French Revolution: during the reign of Terror the vast majority of guillotine victims were either peasants or from the working class. The guillotine of aristocrats concerned a small minority.

It was a terror mainly against desperate PEASANTS and the WORKING CLASS. Let that sink for a minute. Why? In the name of VIRTUE.

I’ll end this thread w/ a phrase of C. Desmoulins who wrote: “My dear Robespierre… my old school friend… Remember the lessons of history and philosophy: love is stronger, more lasting than fear”. Desmoulins was subsequently arrested and guillotined. He wrote from jail:

To be honest, reading numerous details and debates from that period is not only tiring but deeply disturbing. Not recommended for night readings. One can loose his sleep.

Another detail hidden from school books: Lafayette introduced white in FR flag: red, WHITE, blue. Why? It was the colour of royal House of Bourbon. Royalists dominated until late 19th century. Initially, the revolutionaries massacred anti-royal CIVILIANS (Champ de Mars Massacre).

❯ Voltaire = enlightened despotism.
❯ Robespierre = student of Rousseau (like Mao)
After the terror of guillotines, royalists dominated French politics.
❯ Parliamentary regime (= separation of powers) introduced by the July Monarchy under King Louis Philippe.

King Louis Philippe’s father – extremely rich – voted in favour of the death of King Louis XVI, his own cousin! Most propagandistic revolutionary material was printed in his palace. A game of constitutional monarchy (Orléanists) vs. naive [absolute] monarchy (Legitimists).

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Comments

The Bolsheviks repeated the Jacobins history. Unsatiated bloodthirsty Evil. After they run out of innocent victims to execute they turned on their own comrades.
True! It’s an irony that Robespierre didn’t do a dictatorship. He didn’t use Stalinist methods to protect himself from the Convention who, in turn, sent him to guillotine. It seems that he was a believer in his virtue doctrine. A victim of his own absolute naive rationalisations.

The percentages shown are of the total killed in absolute terms, not for population of each class? Smaller “elite” numbers could be higher percentages relative to their class numbers? Sort of a progressive decapatation rate I guess. Be interesting to know the pop of each class.
Very good point. However, in their everyday proceedings they focused mostly on the compliance of common people, for example if using monsieur/madame instead of citoyen/citoyenne, the correct PRONOUNS. Sounds familiar? And journalism? Marat was CNN … with a guillotine.

what matters are percentages relative to the total population, not absolute numbers
That’s partially true. Imagine you’re a revolutionary administrator. You have to arrest people, study accusations, kill, gather dead bodies, it’s a loud mess. This chart proves one thing: their daily routine was to juge fellow citizens, not the aristocrats as the myth goes.

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