Summary:
The thoughts and quote from different major players in the French Revolution.
"On July 12, 1788, a hailstorm burst over a great part of central France from Rouen in Normandy as far south as Toulouse. The Scottish gardener Thomas Blaikie, who witnessed it, wrote of stones so monstrous that they killed hares and partridge and ripped branches from elm trees. For many more the rain of icy white pellets was deadly enough not to need exaggeration. It wiped out budding vines in Alsace, Burgundy and the Loire; laid waste to wheat ripening in the fields of the Orleanais; pitted young apples in the Calvados; shriveled young olives and oranges in the Midi. In the western province of the Beauce, the cereal crops had already survived one hailstorm on May 29 but succumbed to the second blow in July. In the Ile-de-France south of Paris, where vegetable and fruit crops were wiped out as they were ripening, farmers wrote, "countryside, erstwhile ravishing, has been reduced to an arid desert."(Citizens, 305.) The ravages of nature were symbolic of the state of the nation and in effect were instrumental in bringing about the Revolt of the populace.
"Mirabeau mounted the towers for a less sinister ceremony. Waving to the crowds below, he swung a pick at the battlement (of the Bastille) and the first stone fell to great applause....The Bastille was much more important in its afterlife than it had ever had been as a working institution of state. It gave a shape and an image to all the vices against which the revolution defined itself. Transfigured from a nearly empty, thinly manned anachronism into the seat of the Beast Despotism, it incorporated all those rejoicing at its capture as members of the new community of the Nation." The dismantling of the Bastille was the easy part, the reconstruction and stabilization of France were yet to come.
In the third week of August, "a guillotine was set up on the place du Carrousel... A rather beautiful engraving made to illustrate the humanity of Guillotin's device suggests dignified serenity rather than macabre retribution... Nothing could have been more in keeping with late - Enlightenment thinking on capital punishment."(Citizen, 621)
"George Jacques Danton went to the guillotine at the age of 35, declaring it better to live as a poor fisherman than to have anything to do with the government of men."(W.V.B.)
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in*di*vid*u*al*ism n. - Belief in the primary importance of the individual and in the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence. 2. Acts or an act based on this belief.
The French Revolution began as an uprising which depended on individualism. The people of France believed or were driven by circumstance to believe that they were able to effect a change, that they were self-reliant. Initially this led to great chaos. All the institutions and symbols of the monarchy and the feudal system were dismantled and the struggle was to create new ways of existing as a nation, how to bring all the individuals together.
George Jacques Danton and Maximilien Marie Isidore Robespierre were born within a year of each other and emerged as leaders whose individualism was their strength and their weakness. In stark contrast to the sometimes outlandishly idealistic Robespierre, Danton was pragmatic, earthy and realistic. Opposing the Girondists drew them closer together.
Both identified as Jacobins, they were passionately committed to the establishment of the Revolution and willing to participate in or overlook some of the most brutal acts of the mob, such as the September Massacre. Their powerful speeches established many of the principles fundamental to the Revolution.
Danton's thoughts were clearly stated when he said "What care I for my reputation! Let France be free, though my name be accursed!" He also spoke against imprisonment for debt, for education, for freedom of worship and for taxing the rich. He labored to bring stability and order to the chaos of the revolution.
Robespierre spoke against capital punishment, though he was inclined to order his opponents to the guillotine. He also proclaimed that "if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." An advocate of the cult of Reason, Robespierre later presided over the Festival of the Supreme Being.
If true patriotism is defined as selflessness, then it is Danton who emerged as the true patriot, for when Robespierre was elected to the first Committee of Public Safety in 1793 he became so enamored of his power that he sacrificed not only his ideals but his friend Danton. "Terror is the order of the day" declared Danton, and the Terror had decided that liberty and patriotic power were incompatible. As a member of the Convention, Danton criticized Robespierre for losing touch with the people and the principles of the revolution by trying to limit freedom of expression. In his revolutionary zeal, Robespierre violates the ideals of the Revolution. Within a year Robespierre had engineered the demise of Danton and his followers, having them arrested and brought to trial. During Danton's trial, he manipulated the process to achieve the outcome he desired. He limited testimony and reporting, changing the rules and even the number of jurors. Danton accused him of letting his revolutionary principles blind him to the revolution. Robespierre is remembered as a detested and deranged dictator and as having paved the way for the Emperor Napoleon. Robespierre himself was executed on July 28, 1794.
And what was the outcome of the Revolution? Were the people better off after all the bloodletting and the speeches and the soul-searching? When Napoleon declared the Revolution complete, realized that one of its primary achievements, set in motion by the monarchy in calling the Estates General, had been giving voice to individuals.
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