What do you think of Maximillien Robespierre aka "The Incorruptible", Veeky Forums ?
>held France together in the middle of invasions, internal revolts, foreign backed plots to put the people back under the chains of monarchy >Always stayed true to his convinctions, not hesitating to get rid of even his closest friends when they turned out to be corrupt >BTFO both the far left radicals and the ones not committed enough to the revolution >wanted to instore a Republic of Virtue, a truly moral state, only to be killed by corrupt degenerates >opposed dechristianization and understood the important role of religion for the people, promoting the Cult of the Supreme Being
>went batshit crazy at the end of his ''reign'', leading a cult tat basically made him a new god. >''La terreur'' =killing almost all the french elite, including thinkers and authors. >Rise of the bourgeiosie, since the nobility is BTFO Nope, Robespierre shows that every revolution is often paid by blood, drastic changes of which groups are in power.
He was a nutjob whacko who was a danger to everyone around him. It's amazing that France is still even a thing after having him in charge. He's like Caligula but ten times worse.
Elijah Wood
Jesus, that's a fantastic sculpture. Imagine if we had shit like this from the Romans?
Mason Collins
The Cult of the Surpreme Being was just some kind of deist, Rousseau-inspired civic religion, though, it really wasn't centered around him.
The Terreur has been greatly exaggerated, and most of the victims were in the cities like Lyon and Toulon that joined the federalist revolts, or in the Vendee.
The rise of the bourgeoisie, sure. But you can't really blame that entirely on him.
You need to stop reading monarchist, thermidorian and British propaganda, user.
Gabriel Phillips
He needed a stronger jaw, and had trouble keeping his head on his shoulders.
Adam Lopez
>tfw you will never attend a republican banquet entirely organised by Jacques-Louis David
Colton Hall
So Robespierre was actually the good guy? Interesting to know, I always thought he was just whackjob myself.
Colton Torres
If you want to know who the best guy behind the revolution was, I recommend you read about Louis Antoine de Saint Just. Probably one of the most passionate, intelligent, and benevolent persons in History.
Samuel Taylor
>caligula
caligula was based tho, so was neron, pushed reforms, tore down useles congresmen, cared more for the people that their rule depended on than patricians that just sabotaged things, its all posthumuous propaganda, tarnishing people once they die and cant respond
Lincoln Watson
He killed Lavoisier, so yeah, pretty much shit.
Parker Sullivan
You don't make revolutions without breaking some taxmen.
Brandon Martinez
>not hesitating to get rid of even his closest friends when they turned out to be corrupt
;_;
Kayden Gomez
...
Caleb White
>best friends >corrupt Fuck off Robs fags he's a murderer
Cameron Baker
You guys know he wasn't running France right?
I think he was a pretty cool guy whose borderline-autistic devotion to an abstract ideal drove him more or less mad but despite that he was still one of the more sympathetic figures in the revolution and probably would have gone on to do a fair bit of good for France if he wasn't killed when he was. If everyone had listened to him in the first place after The Bastille we'd probably be halfway to a legitimate utopia by now.
>Saint Just >Benevolent >It's not enough to only punish the guilty His 'if you aren't with us you're against us' mentality was everything wrong with the revolution. He was smart and passionate but too willing to keep pushing. Sure by the time of his death pushing was the best way to keep the revolution going but by then I think any reasonable person would have just acknowledged that a whole shitload of people had been killed for nothing and pull France's politics back a few years.
Zachary Bennett
>28,000 state executions in less than a year > Does not include the 30-40k dead in the Vadee, where it was mostly poor peasants being slaughtered for being too Catholic
Dude unleashed a religious war in the middle of a civil war.
Most of those executed were not even rich, let alone nobles.
Austin Bailey
> You guys know he wasn't running France right?
He was one the biggest players. Only Danton could rival him, and in the end Danton was executed on his orders.
No, he was a paranoid schemer who purged his friends and rival with increasing regularity.
He also abetted and helped plan the massacre of thousands for the simple crime of not wanting their priests to take ridiculous civic oaths.
He went out crying like a cowardly bitch, which is what he always was. He just got lucky out maneuvering better men, such as Danton.
Lucas Flores
Or to put it another way, in a country with a slightly smaller population than Syria today, the death toll eclipsed any death rate in the Syrian Civil War to day in combined combat deaths and executions, EXCLUDING the wars against foreign powers.
Joseph Green
Realtalk now, who /eczema/ here
Tyler Campbell
The vendee was in open rebellion against the government due to what they considered irreconcilable differences in ideology. The French Revolution wasn't a class war, if it was about any one thing it was ideology, but nothing's ever about one thing.
Peasants in the Vendee hated having to go to war and having their church representatives, who in the poor regions were generally extremely useful and beloved, declared anti-revolutionary relics.
>went out crying like a cowardly bitch I'd be crying if I just had my jaw ripped off too.
Danton was corrupt and The Vendee was home to legitimate rebels who wanted to overthrow the government. I'm not saying what was done wasn't an atrocity, but war isn't something to be half-assed. Robespierre never wanted to start wars, but he understood the importance of ending them.
Isaac Lopez
Marat was a bloodthirsty savage.
Andrew Nelson
Nah, I'm more of /angedel'assassinat/ kind of guy.
>tfw no pure qt Girondin gf
Jonathan Wood
...
Adrian Morris
>tfw you will never be a Muscadin dandy beating the shit out of sans-culotte scum with your ornate stick nicknamed "Constitution".
Samuel Russell
I know user, we all miss Danton. If you haven't already, read ''A place of Greater Safety'' by Hilary Mantel.
Kayden Hall
>justification of the use of terror
Jaxson Robinson
I can't help but be drawn in by Robespierres Idealism. He was surely mad by the end, of course, but the strength of his ideals is inspiring.
Then again, I also really wanted Lafayette to run a constitutional monarch under Louis as something like a prime minister, so I'm clearly a disgusting romanticist.
Ryder Morris
>implying la Terreur was not justified
Ian Garcia
very much this
any time i hear some one shit talk the french revolution as barbarous im like "what do you think revolution is?"
you cant establish a new state/socioty from within whilst also fighting all the world from without, contending with economic blockade, and contending with a starving and iliterate populace
deal with that situation then tell me how to manage it witout a few heads rolling
Ethan Campbell
Vendeens are royalist traitors. Even today their tradition remains
Sebastian Peterson
I think Robespierre is the perfect example of how dangerous western academic institutions are. They generate hordes of young men full of ideals ready to change the world by killing anyone in their way.
Carter Martin
They're less dangerous than Asian farrmers.
Noah Morales
They inspire asian farmers
Connor Reyes
see Western academic traditions are cancer
Luke Ortiz
And Robespierre did nothing wrong.
Anti-intellectual right-wing weenies stay mad.
Jackson Harris
That's because they're inspiring, but historically farmers have proved that they could do without.
Joshua Ross
Intellectuals are the people who think sitting in a closet and reading books makes them more knowledgeable to commoner life than a commoner is.
Brandon Lopez
>deal with that situation then tell me how to manage it witout a few heads rolling Don't declare war on all of my big scary neighbors like a dumbass.
Elijah Wilson
Robespierre went into the revolution a pacifist. He advocated against both the war and the death penalty you giant fucking faggot. Next time you feel qualified to give your retarded opinion on such a large and complicated issue because you skimmed the wikipedia page on it a few weeks ago consider just killing yourself instead.
>perfect example of how dangerous western academic institutions are die pls
Julian Phillips
It united the nation, spread the ideals of the revolution, and they were probably going to attack first anyway. Remember that it's the Austrians that sent the ultimatum, the French were at first satisfied when the principalities along the Rhine accepted to stop housing French nobles.
Also, the levee en masse, the total mobilisation of the French nation, and the mix of professional troops with conscripts changed warfare forever.
"From this moment until such time as its enemies shall have been driven from the soil of the Republic all Frenchmen are in permanent requisition for the services of the armies. The young men shall fight; the married men shall forge arms and transport provisions; the women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals; the children shall turn linen into lint; the old men shall betake themselves to the public squares in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic"
Asher Cox
the big scary neigbors who had no intention of being nice neighbors becuase they saw republican france as a threat to their rule, neighbors posturing war and economic blockade
Carter Ramirez
Kill yourself Louis XIV did literally nothing wrong, and republicanism is cancer that's produced nothing of value
Christopher Brooks
I always wonder why people cant fathom dissidents and traitors existing in Republican France when even in America a significant portion were redcoats or neutrals in the independence war
This, the monarchies arent even invading France for more power or lands but coz they literally fear/despise the existence of the Republic itself. War can't be avoided.
Connor Flores
Both of you subhumans should be burnt to death
Matthew Turner
>Louis XIV did literally nothing wrong The expulsion of the Huguenots is a bit controversial, but other than that he was a solid ruler. That's probably why nobody dared decapitate him. There was the Fronde that got its shit wrecked, and then Louis XIV ran out of Frenchmen to wreck so he slapped Europe's shit.
Louis XVI on the other hand betrayed his own nation.
>I always wonder why people cant fathom dissidents and traitors existing in Republican France when even in America a significant portion were redcoats or neutrals in the independence war Because it supports the myth that the American revolution was the "good" one and the French revolution the "bad" one. This hypothesis is mostly espoused by those who believe in the myth of American exceptionalism.
Colton Jones
It isn't just the American revolution, white supremacists will often give the violence and insanity of the French revolution a pass because it "was necessary" but will be the first to condemn the Chinese revolution which was just done on a larger scale due to the differences in demographics
Aaron Gutierrez
>white supremacists >French revolution Have we been visiting the same /pol/? White supremacists and American revisionists alike forge fantastic narratives in which the French Revolution was respectively the beginning of the end for the white race and the start of communism.
Just have a walkabout to your friendly neighborhood /pol/ and see what they think about the French revolution. For extra shits and giggles, open up with a picture of Thomas Dumas.
Tyler King
I'm not talking about a small minority of fedora tippers on an obscure hentai website, I'm talking about the mass media which has been spamming my newsfeed about how the Chinese revolution was the worst thing to ever happen, but hey, that French one where inexperienced idealists tried to change everything from the names of days on the calendar, introduce a nonsensical system of measurement and tried to eliminate ANYTHING that might be associated with a religious origin was completely necessary and nothing like Mao at all
David Long
What the fuck are you talking about? When has "mass media" ever given a shit about the French Revolution beyond Les Miserables?
Asher Reed
>Mass media >White supremacists U fookin wot lad? Modern mass media can't stop telling whites to apologize for being white.
Jayden Green
Thats the point, its written off as a revolution that went too far but similar revolutions where the parties involved are not white get scrutinized to death
Oliver Flores
This literally has never happened.
Nathan Martin
>nonsensical system of measurement Fuck off American, go praise the foot of the English king somewhere else.
Wyatt Garcia
Robespierre literally did nothing wrong.
John Johnson
You can't read.
Samuel James
>Robespierre
Adam Jones
Lived like a bitch, died like a bitch.
Zachary Adams
Robespierre did not "lead a cult that basically made him a new god." he did not create the "cult of the supreme being," which was in no way revolved around Robespierre, he only agreed to propose it to the Committee of Public Safety.
Statistically, most of the victims of the terror were peasants. Now, granted, most of the elite had already fled France so if they hadn't they may have been targeted. But there were hundreds of elite executed, and thousands of peasants.
Mason Harris
>Louis XVI on the other hand betrayed his own nation.
His own nation that was, literally, threatening his life, the life of his wife, his innocent children, as well as people who practiced the Catholic faith. His own nation that had, despite his constant giving in to demanded reforms and his willingness to follow the Constitution, denied him the very rights given to him by the Constitution.
Gabriel Torres
>announces that the senates full of traders and that he's gonna lynch random people >They vote to give him a death sentence Rofl
Brayden Ross
>traders
well you know how much the French hate bartering
Hudson Rivera
>Not posting the original version Are you some kind of royalist?
>Don't like new reforms >Run away with the intent of raising a foreign army to invade France >Get caught >Secure that through the highest form of treason the monarchy has no future within the revolution >";_; How could this happen to me?"
He had one job, ONE FUCKING JOB, and that was not messing everything up. And he messed up in the most grandiose manner possible. And to top it all off he was actually quite popular and loved prior to Varennes.
Landon Lopez
Almost every new reform forced through by the events of 1789 were reforms Louis XVI himself tried to force through during his reign but was unable to do so because of the Parlement. He liked reforms. He wanted reforms. He even supported the demands of the Third Estate until his eldest son became exceedingly ill and died, and the resulting emotional turmoil, mourning seclusion with the ultra-conservative ministers and Polignac clan, and, in his mind, cruel behavior on part of the Third Estate deputies ("Are there no fathers among the Third Estate?" etc) made him do a 180.
>Run away with the intent of raising a foreign army to invade France
Nope. Read his correspondence, including the coded letters. He was intending to flee to Montmedy (even refused a quicker route, because that quicker route involved crossing the border) so that he could act of his own volition, rather than act due to the (again, literal) threat of physical violence against himself and his family. His intent was to abandon the current WIP Constitution and start afresh with one based on his declaration of June 23rd, which included all of the current reforms except the ones related to religion and the complete abandonment of royal authority. He even wrote his brothers to tell them to stop raising armies and basically stop being gigantic assholes because he was trying to solve things without the use of force, and they were jeopardize it.
Noah Martinez
>It united the nation this is probably the single most wrong thing I've ever read about the French Revolution. Even before The Terror and The Vendee it was a paranoid bloodbath.
>they were probably going to attack first anyway You can't claim to know that any better than I can. I personally think if they didn't hurt Louis XVI and stopped at a constitutional monarchy while being diplomatic and willing to bend with their neighbors they probably would have been all right at least for a while longer, which would have given them more time to consolidate their revolution.
>spread the ideals of the revolution 'Nobody welcomes armed missionaries.' Within France it stirred up resentment and division while outside of France all it did was mobilize armies. The average nobody isn't going to care what the big invading army says their cause is, if they get told to fight them they will. All the war did was spread misery to other countries by adding foreigners to the death-toll. The ideas would have spread better if France actually got its shit together and proved their ideas could work. Nobody declared war on France but they reached the conclusion they did. War obviously isn't part of the equation. As the older systems started to fail in other countries people would eventually have turned to France as an example. Forced revolutions are fucking awful all the time without fail.
>levee en masse changed warfare forever I don't care how good of a job of it they did, the war in the first place was bad for Revolutionary France. And it's that all or nothing total-war mindset that led to atrocities like the vendee, the drownings and the fusilades.
Louis couldn't have betrayed the nation because as he saw it Revolutionary France wasn't his nation. Louis fucked up in several places where a stronger ruler might have avoided disaster but Louis had integrity if nothing else.
Leo Sanders
Louis had not a shred of integrity. He was a traitor. He collaborated with foreign royalty.
He and his relations deserved death.
Death to you and all other monarchists.
Long live Maximilian Robespierre!
Elijah Jones
>Nobody declared war on France but they reached the conclusion they did That might have a little something to do with your own source affirming the September Massacres only took place after the Duke of Brunswick (bro-tip: Brunswick isn't in France) had taken Verdun (bro-tip: Verdun is in France). And why did that happen? The aftermath of a little proclamation that happened prior to Louis XVI's execution.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Pillnitz The declaration was pretty much to restore Louis' old power (which would mean reversing the entire revolution: remember that the first constitution which limited the king's power was still a draft). The revolution was condemned before it had a chance to prove itself.
As for your idea of France "proving its ideas worked", that sure helped Napoleon with the Treaty of Amiens that totally wasn't violated purely because the British and Russians were pissed off, right?
From the start the Revolution itself had been intolerable to the Ancien Regime nations.
Nicholas Myers
First of all Napoleonic and Revolutionary France are totally different things. The Revolution died with the Thermidore Coup.
Now back to the other stuff.
Yes I did forget that the September Massacres happened after Brunswick's manifesto, but you don't have it 100% either. The manifesto was a response to France's declaration of war on the major European powers. Nobody had said anything about killing Louis at this point, Brunswick was just saying 'if' they harmed the Bourbons Paris would be fucked.
The point I was making was that the war declaration didn't help revolutionary France but I think my brain kind of spazzed out for a second while writing that last post because the bit you quoted doesn't actually make sense to me right now.
I think the point still stands though, Brunswick took Verdun because France declared war, in response to this a lot of French people slaughtered a whole lot of other French people and everyone was generally terrified and demoralized, a feeling which I know did crystallize into mad determination but the outcome still wasn't what I'd call good.
And I know what the Declaration of Pillnitz was, and it never would have been made in the first place if the revolutionaries weren't so belligerent. Declaring war was a horrible idea and the revolutionaries should have gone out of their way to avoid conflict wherever possible. You don't win an ideological war with brute force.
Samuel Flores
All revolutionaries were scum.
Gabriel Butler
>were
Jose Wilson
Who says that the jacobins declared the war? When they took power they inherited a war started by the girondins in 1792, who were basically warhawks. Robespierre denounced the war from the very beginning of debates about it in 1791 but no one listened.
Lucas Long
Louis XIV a shit. Endless wars and money fucked up the crown's finances and the economy in general
Daniel White
are you in fifth grade? if not this is the most retarded post i've read in a while