The French Revolution succeeds

Jeremy Lin

Banned
What would have happened if Robespierre and the Bourgeous hadn't lost their stomach and gone all the way with their revolution? I have always contended that The French Revolution failed because for any class revolt to succeed the upper class must be completely wiped out. Robespierre did not do so and allowed the French monarchy to come back after Napolean was defeated but what if he did and ordered the execution of every single bloodline from the nobility? Could their republican ideals have spread throughout Europe?
 

Rosenheim

Donor
Advocating mass killings is not seen favorably around here.

Republican ideals have nothing to do with the blood they were drenched in.
 
Well that may be eventual conclusion of Montagard philosophy (depending on how far down the corrupting rot of society is considered to go), there's no way that a complete murder of the entire aristocracy is plausible. For starters, St. Just himself was the son of a minor rural notable, and if every other revolutionary moment in history is any indication, there's probably quite a few second or third sons of petty nobles filling up the National Assembly and Revolutionary Army in positions of varying dispensability.

Beyond that, the Terrorists were still politicians and leaders, and there's no way they would consider essentially conducting a pre-industrial cultural revolution for reasons of simply practicality. The troops needed were being used to fight several overlapping wars all the time they were in power.
 
The First Republic fell, but I never thought the Revolution in itself failed. Yes the monarch xame back, but it wasn't the Ancien Régime any more, after 25 years. A lot of progressive things happened (too long to list) even the kings couldn't undone. They even had to write a Constitution to came back.

I don't think killing everyone from the nobility would have been a good message to the rest of Europe. Beside, they were already at war with everyone, who really wanted to put Louis XVIII on the throne.
 
The Ancien Regimes of Europe hate the Revolutionaries anymore. A lot of the French populace will probably be turned off by all the murdering, especially as some nobles were for the Revolution as well. If anything, this will make a coup led by Napoleon or someone else even more possible, as it'll be seen as stopping psychopathic madmen instead of just a plain old coup.
 
Very bad idea. Very very very bad idea. Fisrt executing every bloodline from the nobility would probably about quarter of France since the way nobility works the more heirs you kill the more distant relations gain a claim. Second even if this genocidal plan could be pulled of it would result in a general collapse of society. You can only kill so many people before the terror gets to high for things to continue to function and the people lose all loyalty to the goverment. Look at Pol Pot.
 
The Ancien Regimes of Europe hate the Revolutionaries anymore. A lot of the French populace will probably be turned off by all the murdering, especially as some nobles were for the Revolution as well. If anything, this will make a coup led by Napoleon or someone else even more possible, as it'll be seen as stopping psychopathic madmen instead of just a plain old coup.

Agreed, if I think a lot of Frenchmen didn't like the killing as is. What he is talking about would be justly seen as mass murder.
 
Advocating mass killings is not seen favorably around here.

Republican ideals have nothing to do with the blood they were drenched in.

Such false accusation are even less favorably seen here.

I doubt that killing every noble in France would have been a "mass" killing. But i doubt they would do so for some practical reasons : they were busy with serious things like war. The Terror was seriously limited and outsde Paris (the First Commune of Paris is somewhat a special case) you'll see that the local elites (bourgeois and annoblished bourgoies, or more rarely embourgeoised nobles) were the most supportive Montagnards, especially after the tentative of revolt of the great land-owners (under the Federalist or Royalist banner) that threatened their power.

I remember havin seen the letter of support to government send by the revolutionary club of Montauban durin the revolution. At each one, you have a spport.
By exemple 1790 "Lon life the king, that brinf justice and peace to the nation",
in 1792 "Down with the tyrans, long life the Republic!", in 1794 "Hurrah for the Montagnards, thanks the Supreme Being we entered in a new era",
in 1796 "Thanks the brave Directory to have save us from the periles of blood-thirsty and tyranny",
1799 "The courage of the First Consul for preserving the Republic couldn't be enough praised",
1811 "God blessed the Empireby giving to the France and to the Emperor a son",
1814 "The Heaven would be praised to have put the rightful monarch of France under the throne",
1815 "Down with the impostor, long live Napoleon",
1815 "Down with the impostor, Long Live Louis".

You don't have a real separation between the eras, and the elites were always in charge, except ponctually with Paris and some cities.

Now, as Remicas, i doubt we could say the French Revolution failed. If we accept the classical timeline of 1789-1799 as the era of the revolution, we could say it suceeded.

The outcome was a modern state, the definitive end of order system in France and the aeras where it was exported in Europe, the unification and the rationalisation of administration...
 

MAlexMatt

Banned
Agreed, if I think a lot of Frenchmen didn't like the killing as is. What he is talking about would be justly seen as mass murder.

Mass killings can never lead to a successful republic.

I'm very wary of making categorical statements, but I'm pretty sure about this one.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
Advocating mass killings is not seen favorably around here.

Republican ideals have nothing to do with the blood they were drenched in.

They kind of do, though. The people who set about founding (or at least advocating) what we would recognize as the first modern republics were kind of big on employing violence to attain their aims (see U.S.A., France, 1848 Revolutions, etc.). You can't separate the means from the ends; not when the means are part and parcel of the ideology.
 

Rosenheim

Donor
They kind of do, though. The people who set about founding (or at least advocating) what we would recognize as the first modern republics were kind of big on employing violence to attain their aims (see U.S.A., France, 1848 Revolutions, etc.). You can't separate the means from the ends; not when the means are part and parcel of the ideology.

I'm not arguing that the usage of force did not have its place in the establishment the first modern republics. What I am saying is that the complete decapitation of the Noble class within France would be an example of the "ideals of Republicanism" being used to futher the personal power of the few.

Violence was abundant in the American War of Independence, The First French Revolution, The July Revolution of the 1830s, The Revolutions of 1848; all of these events (excepting perhaps the American War of Independence) can be catagorized by the attempts of the people to overthrow the political class by use of armed force. In the event of a successful toppling of government, the new political order would use often force as a method of coerce the unwilling into acceptance of the status quo. Yet, acts that we would see as "mass murder" or "genocidal" are either hard to find, or represent a breakdown in the wider functions of the Republic.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the success of the French Revolution is not measured in the amount of noble blood spilt, but in the spreading of the ideals of "Life, Liberty and Equality" and the establishment of modern administration and centralization.

In response to LSCastilina:
The murder of every person of noble blood in France, what the author of topic measured the success of the revolution in, does not qualify as mass murder? His/her view of a direct correlation between the death of the enemies of the Terror to the spread of Liberalism on the continent does not strike you as perhaps strange or distressing?

EDIT: And now he/she has been banned, apparently for being a sockpuppet.
 
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Jeremy Lin said:
What would have happened if Robespierre and the Bourgeous hadn't lost their stomach and gone all the way with their revolution? I have always contended that The French Revolution failed because for any class revolt to succeed the upper class must be completely wiped out. Robespierre did not do so and allowed the French monarchy to come back after Napolean was defeated but what if he did and ordered the execution of every single bloodline from the nobility? Could their republican ideals have spread throughout Europe?
What is this complete non-sense?

For one, the Revolution didn't really failed unless you count the Restauration as a final defeat. However, it's only a half-defeat because the Revolutionnary ideas were kept alive and applied in the succeeding regimes France has known despite several constitutionnal changes. In other words, the Revolutionnaries were defated, their ideas weren't.

Second, I doubt it has anything to do with no "class revolt". In fact, I don't think it is really relevant to talk about such things because the French Revolution had supporters and opponents in every class of the French society. You had a few revolutionnary nobles (like Philippe Eaglité though he isn't the best exemple) as well as Royalists peasants (Most of the Vendean Rebels). Thus, one can't look at the French Revolution as a fight between a reformative lower class and a conservative higher class: that's a die-hard Marxist view. Hell, even Louis XVI, who was King of France, wasn't opposed to reforms of the French monarchy: however, he never agreed with the way the Revolution was being made. Does that make him a reactionnary?

Third: butchering the nobility wouldn't achieve anything. On the contrary, like the normal OTL Terror, it would backfire on the Revolutionnaries. The French Revolution was at first well-looked by European powers: reformists saw this as the end of French Absolutism, pragmastists saw it as France becoming a weaker power (Which, on a side note, proved false if you look at what happened next, notably with Napoleon). However, once the Monarchy was overthrown and the terror began, the French Revolutionnaries were seen as butchering monsters by Europeans: monsters that needed to be stopped. Some might have been frightened by the ideas, but it's more likely the idea that they would lose their heads that led to Coalitions against the First French Republic.

Fourth: The Terror consisted in butchering every people suspected of being non-republican. Later, it was people who didn't agree with the Jacobinist views of Robespierre: that's how Hebert (more radical than Robespierre) and Danton (more moderate) lost their heads. It's hardly democratic and doesn't limit itself to the upper class of society...

Fifth: The ideas of the French Revolution have spread throughout Europe and that is thanks to Napoleon. Many European countries based their first legislation upon the Code Civil that Napoleon rmade and which is a compilation of Revolutionnary ideas. It has evolved along the years, it was not immediately applied in several countries, but that's a proof the ideas survived.

Note: I know he/she has been banned, but I really wanted to express my views.
 
Setting aside the political effects of the French Revolution, what would have been the cultural effects, if the ideas like the Metric system, Revolutionary Calendar etc.were adopted by the other European countries? The Metric system was eventually adopted by others.But the Revolutionary Calendar which was much more scientific and modern than the Gregorian Calendar, was abandoned without any serious consideration.
 
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