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Twelve Who Ruled: The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution

by R.R. Palmer

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Peter said: " The French Revolution was much crazier than I realized, especially as someone who grew up mostly studying the American one.

At a basic level, it seems like there were three main things that differed between the two. Firstly, Americans were much less c The French Revolution was much crazier than I realized, especially as someone who grew up mostly studying the American one.

At a basic level, it seems like there were three main things that differed between the two. Firstly, Americans were much less concentrated in a single city. As a result, the urban mob was effectively non-existent. In addition, the federated nature of state governments and the existence of limited democracy meant that the US was more prepared for self-govenment. Related to this, the US never actually killed the king. Britain remained an extant threat, and as such, there was not as much of a power vacuum. Power over the states was available, but not over the former dynasty. And so that vacuum was much less empty.

But the other element was more philosophical - the US revolution was driven by the Scottish Enlightenment (Hume / Locke), a tradition in which men were considered somewhat fallen and sinful; the centering concept was on the individual and their rights. Whereas the French, influenced mostly by Rosseau and Voltaire, thought of people as naturally good, corrupted by civilization. They constantly focused on "the people" as an entity with a rejection of the individual. This seems like faulty firmware, and firmware which is deeply embedded in human nature. We like to imagine that there is a "they" "up there" who are to blame, and that "we" can fix everything if we just replace them - rather than taking responsibility for ourselves, we want to ride on the wave of populist energy, relishing in its power. And yet in a remarkable example of scapegoating, the only end state of that ride is to become a scapegoat, executed and thrown to the side by the next mob. Terror and virtue are deeply connected - the desire to cleanse and renew through violence is universal.

Christianity is a powerful antidote to this, and by revolting against the Church and the Crown together, the French revolution was...much more revolutionary than the American version, which ended up seeming actually quite conservative in comparison.

I was also surprised at how socialist / communist the revolution was - purges were common, and the desire to have central control of the economy was a powerful factor in many quite bad decisions. Tying it back to our day, the idea that prices are a signal was not widely held - when prices went up, the temptation to fix them was impossible to resist, even as the amount of bread did not increase. Money is a tricky concept - in its resting state it acts like store of value, but in movement is a mechanism of exchange. No amount of price fixing can really create more stuff.

Ultimately, anarchy breeds tyranny, and France was no exception. The transmutation of the Twelve from idealists to despots was inevitable, and as tragic as it was terrible. ...more "

Jul 30, 2026 03:06PM · see review