Why The French Revolution Was Worse Than You Thought

few events of the last 250 years had an impact on the Western World quite like the French Revolution it marked a turning point in political thought in ways that are still relevant today in France in 1789 the thousand-year-old French monarchy was challenged by revolutionaries many of these Rebels sought to change France toward their idealized visions of Liberty and equality but what started as an attempt to change the French State soon spiraled into immorality cruelty and careless destruction the events that started in 1789 changed the world and echoed to this day in the west the French Revolution is generally portrayed as a one-dimensional struggle of the oppressed masses against the tyrannical monarchy clergy and nobility many people like to oversimplify and blame everything on the king but historians through the years have been refuting this narrative in truth the French Revolution was much more complicated and nuanced than a simple case of an oppressed underclass versus greedy Aristocrats Revolutions in history are almost never purely from the bottom-up it was a complex conflict where allegiances were constantly shifting and there were good and bad people on all sides the Revolution was fought over the meaning of Concepts like Liberty equality and separation of church and state Concepts that are still relevant today but the events of the French Revolution also got very dark while some aspects of French society were improved others were made much worse many of the World Views had Unleashed were extremely damaging and remain a problem even in our time despite happening two centuries ago there are still many lessons that can be drawn from the revolution's events in this video I'll be explaining what exactly happened in the French Revolution and why it was worse than you think we can understand the French Revolution by only looking at the immediate causes the reality is there were many long-term factors at play that need to be understood first of all France was not some poor Backwater under the king that is an utterly ridiculous idea and not even close to the reality in the 1700s France was a leading power in Europe it had a population of almost 28 million which was the most populous of any state in Europe besides Russia the country had emerged from the religious wars of the Reformation as a Bastion of Catholicism its GDP was over two times that of its main rival Britain it boasted the largest European Army and had a powerful navy French was the second language of the educated across Europe and French literature theater fashion and Cuisine were greatly influential historian Simon Sharma describes France under Louis XVI as a rapidly modernizing Nation with entrepreneurial Nobles a reform-minded monarchy early industrialization growing Commerce and scientific progress so France in many ways was doing very well in the Years leading up to the revolution in 1789. so if all that was going well why exactly would there be a revolution well let's start with the first thing the French state was struggling to reform while the monarchies institutions had worked well for centuries they were struggling to deal with new challenges the Industrial Revolution was just beginning Mass literacy was spreading new ideas and explosive population growth led to overcrowded cities and squalor King Louis XIV who ruled France as an absolute monarch from 1643 to 1715 was a powerful King who did much to strengthen the monarchy and the Catholic religion through France but his Reign was now far in the rear view mirror a lot had changed by the late 1700s the French government was plagued by financial problems the state was in deep debt and yet could not stop spending this was partly caused by the Seven Years War which was fought between France and Britain from 1756 to 1763. it was essentially the first world war in history and France lost in the peace treaty it was forced to give up huge parts of its overseas Empire the cost of the war and the defeat plunged the government into a rolling debt crisis this was made even worse when they financed the American Revolutionary War in the 1770s by the 1780s over half of the state's Revenue was being spent on debt service for France was struggling to keep up the finances to hold on to its International position and Empire now both King Louis XV and 16th tried to address this problem they attempted to reform the tax system several times but they could never come to terms with the powerful French nobility while they were absolute monarchs on paper they really weren't in practice the age of France's institutions also had its own drawbacks Economic Development was hindered by old Guild restrictions internal Customs barriers and tolls new agricultural techniques like crop rotation were introduced but slow to spread through the country series of harvest failures in the 1770s and 1780s led to increased inflation and hardship across large sections of France red prices rising hurt the entire French economy because it decreased the need for manufactured goods and textiles this could and did lead to the loss of tens of thousands of jobs which in turn led to tens of thousands of desperate unemployed workers in the middle of France's key cities Paris in particular had become dangerously overcrowded by 1789.

in the late 1700s decadence had also become a major problem in French society despite still being a Catholic Nation the French had fallen a long way from Saint Joan of Arc religion had become an afterthought for much of the French population even for many clergy Vice Industries such as prostitution and pornography were growing Louis XIV had made prostitution illegal during his Reign but it was allowed under his son Louis XV Louis XVI tried to crack down on it again the damage to society had been immense and yes I know there's a lot of Louise here but bear with me on top of this the Pope's moral edicts were often ignored in the country for example the pope had banned Catholics from becoming Freemasons all the way back in 1738 but despite this Masonic lodges were allowed to spread all through France in the 18th century they spread relativistic and deistic religious views that disrupted Catholic Orthodoxy They promoted the idea of a deistic inactive Supreme Being as opposed to the Catholic view of a personal theistic God these beliefs weren't totally uniform in masonry since there were some of them who were catholic but the general trend of masonry was liberal and it would get more Extreme as time went on many powerful Frenchmen including the king's own cousin the Duke of Orleans joined the organization to give an idea of the scope of this issue in 1772 there were around 100 Masonic lodges in France by 1789 there were 2000 and leading figures of the coming Revolution such as Maximilian ropespierre and John Paul morat would be Freemasons the decline in religious standards in France could be attributed to the fact that the French government had gained a disproportionate amount of power over the French Catholic Church corruption and cronyism spread many Bishops even entertained ideas of galicanism this was the idea of becoming a National Church similar to the English Anglican Church meanwhile low-rank clergy lived in poverty and were unable to properly perform their duties the government even had the Jesuit order the Catholic intellectual Elite expelled from the country in 1764 on bogus grounds this appease the anti-catholic writer Voltaire who once wrote that there was no way of getting rid of the church without first getting rid of the Jesuits this declining religiosity is critical to understand because it explains many of the strange religious positions that many revolutionaries would later hold historian Hiller bellock wrote in his book the French Revolution Fran France in the generation before the Revolution was passing through a phase in which the Catholic faith was at a lower ebb than it had ever been since the preaching and establishment of it in Gaul foreign Europe in the 1700s had entered the so-called Age of Enlightenment Enlightenment ideas were challenging widely held beliefs about science government and religion historian Ralph engelsing argues that 18th century Europe was undergoing a reading Revolution the number of books published had risen exponentially coffee shops salons and Masonic lodges provided new spaces for radical ideas to be discussed now the enlightenment did not invent science or Reason these things were already widely flourishing through Christendom for a millennia the very term Enlightenment is loaded because it implies the world was in darkness before it really wasn't at all the Middle Ages produced many groundbreaking scientists such as Roger Bacon and John burradon but what the enlightenment called for was increasing the importance of science and reason in society it was a more materialistic and less spiritual way of viewing the world it also introduced new political philosophy thinkers debated over what the purpose of government should be and what say if any the public should have in it the writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea that the general will should rule Society became very influential monarchists of the day argued that the government's Duty was to maintain order tradition and morality the people's will is irrelevant the king is Sovereign and doesn't need outside approval new thinkers on the other hand were arguing that it was the government's duty to serve and obey the people the people they argued were Sovereign in and of themselves you could say that this debate would become the heart of the French Revolution but besides the debate over who should be Sovereign there were two other main areas of debate between Enlightenment thinkers and traditional thinkers the first was the debate over man's nature the traditional view was that man was sinful and flawed but writers like John Locke contested this claiming that man was born a blank slate Rousseau went even further arguing that man was inherently good and only needed to be freed from the shackles of traditional Society this led to the final area of debate what is true Freedom Catholic thinkers argued for the concept of positive Freedom this is the view that freedom comes from being able to pursue virtue Enlightenment thinkers disagreed and argued for negative Freedom the ability to do whatever you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone else this was a new way of viewing Freedom that was extremely alien to Christian thought this period of human history should be understood as Downstream from the Scientific Revolution that was happening at the same time it created a sense of euphoria and optimism in Europe every year new discoveries were made about the world that no one had suspected before many people truly started to believe that if they could just get rid of what they saw as obstacles to progress like religion monarchy and inequality Humanity would enter a new golden age guided purely by reason and Enlightenment this view is best embodied by the statement from Arthur schopenhauer that religion will disappear from the European environment like a nurse whose care is henceforth useless to the child delivered to the lessons of a tutor but the philosophers of the Enlightenment were wrong they were over optimistic about human nature and underappreciated the value of Christianity and the French Revolution was about to prove why but while all these intellectual arguments went through France low brow propaganda was also spreading political pornography and other forms of degeneracy were widespread the royal family especially Queen Mary Antoinette who was an Austrian and a foreigner were the targets of slander the queen especially was victim of many false accusations ranging from bestiality to homosexuality these constant attacks formed a tornado that damaged The Prestige of the monarchy in other eras all of these issues that I've talked about could pass by and probably not cause a collapse of the state but it was how they were all converging simultaneously that would lead to serious talk of revolution foreign contrary to what some think the French Revolution didn't happen because King Louis XVI was some kind of tyrant in fact he was the opposite the King was an indecisive man who didn't like Bloodshed he had abolished torture and was open to tax reform but he did want to maintain the monarchy's power in 1789 he called the Estate General for the first time in over a century to try to address the Crown's debt crisis the Estate General was a body where all parts of France could meet to voice their Grievances and vote for policy changes this caused much of the general population who made up the Third Estate to now believe for the first time they had a direct role in running the government so to recap here when the Estate General was called the monarchy was going bankrupt crop failures had skyrocketed the price of necessities and led to mass unemployment moral degeneracy and decadence was rampant through all French social classes new ideas of how the government should work were circulating among some of the wealthiest and most influential people in France and all peaceful reform were stagnating the Estates General was a medieval institution that hadn't been tinkered to deal with modern problems for example it gave a vastly disproportionate amount of voting power to the nobility and clergy compared to the rest of society and as the three Estates debated they couldn't come to agreement on any reforms the wealthy French bourgeoisie Merchants lawyers and journalists were leaders in advocating for radical change when the Estates gathered this wealthy class used their influence to whip up mobs into a frenzy even some of the nobility and clergy worked with them the Third Estate eventually hijacked the whole event and declared itself the National Assembly it alone would be writing the laws members of the first and second Estates seeing where the wind was blowing flocked to join it King Louis opposed this but he was forced to acknowledge it the Revolution was officially on in July the Bastille Fortress which was a symbol of royal power was stormed by a mob who feared the King was disloyal to the new National Assembly the captain of the Garrison was murdered and his head put on on a spike this event changed everything because it normalized mob violence as a way for revolutionary forces to achieve their goals soon after the National Assembly published The Declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen among promising various rights the document made France into a constitutional monarchy it introduced equality under the law and abolished Noble and clerical privileges it ended Catholicism as France's official religion and declared the French government's secular the legislature would be elected by property owning males it's worth pointing out here that while universal suffrage for men was debated the revolutionaries were very opposed to the concept of women voting they believed that women getting involved in the political process would destroy Society but the new government still had to address the debt crisis and to solve this their answer was simple confiscate the wealth of the former nobility and clergy and they did Church property was seized and sold off to the wealthy bourgeoisie many Nobles and clergies scrambled to give up their excess wealth to show their loyalty to the revolution so far the revolutionaries had hardly received pushback for their many power grabs many of them started to believe they could do anything they saw fit to transform France to their liking but starting in 1790 the National Assembly made two catastrophic mistakes mistakes that would divide the government and create an environment of fear hatred and paranoia these mistakes were so massive and misjudged that they echo through time to this very day first in July 1790 the National Assembly passed a law titled the Civil constitution of the clergy this law declared that the French Catholic Church would be brought completely under control of the French government it required that priests and Bishops be elected rather than appointed by the pope a political body would be created to monitor all clergy contacts with Rome and all clergy must swear an oath of loyalty to the new government this law meant that the Catholic Church whose autonomy is necessary for its existence would effectively be enslaved if this law had been followed the Catholic religion in France would die now until this point the church had been willing to tolerate economic reform at its expense and the loss of its traditional privileges but this new law could never be accepted the ideals of the Revolution and the ideals of Catholicism could find compromise before but they were now at an impasse the revolutionaries had assumed that Catholicism was dead and that there wouldn't be major opposition to the law but they had badly miscalculated in response to the Civil constitution of the clergy almost all of the acting Bishops in France and over 70 percent of lower priests refused the Loyalty oath soon afterwards Pope Pius VI issued a Papal brief denouncing the law radicals in the National Assembly now began to paint the church as a reactionary Force loyal to the old regime and an existential threat to the revolution Hillary belloch wrote The Elements of vanity of material greed and of a false finality which are to be discovered in any purely democratic theory of the state will between them always bring this Theory into some conflict with religion the rest of 1790 and 1791 were the Calm before the storm the constitutional monarchy that the revolutionaries had tried to establish was failing because whenever the king disagreed with the legislature he was painted as an enemy of the people this led to the royal family trying to escape the country in 1791 but they were caught and brought back to Paris Under Suspicion of treason but the revolution would truly explode into madness when in April 1792 the Revolutionary government declared war on Austria and Prussia these were two of the leading monarchies in Europe with militaries to match French armies quickly suffered devastating defeats and key forts On the Border were lost the Austrian and Prussian governments made clear in statements that they were against the Revolution and intended to restore the French King to full power because of their statements against the revolution utter hysteria now consumed Paris the National Assembly passed a law allowing priests who refused the Loyalty oath to be deported from the country king Louis who no doubt saw these priests as his few allies left in the country vetoed it he also vetoed a bill that would have created an official revolutionary militia inside of Paris anti-monarchy revolutionaries had always wanted to get rid of the king and create what they saw as a totally egalitarian Republic and they now had the chance to get rid of the king they hated so much in August the King was arrested and the monarchy was abolished a month later in September over 1 000 years of French monarchy met its end the armed violent Parisian mob started to play a leading role in the revolution the Republic had totally lost control of public order within Paris the armed working class of the city became known as the sankulats and they made it their mission to Dole out mob Justice to any perceived enemies of revolutionary ideals radicals were all too happy to use these mobs for their own goals hundreds of political prisoners were massacred in their cells in what became known as the September massacres from here the Jacobins the most radical wing of the Revolution see seized control of the government charged with treason King Louis was executed in January 1793. now at this point it needs to be understood that many people who supported the original Revolution did not support this new Direction it was taking they had wanted France to be a constitutional monarchy and they opposed anti-catholic policies but the revolution had now become like a freight train with no breaks moderate revolutionaries would soon join the nobility and Church in persecution foreign in August 1793 France was still on the back foot in its war against Austria and Prussia to turn the tide of the War the government implemented military conscription for all French males aged 18 to 25. the law was one of the first of its kind in Europe now imagine you're a French citizen who goes to church like the monarchy and is now being conscripted to fight for the very government that's destroying both that was the case for large sections of France and as you would expect revolts broke out the largest rebellion was in the vendi region where the rebels scored many victories the French government responded by forming the so-called Committee of Public Safety which effectively combined the legislative judicial and executive branch into one body it condemned to death anyone with and I quote strong presumptions of complicity with the enemies of Liberty if that sounds vague to you it's because it is the lawyer Maximilian Robespierre who is now a leading member of the Jacobins declared the revolution is the war of Liberty against its enemies this was the beginning of what has since been called the reign of terror the National Convention confirmed this by literally voting for a resolution that declared terror is the order of the day anyone suspected of doubting the revolution or working with the Enemy was arrested I've seen some historians refer to the Committee of Public Safety as the world's first police state one of the first to be executed under this policy was the former Duke of Orleans Philippe he was a grand master Freemason and had played a major role in aligning the nobility with the revolution ironically he had even voted for his own cousin the King's death and he also voted for the very policy he was now charged under none of it saved him he was guillotined within a few months as for the rebellion in vendee it saw some successes and drained the government of Key Resources however it was eventually put down through brutal pacification tactics where entire Villages were destroyed the Revolutionary government showed no mercy it's estimated that over one hundred thousand civilians of the region were killed the Revolutionary generals involved would later be executed for war crimes when it was over the government had won but at the cost of writing one of the most shameful chapters of French history for the Jacobins Liberty meant destroying anyone from the old order who stood in their way if that meant absolutely brutal tyranny then the ends justify the means the revolution entered a stage of total lack of accountability for the central government all problems could simply be blamed on counter-revolution and the old system the Jacobins had a radical utopian vision for a future French society where recent and equality would Reign they believed the enlightenment idea that man was inherently good and only needed to be free of traditional influences to reach greatness thus the Jacobins were the first politicians in history to dehumanize political opponents in the name of Liberty and democracy as the reign of terror progressed over 30 000 people were killed with most being executed the same day their sentences were issued so obviously there were no appeals in this process most of these executions were based on utterly flimsy standards and victims were denied public trials and the opportunity of legal assistance on top of executing anyone suspected of disloyalty to the Jacobins anti-religious policies ramped up to new heights religion was made the scapegoat for all the problems of the Republic now even priests who swore oats of loyalty to the state were killed and a campaign of de-christianization was launched Catholics and Protestants alike had their religious rights revoked many clergy were killed in Savage ways and churches were converted into Halls of reason the government created its own new state religion the atheistic Cult of reason the Christian calendar was abolished and replaced by a new revolutionary calendar that began at year one it was basically a Reddit atheist dream come true one of the most unjust executions was that of 16 Carmelite nuns who were sentenced to death simply for not renouncing their religious vows this to the Revolutionary tribunal was a form of treason faced with either death or apostasizing the sisters bravely went to the guillotine without a second thought Maximilian rose beer was a key figure in all these events he welcomed the de-christianization campaign but he preferred a deistict new religion to be adopted over an atheistic one to do this he promoted The Cult of the Supreme Being and he led a festival to this new deistic God rosebier as a leading member of the Committee of Public Safety now had to play balance between the people even more radical than him and the moderates 1793 and 1794 saw the execution of many previously leading revolutionaries at the hands of their own comrades just to list some of the killings the entire gerandin faction who were moderates compared to the Jacobins jean-palmera a Jacob and journalist who called for the brutal killing of all moderates he was stabbed to death by a moderate George Danton Jacques Herbert Camille de Mula and many many more all died at the hands of the Committee of Public Safety many of these men had voted for the death of King Louis but they now suffered his same fate the infighting was so deadly that the journalist Jacques Malay Dupont famously remarked the revolution like Saturn devours its own children obviously this reign of terror had to come to an end somehow in July 1794 there was a coup against roast beer by other members of the National Convention he and all of his allies were arrested tried and guillotined in less than three days Robespierre was guillotined in an especially cruel way being strapped into the guillotine face up so he could watch the blade coming down the sankulats and Paris mobs were also finally disarmed and declawed the Jacobins went from an unquestionable force of power to being wiped out much like they had done to their Rivals the worst Madness of the Revolution was now finished from this point the revolution entered a period led by a group called the directory the directory is a fitting name for them because they were a horrendously corrupt body that rigged and directed elections to maintain stability however they relied on the military to maintain order and Crush all opposition especially the Parisian mobs the directory continued aggressive anti-religious policies causing new revolts to continuously break out across France the directories incompetence and over-reliance on the military eventually allowed Napoleon Bonaparte to seize control of the state in 1799.