I’ve read A Tale of Two Cities. I took high school history. I have access to Wikipedia.
But I somehow can’t really believe it. Did a mass of unwashed peasants really kidnap hundreds, maybe thousands of aristocrats and send them to the guillotine? Were there trials? What was the legal pretense, if any, for doing this? Who was rich enough to get executed and who was considered not rich enough? Did it even really happen or was it just the royal family that was executed, and it was exaggerated over time?
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>Did a mass of unwashed peasants really kidnap hundreds, maybe thousands of aristocrats and send them to the guillotine?
Well technically yes, but that sentence is full of half thruth.
– The average person washed far before the french revolution. That’s a pretty bad misconception of history.
– Peasant were in the field outside of cities, so their were not a big part of the revolution. Most of the people that were involved were member of the military and people that lived in the city. They were merchants, artisan, bourgeois, etc.
– Kidnap is not really the real term. It was a civil war, a change of governement and people ”brought to justice” to pay for their crimes.
– Actually only a small percentage of the noblity was executed. Most of the nobles left France before things started to go bad.
>Were there trials? What was the legal pretense, if any, for doing this?
Yes. The Trial of Louix XVI took place in december 1792 and his execution was in January 1793. There was 33 charges ranging from shutting down the Estates-General (basically removing the governement), ordering the army to march against citizen, complicit in the Champ de Mars Massacre, etc. Basically, he was accused of being a ruler that use his power against the population, which was what all of them were doing at the time and the people had enough.
In september of 1793 the Law of Suspects was passed by the new governement. This was basically a free pass to arrest any ennemies of the revolution. This included uncooperative former nobles (nobility was not illegal, but it was revoked), émigrés, former governement official, ex-officers of the military, hoaders of goods, etc.
There was no purge of the nobility or of the rich (many of the leader of the revolution were wealthy middle class of the third estate (first is clergy, second is nobles, third is everybody else) in france at the time. It was a political purge against anyone that went against the revolution. The governement was attacking their political opponent with all the necessary and except that this can create.
There was around 17 thousand executions, and around 10 thousands more people are believed to have died in prison or without a trial. At least 3/4 of those were of the third estates.
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