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?
In: Other
Most aristocrats fled France. Most of them went to Austria, which had become an ally of France. They then raised armies in exile and tried to invade France along with a coalition of surrounding monarchical countries who were afraid the Revolution would spread. This began the Coalition Wars, which were 7 in all. The first two are sometimes called the French Revolutionary Wars and the remaining five are commonly called the Napoleonic Wars.
The period of mass executions by guillotine was called The Reign of Terror and didn’t start until several years into the Revolution. It was not led by hordes of peasants who mindlessly rebelled against the aristocracy. It was led by the bourgeoisie, which were rich non-aristocrats. The targets were not necessarily the nobility. Some members of the nobility actually joined the Revolution. The targets were royalists-people of all classes who supported the monarchy. Some Jacobins, called the girondin faction, actually wanted a constitutional monarchy. They were mostly pushed out of the National Assembly and many of them executed. Then the two leaders of the Jacobin Club-Danton and Robespierre-were locked into a power struggle. Robespierre had Danton and his followers executed for being to moderate and had the enrage faction members executed for being too extreme and Robespierre briefly became essentially a dictator until he was executed by the Assembly and they instituted a 5-person government called the Directory.
There were masses of unwashed peasants who led uprisings, such as the destruction of the bastille and the arrest of the royal family at Versailles. But launching the national assembly and directing the various competing factions of the Revolution was all done among the bourgeoisie. The few aristocrats who joined the Revolution were military commanders in the Coalition Wars.
Latest Answers