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The Reign of Terror
History is said to be written by the winners, but is it possible to
rewrite history? In a way, the French, like many who have preceded them, and
many who will proceed them have done the impossible, rewriting history. From
trivial folklore, such as George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, to the
incredibly wrong, the African slave trade; people's views of history can be
shaped and molded. The French have done a superb job of instilling all of us
with the concept that their Revolution was a fight for liberty, justice and the
good of all Frenchmen everywhere. Their glorification of the Bastille with it's
depictions in painting and sculpture and how the Revolution was the beginning of
a new age pales to some of the events during this period. In fact, the storming
of the Bastille was merely a hole in the dike, and more would follow. The
National Guard, the Paris Commune, the September Massacre, are all words that
the French would prefer us not to hear. These events were a subtle dénouementto
an climax that was filled with both blood and pain. The Reign of Terror, or the
Great Terror, was a massive culmination to the horror of the French Revolution,
the gutters flowing with blood as the people of Paris watched with an
entertained eye. No matter what the French may claim, if one chooses to open
his eyes and read about this tragedy, they are most certainly welcome.
The revolution begins quietly in the fiscal crisis of Louis XVI's reign.
The government was running deeply into bankruptcy, and at the urging of his
financial advisors, he called the Estates General. The governing body had not
been called for almost two centuries, and now it's workings seemed outdated. A
small number of people said that the Third Estate, that which was drawn from the
towns, should have power to equal the other Estates. Clubs of the bourgeoisie,
the middle class, were formed, proclaiming, "Salus populi lex est." It was a
simple cry meaning "the welfare of the people is law." To these people, the
Estates General was like a pair of shoes that no longer fit. Reformed seemed
iminent, the phrase, "The Third Estate is not an order, it is the nation itself"
began to circulate.1
With much fanfare and circumstance, the three estates were called
together. However, on trying to meet, the Third Estate found the doors to t...
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depiction of man at his worst. The sad truth is that events of this nature have
occurred with amazing regularity. Perhaps if the Reign of Terror was just one
appalling moment of human cruelty, the world would be a different place. With
such things as the Gulag, the Holocaust, the African Slave Trade, and even
returning back to ancient times of the Assyrians and the Crusades, man has been
known to slaughter his brethren wholesale. We are a race, bred with violence
coursing through our veins, and we can do little about it. Perhaps my
speculations are wrong, but if such tragedies have occurred over and over, can
we truly ever change. The Reign of Terror is just the culmination to the
bloodiness and the atrocities of the French Revolution. It is quite ironic that
a Revolution based on the ideals of Reason and the fight for the people, would
kill over thirty thousand of their countrymen. In conclusion, the Reign of
Terror was the climax of this terrible Revolution. The violence and paranoia of
the sans culottes, the lust for political power in the convention, and the petty
differences of one person to another finally reached a head, exploding into a
mass execution.
The Third Estate is everything. As to the author Abbe Sieyes, a nation requires private and public activities to survive and prosper. Four separate classes of The Third Estate that include a people from your basic peasants, to industry workers, and merchants, to the “most distinguished liberal and scientific professions to the lowest of menial tasks.” According to Sieyes the thirds estate comprises nineteen twentieths of the population who absorbs the arduous work that the “privileged order refuses to perform”. Essentially, The Third Estate is the backbone of their social, and economic estate but yet the nobility and the clergy continue to step on them and exploit their labor for capital gain. Abbe brings to light the question as do we not understand the ramifications of a monopoly, while the
Do the actions ever justify the end result? The Reign of Terror, the revolution lead by Maximilien Robespierre, began on January 21, 1793 when King Louis XVI and his wife were guillotined due to the way they had led the government into a financial crisis and as a result when Robespierre took over with his radical new government 20,000-40,000 people were brutally executed. So was this radical period in France really necessary or was it just mass killings with little progress. The Reign of terror was not justified because of the threats against the revolution, the methods used by the revolution were not justified, and the ideals of the revolution were not justified.
A rather ominous name for the unaware; “The Reign of Terror”. An oblivious person could completely bypass the horrifying events related to the French Revolution, had it been named differently. The title for these events is appropriate from my perspective. Those four words could easily interest a curious, ordinary person, and so the history can survive, along with the information transferring to yet another carrier. Of course, everyone can benefit from knowing a few terms that can increase your understanding of the topic. An absolute monarch is a person that has absolute power among his or her people. The Estates General is a representative body drawn from the three ‘estates’ into which society had been theoretically divided. A fraternity is a group of people sharing a common profession or interests. A radical person is a person who advocates thorough or complete political or social reform. The device used to execute most people was the guillotine: a machine with a heavy blade sliding vertically in grooves, used for beheading people. The Reign of Terror is generally defined as a period of remorseless repression or bloodshed, but in particular, it is the period of the Terror during the French Revolution. Conservatives are people that hold to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation. Now that we can speak of our topic with more knowledge of terms typically used for this subject, we can address the pending question. Was The Reign of Terror justified? An outstanding amount of people died for good and bad reasons. Every system was corrupt, there was practically no right and wrong; no order, just rebellion. Several conflicting arguments can be made, but there is a definite decision to make in this situatio...
As such, there no longer existed any excuse for people to ignore the rights and respect which belonged to their fellow men. Article 4 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man explicitly states that the “rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights” (National Assembly). This moral responsibility prohibits the ignorance of grievances and injustices to other people, stemming from Enlightenment thought regarding the bettering of self and others (Duiker and Spielvogel 382). However, the Declaration advocates for extreme freedom in the rights of its citizens in manner not seen in the United States, due to the harsh oppression that existed under Louis XVI. The Third Estate, whose members comprised a large portion of French society, were required to pay taxes during the reign of Louis XVI, while the First and Second Estates were exempt. The shift from this drastic exploitation of lower class citizens culminated in expressions of liberty, which dictated the severity to which personal freedoms extended. Article XIV, which allows citizens to decide the extent of their public contribution, is an extreme interpretation of the ideals of individual liberty presented in the Enlightenment (National
As more peoples blood is split to gain the rights not extended to them, the Terror grows becoming more and more gruesome. The French revolution began in late 1789 to obtain the rights that every citizen in born with. The motto of the French was liberty, equality, or death and the price to be paid for the civil liberties was blood. The revolutionary leader Robespierre and journalist Marat explained the more blood the better so that was what raged the people and started the Reign of Terror. Were the values expressed by the French Revolution necessary though? Even though, the French Revolution saw the Terror as a sign to create peace and restore a new France it was not justified because the extremities of the internal and external threats spun out of control and the methods of the period were over the top.
Abbé Emmauel-Joeph Sieyès (1748-1836) a middle-class clergyman wrote a pamphlet, “What is the Third Estate”(1789) in which he wrote upon the present state of affairs and the Third Estate (Hunt, p. 107) The Third Estates message was simple. The few privileged noble order at current, was far from being useful to the nation (Hunt, p. 109). The effects of the monopoly ran current state of affairs was shackling and oppressing to all those whom fell out of the category of the noble order. Those, whom did not fall in the noble order, made up the Third Estate, which accounted for ninety nine percent of the population (Hunt, p. 109).
Third Estate, it was used for most of the population that was neither clerical nor noble, and for their representatives at the Estates General. In 1789, the Third Estate made itself a National Assembly and launched the French Revolution.
The Great Terror, an outbreak of organised bloodshed that infected the Communist Party and Soviet society in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), took place in the years 1934 to 1940. The Terror was created by the hegemonic figure, Joseph Stalin, one of the most powerful and lethal dictators in history. His paranoia and yearning to be a complete autocrat was enforced by the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD), the communist police. Stalin’s ambition saw his determination to eliminate rivals such as followers of Leon Trotsky, a political enemy. The overall concept and practices of the Terror impacted on the communist party, government officials and the peasants. The NKVD, Stalin’s instrument for carrying out the Terror, the show trials and the purges, particularly affected the intelligentsia.
This term Three Estates does not necessarily mean the three divisions of the parliament. This term could be, "as more effective synonym for 'both houses' ." (Alford 36) The two houses are the House of the Lords and the House of the Commons. This shows that the term is not a direct interpretation , but rather an idea of the separation.
The Abbe Sieyes, "What Is the Third Estate?"(1789), in Perry Rogers, ed., Aspects of Western Civilization: Problemsand Sources in History, vol. II (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000), 108-110.
Some people like Emmanuel Sieyès, middle-class writer who was taken by the Enlightenment ideas, believed that all of French Society lay on the backs of the third estate. On the contrary, Robespierre, the monarch at the time, believed that the third estate did not have the power to do anything important to society. The third estate had to pay taxes like the Gabelle and Taille while the first and seconds estates did not have to pay any taxes to the king. Also, the third estates had less of a representation in voting. The first and second estate could outvote the third estate every time and this was a huge inequality. The condition of the third estate was horrible but a good portion of this third estate was the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie had some wealth and social class, so they influenced the rest of the third estate about their rights, while also inspiring some lower clergies and provincial nobles and thus led to a group of rebellious people to fight the monarchy. This fight for political representation and political rights was only one cause of the French Revolution. Another causes lies in the French Monarchs: Louis XlV, Louis XV, and Louis XVl. When Louis XlV was ruling, the monarchy had unlimited power and was known as a
Llewellyn, J., & Thompson, S. (2015, June 04). The Reign of Terror. Retrieved March 07, 2017, from http://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/reign-of-terror/
The French Revolution was a time were people started to want different things. The French people wanted popular sovereignty and inalienable rights. The French Revolution basically missed its mark and caused thousands of pointless deaths. The Revolution ultimately caused more bad than good. But it helped shaped nations by showing how the will of the people contributed to reformation. The Revolution was started in 1789. The Reign of Terror started in 1793. The government of the Revolution decided that all of the aristocrats and nobles were enemies of the Revolution. The Reign of Terror started in The executions started in Paris. The first person to be executed by the guillotine was Marie Antoinette. The guillotine was used for over 17,000 executions
On July 14, 1789, several starving working people of Paris and sixty soldiers seized control of the Bastille, forever changing the course of French history. The seizing of the Bastille wasn’t caused by one event, but several underlying causes such as the Old
When a group of Parisians “attacked and captured the royal armory known as the Bastille” . The Bastille was known at the time for also being a prison. When they were advancing toward the Bastille, “five to six thousand armed bourgeois penetrated the Bastille 's outer courtyards” . Seeing their advancements the enemy began firing at the bourgeois, while their “cannon fired on the town, and the people took fright; a large number of individuals were killed or wounded” . Yet this did not stop the riled up bourgeois who proceeded in taking over the Bastille. As they went further inside women and children of the town began to help in ways they could. The children would “after the discharge of fire from the fortress, ran here and there picking up the bullets and shot” , showing that they were willing to do anything they could to help win the revolution. After finally reaching the inside of the building, the bourgeois broke out in happiness, knowing that they have now successfully taken over the Bastille. On their march out, the bourgeois “anxious to avenge themselves, allowed neither De Launey nor the other officers to reach the place of trial. They seized them from the hands of their conquerors, and trampled them underfoot one after the other” . The overall purpose of the bourgeois attacking the Bastille was to save the “Third Estate from [King] Louis XVI 's attempted