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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It wasn’t legal. It was a revolution. People were pissed and they took action. I also don’t think it was thousands of people killed. Like today the wealth and power distribution was like a pyramid with fewer people having all the wealth and power at the top and all the poor at the bottom. It is a dangerous distribution. The less people have the less they have to loose and the less risky drastic action becomes.
Update: I spoke before I googled. The internet says 2,639 people were guillotined. That is indeed thousands of people. However 50,000 total were killed. I can’t find how many were nobles. I still think most of what I said checks out even if I underestimated (by a lot) the number of dead.
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