La Guillotine Permanente: A French Revolutionary Timeline

Reader mode

Christian

With the mention of Jourdan, and the author probably ain’t gonna be going into too much detail on it, but I have read a pretty convincing paper on why Jourdan didn’t do so well compared to his earlier years during Fleurus.

Essentially, Jourdan was a perfect apolitical general. He was a good and loyal Republican who followed the orders of his government and was willing to defer and at the same time, question the representatives on mission when he felt it was needed

He couldn’t succeed in the times of the Directory because he wasn’t an independent minded general who does what he wants, he was a loyal cooperator who thrived with clear orders from the top. Plus there’s the fact that the dismantling of the Committee’s power massively disrupted the army’s logistical situation and Jourdan drove himself to near death over trying to fix it.

Would think that he’s doing much better here with the committee stronger than ever and orders and supplies still coming in regular intervals.
 
KaesiumXP

KaesiumXP

Decided to make a map of the current situation because i haven't seen one in a while
Jacobin_France_and_Her_Allies (1).png

Tell me if I've gotten anything wrong
 
KaesiumXP

KaesiumXP

Belka DNW said:
Did France seize Savoy? Also, wouldn't be in the interest of revolutionary brotherhood to cede Flanders to the Dutch?
Click to expand...
I think Napoleon negotiated a peace where Sardinia-Piedmont gave up Savoy and Nice and let French troops pass through but were otherwise unaffected.

I think the Austrian Netherlands had been annexed to France at the time of the Batavian Revolution, so giving them Flanders would have been surrendering French territory, the same reason the Cisrhenians dont have Alsace
 
Kaîsar Maniòdes

Kaîsar Maniòdes

I just read all the chapters and have to say that this is absolutely amazing! I hope we can see how The Cult of The Supreme Being develops with Robespierre is in power and being idolised (to his discomfort).
 
Qalqulserut

Qalqulserut

Man, philosophy in this world is going to be unrecognizable. Just think of critical theory and western progressive strands of thought that ultimately branch from continental philosophy. And continental philosophy proper begins with German romantics and enlightenment figures, like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Holderlin. I've no idea about Holderlin - he's pretty important actually though as the biggest Romantic ever - but Hegel might become ITTL what he thought he was going to be: a Girondin, anti-christian Popularphilosoph (a man who makes philosophy accessible to the masses) and readily a convert to the Cult of the Supreme Being.

More importantly,

The success of the Revolution is going to accelerate radical philosophy by decades. While Babouvism and its spawn are taking center stage, a major schism must happen soon within radical Jacobinism. Yes, there were utopian socialists already like St-Simon, but I'm not talking about that; nay, this is a far more potent kind of radicalism - one forged in bitter disappointment.

Babouvism's Blanquist-like tactics will eventually fail, and someone will eventually learn. Though Revolutionary France may be leaps ahead, it isn't by any means a perfect society. So we will get anarchists and communists earlier, even if they won't be called that; these radicals' radicals in time, will be widespread and perhaps even more accepted than they were OTL.
 
WotanArgead

WotanArgead

Qalqulserut said:
but Hegel might become ITTL what he thought he was going to be: a Girondin, anti-christian Popularphilosoph (a man who makes philosophy accessible to the masses) and readily a convert to the Cult of the Supreme Being
Click to expand...
Well, I’m not sure about anti-Christianity, but I would still see a transformation from a radical to a pseudo-Bonapartist Republican-conservative.
 
Qalqulserut

Qalqulserut

WotanArgead said:
Well, I’m not sure about anti-Christianity, but I would still see a transformation from a radical to a pseudo-Bonapartist Republican-conservative.
Click to expand...

Without Bonaparte, Hegel could never have become an admirer. Without the failure of the French Revolution, and the profound disappointment of the German Enlightenment, Hegel would remain on his original track.

At the time of the establishment of the Cisrhenian Republic (1794), Hegel was in Berne, Switzerland. He would likely move to the Rhine once the battles there were over. The Revolution would be an important modernizing force in the Rhine, and advance the region from its political and material backwardness; so, Hegel's philosophy here would be more free from reactionary distortions than IOTL.

You have to remember that Hegel lived in a materially, politically and even culturally conservative environment. All of that is being destroyed in the Cisrhenian Republic.
 
WotanArgead

WotanArgead

Qalqulserut said:
You have to remember that Hegel lived in a materially, politically and even culturally conservative environment. All of that is being destroyed in the Cisrhenian Republic.
Click to expand...
Which does not negate the possibility that Hegel may decide that the revolution has already achieved its goals, and that the new regime has the right to suppress all troublemakers.
 

Leonidas

I love seeing people discuss philosophy in alternate history, since it’s so rare for it to be written in for its own sake and not just when it directly contributes to a political ideology.
 
Qalqulserut

Qalqulserut

WotanArgead said:
Which does not negate the possibility that Hegel may decide that the revolution has already achieved its goals, and that the new regime has the right to suppress all troublemakers.
Click to expand...
I don't understand the relation between this and "pseudo-bonapartist republican-conservatism"
Like the anti-christianness of early Hegel's philosophy isn't an alternate-historical speculation, it's directly attested in his work "The Positivity of Christian Religion"

I know that's a very ironic title - Hegel's obscurantism strikes again.

... “Positivity” for Hegel meant given by authority, handed down and accepted as fact, as opposed to “Subjective,” by which he meant a religion which came from people’s hearts, because it grew out of how they lived. At this time, as throughout his life, Hegel idealised life in the ancient Greek polois, and he saw the whole period from the downfall of antiquity up to his own time, a period dominated by Christianity, as a period of despotism and unfreedom. This was because Christianity focussed on people's individual concerns, rather than the good of the whole community. One result of this was growing inequality. He hoped that the French Revolution would be a harbinger of a renewal of democratic ideals, reaffirming individuality within a genuinely republican ethos.
Click to expand...
This description of the text summarizes the matter at hand nicely.
 
Last edited:
WotanArgead

WotanArgead

Qalqulserut said:
I know that's a very ironic title - Hegel's obscurantism strikes again.
Click to expand...
To be honest, I didn't know about it. But I meant the political aspect of Hegel’s philosophy - namely, that the pinnacle of political development is the state. Only here instead of the Prussian Monarchy is a Republic.
In general, it’s funny - because in the light of Hegel’s early views, the emergence of Marxism does not seem like something so paradoxical.
 
Qalqulserut

Qalqulserut

WotanArgead said:
To be honest, I didn't know about it. But I meant the political aspect of Hegel’s philosophy - namely, that the pinnacle of political development is the state. Only here instead of the Prussian Monarchy is a Republic.
In general, it’s funny - because in the light of Hegel’s early views, the emergence of Marxism does not seem like something so paradoxical.
Click to expand...
I think I can agree that Hegel would become a "republic defender", indeed. I am not sure about how Hegel becoming a republican will change his dialectics and his view of history, exactly.

At the least, he would identify the Absolute Idea as the Supreme Being, and his Philosophy of Right would become a philosophical paradigmatization of right and the democratic Republic.

Now, do you know how much this makes the task of Marx easier? Now, Marx isn't criticizing the idea of a constitutional monarchy anymore, he's criticizing a next step further to Communism already. Instead of having to demonstrate that Democracy is the ideal of any state, here it is already done free for Marx! He doesn't need to show the absurdities in Hegel's arguments for the sovereign monarch, this and that. Now, all he has to do, is show why the state and democracy as an ideal are fundamentally incompatible.

In that is the philosophical base, or at least one of many, for revolutionary socialism. It's not that by mere happenstance, bad actors have taken advantage of the system; it's that the system is fundamentally broken and lying - to us and itself.
 
Mildtryth

Mildtryth

Qalqulserut said:
He doesn't need to show the absurdities in Hegel's arguments for the sovereign monarch, this and that. Now, all he has to do, is show why the state and democracy as an ideal are fundamentally incompatible.

In that is the philosophical base, or at least one of many, for revolutionary socialism. It's not that by mere happenstance, bad actors have taken advantage of the system; it's that the system is fundamentally broken and lying - to us and itself.
Click to expand...

But at this point, what there will be to differentiate it from anarchism?
 
Reader mode
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top