I was comparing the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars with the 18th century standard of warfare (basically, the standards that held from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia until the French Revolution). It is true that some previous wars in European history had been just as awful, like for example the Thirty Years’ war. However, the innovations brought by the French Revolution destroyed a century and a half long tradition of reasonably limited and civilized warfare. To see this, it’s enough to look at the casualty figures of 18th century European wars prior to 1789 and compare them with the death toll of those in the period 1792-1815. It’s an order of magnitude difference.
Moreover, some of your claims are wildly inaccurate. In particular, the first mass conscription (levée en masse) was levied in the summer of 1793, six years before Napoleon’s Brumaire coup. And it was by no means “the whole [F]rench people” that stood behind the revolutionary regime. A very large percentage was monarchist and saw the Revolution as an illegal and tyrannical usurpation—for which they had at least some good reason, considering that it immediately abolished centuries old traditional institutions of local autonomy and submitted them straight to the dictate from Paris. You yourself said that “there were many people inside France trying to destroy the Revolution from inside” because they didn’t like the change. Does this mean that, according to you, these people deserved the Terror to be unleashed against them?
In some places, like the Vendée, the monarchists had overwhelming support—which was crushed by the revolutionary regime in a campaign of mass atrocities whose scale and brutality would truly not be repeated in Europe until the 20th century totalitarians took over. (If you think my assertion about the Nazis is incorrect, can you name some campaign of atrocities in Europe between the French Revolution and the Nazis that rose to the same level? Perhaps some things that happened in Eastern Europe in the post-WW1 chaos would qualify.)
The assertion that “[t]here is no ethnic conflict that was started [or] inspired by the French Revolution” is also absurd. If anything, the German-French rivalry and revanchism that was to produce a series of cataclysmic wars in the next 150 years was a direct consequence of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Moreover, nothing like the European nationalist ideologies that would cause all the strife and wars in the subsequent 200 years existed before the French Revolution. The novel idea of a centralized and ethnically uniform nation-state that is the very essence of nationalism was at the center of the French revolutionary project. (This is especially obvious in the revolutionary government’s policy of eliminating local languages and dialects and forcible imposition of linguistic uniformity.) Once such ideas start taking hold in ethnically diverse places, the consequences are terrible almost without exception.
In Haiti, the story is much more complicated than what you say, and altogether horrible—certainly nothing like the idealistic story of successful abolition of slavery that you suggest. When the formal abolition came in 1794, the slave rebellion that would ultimately turn into all-out race war was already well underway. The bungling politics of the republican commissioners newly arrived from France, principally Sonthonax, certainly didn’t help the situation. (It is true that the conclusive and most brutal events happened after Napoleon’s unsuccessful invasion in 1801-02, but the situation had turned very nasty even before that.) And in any case, the worldwide slave trade was abolished by the Royal Navy prompted by British abolitionist politics. The French Revolution had nothing to do with that.
Your constant pointing out of all the nice and sweet things that the revolutionary regime was declaring on paper is rather absurd considering what this regime was doing in practice. (And a more in-depth analysis would in fact show that some of these nice-sounding ideas did in fact predictably lead to awful consequences when attempted in practice, while many of them weren’t at all nice when one looks at what they really meant behind the lofty language.)
All in all, you seem to be repeating a very naive and cartoonish version of events. I suggest that you read more on this historical period if you’d like to discuss it seriously.
Correction: The first levée en masse was in February 1793, not the summer of 1793 as I wrote originally. This however goes even further towards the point I was making.
Since you are issuing a post, not a book, you had to leave out most of the crimes of the French revolution, such as the infamous red terror, which was the very essence of the French revolution and its most emblematic act, the prototype and original for all the many terrors and mass murders of the twentieth century, the inspiration for all our most evil intellectuals.
Among the many crimes you left out was two years of hyperinflation with price control between 1793 and 1795, which employed the most savage terror to control prices, and imposed widespread famine, which famine produced massive riots, which were in turn put down by measures of extraordinary brutality.
(If you think my assertion about the Nazis is incorrect, can you name some campaign of atrocities in Europe between the French Revolution and the Nazis that rose to the same level? Perhaps some things that happened in Eastern Europe in the post-WW1 chaos would qualify.)
Anti-Jewish pogroms killed somewhat more people than the tens of thousands in the Terror. According to Wikipedia, 70,000 to 250,000 during the civil war period in Russia.
You’re right, of course—the 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent civil war involved atrocities on all sides that easily beat the French revolutionary terror.
For some interesting reason, when I make a query to my brain on what happened in Europe in some period X-Y, the answer usually excludes Russia unless I ponder it more carefully. Even when I wrote about post-WW1 Eastern Europe in my above comment, I was vaguely thinking of the Freikorps fighting it out with Poles and Czechs rather than the Russian Civil War.
It would certainly mean moving the goalposts if I insisted on excluding Russia from Europe, but it still says something that you have to go all the way to the rise of the hardcore 20th century totalitarians to find similar examples.
You’re right, of course—the 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent civil war involved atrocities on all sides that easily beat the French revolutionary terror.
On the other hand, it’s standard to the point of cliché to regard the events in France post-1789 as specifically foreshadowing those in Russia post-1917 (with Lenin “correcting” some of Robespierre’s mistakes, for instance making sure all the heirs of the old regime were dead).
To be fair, white terror can be extremely nasty and non-selective too. This was true in the time of Sulla as much as in the 20th century, including the killings by the Russian Whites cited by Lessdazed.
Sulla then resigned the dictatorship, restored the Republic, and returned to private life, though the fact that such measures as Sulla’s were necessary to protect and revive the Republic should have demonstrated it could not be revived.
In general, white terrors are response to red terrors, or to the dire and imminent threat of a red terror.
In war, both sides always do dreadful things, for to win, you have to be twice as bad as the bad guys. If one side is better than the other, they demonstrate moral superiority by how they behave after they have won, not by how they win. Compare what followed the white terror in Taiwan, with what followed the red terror on the Chinese mainland.
I was comparing the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars with the 18th century standard of warfare (basically, the standards that held from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia until the French Revolution). It is true that some previous wars in European history had been just as awful, like for example the Thirty Years’ war. However, the innovations brought by the French Revolution destroyed a century and a half long tradition of reasonably limited and civilized warfare. To see this, it’s enough to look at the casualty figures of 18th century European wars prior to 1789 and compare them with the death toll of those in the period 1792-1815. It’s an order of magnitude difference.
Moreover, some of your claims are wildly inaccurate. In particular, the first mass conscription (levée en masse) was levied in the summer of 1793, six years before Napoleon’s Brumaire coup. And it was by no means “the whole [F]rench people” that stood behind the revolutionary regime. A very large percentage was monarchist and saw the Revolution as an illegal and tyrannical usurpation—for which they had at least some good reason, considering that it immediately abolished centuries old traditional institutions of local autonomy and submitted them straight to the dictate from Paris. You yourself said that “there were many people inside France trying to destroy the Revolution from inside” because they didn’t like the change. Does this mean that, according to you, these people deserved the Terror to be unleashed against them?
In some places, like the Vendée, the monarchists had overwhelming support—which was crushed by the revolutionary regime in a campaign of mass atrocities whose scale and brutality would truly not be repeated in Europe until the 20th century totalitarians took over. (If you think my assertion about the Nazis is incorrect, can you name some campaign of atrocities in Europe between the French Revolution and the Nazis that rose to the same level? Perhaps some things that happened in Eastern Europe in the post-WW1 chaos would qualify.)
The assertion that “[t]here is no ethnic conflict that was started [or] inspired by the French Revolution” is also absurd. If anything, the German-French rivalry and revanchism that was to produce a series of cataclysmic wars in the next 150 years was a direct consequence of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Moreover, nothing like the European nationalist ideologies that would cause all the strife and wars in the subsequent 200 years existed before the French Revolution. The novel idea of a centralized and ethnically uniform nation-state that is the very essence of nationalism was at the center of the French revolutionary project. (This is especially obvious in the revolutionary government’s policy of eliminating local languages and dialects and forcible imposition of linguistic uniformity.) Once such ideas start taking hold in ethnically diverse places, the consequences are terrible almost without exception.
In Haiti, the story is much more complicated than what you say, and altogether horrible—certainly nothing like the idealistic story of successful abolition of slavery that you suggest. When the formal abolition came in 1794, the slave rebellion that would ultimately turn into all-out race war was already well underway. The bungling politics of the republican commissioners newly arrived from France, principally Sonthonax, certainly didn’t help the situation. (It is true that the conclusive and most brutal events happened after Napoleon’s unsuccessful invasion in 1801-02, but the situation had turned very nasty even before that.) And in any case, the worldwide slave trade was abolished by the Royal Navy prompted by British abolitionist politics. The French Revolution had nothing to do with that.
Your constant pointing out of all the nice and sweet things that the revolutionary regime was declaring on paper is rather absurd considering what this regime was doing in practice. (And a more in-depth analysis would in fact show that some of these nice-sounding ideas did in fact predictably lead to awful consequences when attempted in practice, while many of them weren’t at all nice when one looks at what they really meant behind the lofty language.)
All in all, you seem to be repeating a very naive and cartoonish version of events. I suggest that you read more on this historical period if you’d like to discuss it seriously.
Correction: The first levée en masse was in February 1793, not the summer of 1793 as I wrote originally. This however goes even further towards the point I was making.
Since you are issuing a post, not a book, you had to leave out most of the crimes of the French revolution, such as the infamous red terror, which was the very essence of the French revolution and its most emblematic act, the prototype and original for all the many terrors and mass murders of the twentieth century, the inspiration for all our most evil intellectuals.
Among the many crimes you left out was two years of hyperinflation with price control between 1793 and 1795, which employed the most savage terror to control prices, and imposed widespread famine, which famine produced massive riots, which were in turn put down by measures of extraordinary brutality.
Anti-Jewish pogroms killed somewhat more people than the tens of thousands in the Terror. According to Wikipedia, 70,000 to 250,000 during the civil war period in Russia.
You’re right, of course—the 1917 Russian Revolution and the subsequent civil war involved atrocities on all sides that easily beat the French revolutionary terror.
For some interesting reason, when I make a query to my brain on what happened in Europe in some period X-Y, the answer usually excludes Russia unless I ponder it more carefully. Even when I wrote about post-WW1 Eastern Europe in my above comment, I was vaguely thinking of the Freikorps fighting it out with Poles and Czechs rather than the Russian Civil War.
It would certainly mean moving the goalposts if I insisted on excluding Russia from Europe, but it still says something that you have to go all the way to the rise of the hardcore 20th century totalitarians to find similar examples.
On the other hand, it’s standard to the point of cliché to regard the events in France post-1789 as specifically foreshadowing those in Russia post-1917 (with Lenin “correcting” some of Robespierre’s mistakes, for instance making sure all the heirs of the old regime were dead).
You compare the French revolution with the other totalitarian terror regimes it prefigured and inspired.
To be fair, white terror can be extremely nasty and non-selective too. This was true in the time of Sulla as much as in the 20th century, including the killings by the Russian Whites cited by Lessdazed.
Sulla then resigned the dictatorship, restored the Republic, and returned to private life, though the fact that such measures as Sulla’s were necessary to protect and revive the Republic should have demonstrated it could not be revived.
In general, white terrors are response to red terrors, or to the dire and imminent threat of a red terror.
In war, both sides always do dreadful things, for to win, you have to be twice as bad as the bad guys. If one side is better than the other, they demonstrate moral superiority by how they behave after they have won, not by how they win. Compare what followed the white terror in Taiwan, with what followed the red terror on the Chinese mainland.
Granted being bad can be useful, being bad can also be useless or counterproductive. As it often is the latter two, the principle doesn’t hold.