Louis granted freedom of the press and they had a field day. It didn’t matter if what they were printing was true or not. If people were reading it, if they were buying their pamphlets, they would write it. Or, in the case of journalists like Jean-Paul Marat, if it roused people to actions that he believed were necessary, he would write it. The media spread false information about counterrevolutionaries secretly plotting in prison that led to the September massacres. They spread information about rigged elections that destroyed the public’s trust in democracy leading to the rise of a potentially very dangerous tyrant, Napoleon Bonaparte. And they spread false information about important figures, most notably, Marie Antoinette, that destroyed the reputations of the royal family leading to public outcry for their heads to be chopped off of their bodies. Marie Antoinette never said let them eat cake, and yet that quote, the most famous quote she never said was incredibly damning. She was accused of having affairs she never had. She was accused of a scandal involving an exorbitantly expensive diamond necklace she had nothing to do with. All that’s in the mini fix on Patreon. Her character was assassinated by fake news. And it mattered. It wasn’t just her reputation. It was France. Journalists convinced the people that she was everything wrong with France. The media is incredibly powerful and back then it was just newspapers and pamphlets you had to go buy on a street corner somewhere, intentionally seek out. Today it’s so much more than that. It’s everywhere. We have it in our pocket at all times. You can pull out your phone and open pretty much any app and you are hit with it immediately. It’s powerful and it's dangerous when it isn’t wielded responsibly.

Another takeaway Professor Adams points out, the people behind the September massacres and the reign of terror where they are ruthlessly murdering people, mostly innocent people, these guys do not believe that they are doing anything wrong. Actually they are convinced that they are doing good. Adams says quote “In a context of deep political divisions, widespread disinformation, economic crisis, and social unrest, overheated rhetoric can lead to violence. Groups of individuals who commit these violent acts see themselves as honorable defenders of a cause, not as a violent mob,” end quote. And I’m reminded of the insurrection at the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021. It was a violent mob. Violent mobs are bad right? How can so many people genuinely think that that wasn’t bad? Because they view these insurrectionists as, like professor Adams said “honorable defenders of a cause.” Perspective.

Number 3, quote “Rarely is one individual solely responsible for instigating an attack on democratic institutions and a regime of violence,” end quote. Adams talks about Robespierre, how Robespierre got all the blame for the reign of terror but how he was actually just one cog in that machine. He was the face of it, the one everyone saw. But there were many more people involved. It’s easy to cast all the blame on one person to hate that one guy, that one politician but you have to factor in the system that holds him up, the shadowy faces behind him making it all happen. They are just as dangerous.

Professor Adams concludes her article with takeaway number 4 which is a bit of a gut punch honestly, quote “When politicians question and undermine the results of elections… citizens become more cynical and less committed to democracy, which is enormously damaging in the long run,” end quote. Are elections rigged? I don’t know, I don’t think so, but if you think so then, I don’t know, go deal with it privately or something. Stop showing all your cards. Stop stirring up public fear and distrust in democracy. If you’re going to publicly poke holes in democracy, then prepare for the public to set their sights on, to accept a totally different form of government - a monarchy, a dictatorship, dare I say… communism? I mean if you’re all for democracy, then stop attacking democracy. Adams warns quote “Our politicians should keep in mind that while undercutting faith in democratic institutions may sometimes lead to short-term political gain, the long-term effects are profoundly damaging,” end quote.

I’m not trying to say that America’s about to erupt into revolution and another reign of terror and start chopping peoples head’s off. I’m not. The situation is completely different here and now than it was in France in 1789. Like, we’re doing great compared to how things were in France. We’re golden. So it’s apples and oranges. But there are some eerie lines that can be drawn, especially with the involvement of sensationalized media, especially with the undermining of election results, especially with excusing violent mobs as honorable defenders of a cause. There are important lessons we can learn from their mistakes. Propaganda, brainwashing is subtle. It’s a long game. You think you’re in control. You think you think for yourself, make up your own mind, stick to your principles, your morals, your convictions. You think that even while they snake their way into your psyche undetected. You think that even as the blades drop, as the heads roll, as you run your sword through a priest, as you torture an innocent child. You’re not a bad person. You’re a defender of the cause. But you only think that because they wanted you to.

Information used in this episode was sourced from biography.com, history.com, Encyclopedia Britannica, the US Office of the Historian, Chateau de Versailles, the University of Texas, napoleon.org, Age of Revolutions, The Collector, and Five Minute History. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.

Sources: