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Comment by ashoeafoot | Hacker News Reader

Have you held the nations that stayed aristocratic and the havoc they caused next to france? Getting rid of parasitic waterhead bodies of government is always a pro birthong pains included.

PS : Those wars started because the assembled aristocracy of f europe jumped the reforming nation.

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Can’t replay the counter factual, but for those that lived it, there were regrets… and most reasoned there was a better way about the changing of power.

Also, it’s not like it was all happy republicanism after the terror, there was a new elite replacing the old (Napoleons) and he was a petty noble anyway, plenty of the aristocracy stuck around, and said emperor did his best to marry into Europe’s aristocracy. Seems a bit like musical chairs, don’t you think? Plenty of France was still royalist too anyway after it all. I don’t think the narrative is so clear, except everyone realized you can’t beat down your peasants too hard.

Even Peter the Great, traveling through France in the 1700s, wondered how long the wealth disparity could last, having seen Versailles and the peasants from the road.

peter the great gave a shit about the peasants , like all Russian zhars, russians had cholera as main source of death till the communists did take over. thats drink from the place you shit in savagery ,those aristocrats did less then nothing and deserved to be purged for dysfunctionality alone . You can not romanticize backwardness just because the front fell of the anti democratic progressive priest caste in the west. Those guys didn't built a thing either besides a caste system .

The problem with the French revolution was that the radicals moved too far, too fast, in the social reform. Their economics werent the issue, it was the total disregard for any religious or traditional culture and the factionalism that doomed the revolutionaries.

Big part the French Revolution is not by chance called “la Terreur”.

You can acknowledge that the values the revolution promoted are good, aristocratic rule needed reform, while still being clear that revolutions are not a peaceful thing, especially not for poor or marginalised groups. 50.000 people executed is quite some birthing pains…

> Those wars started because the assembled aristocracy of f europe jumped the reforming nation.

And you think this helps your argument?

I think he means to say that had the other European nations not declared war on France with all the grand coalitions, the casualty rate wouldn’t be what it was.

I think that is partially true.

Even without that, the execution rate in the Reign of Terror was appalling and I doubt it's something the initial commenter would want to live through. Revolutions only sound good idealistically but are very difficult to pull off, most even fail.

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