Reluctant Girondin, not a huge fan of their foreign policy but the least crazy of the republicans.
Autarkic states never last long, especially if they are conducting a revolution within their borders. Joseon Korea is a great example of the failure of looking inwards while conducting change of any sort. So was the Soviets but that is another matter.
They had an immensely weak foreign policy and weren’t up to the job in defending liberty, fraternity, and equality compared to the Montagnards, whose policies prevented a counterrevolution for the longest of time and stopped France from being carved up by the hungry states around them. Ultimately, the demands for radical democracy they were rooting for was won decades upon decades later.
In order to maintain and strengthen the new rights given to the Third Estate—the manual labourers in Paris, merchants, white collar workers, and non-ethnic French of France like the slaves in the outer colonies and Cagots—Hebertists understood that freedom can only be wrested away by force against the oppression of the monarchy and the pillars of reaction. France would have not been able to survive without their decisive leadership against the hostile church and foreign powers who wanted to partition up the country. While sidelined, their struggle is most responsible why France ended up a major player in culture and science in the late 1800s, else France would have been a backwater along the likes of Russia in the same latter 1800s.
What could have been was lost when the humanist Robespierre didn’t like them because Hebert was an edgy fedora-wearing atheist or whatever the revolution-era French equivalent was, and was scared of dismantling all unfair hierarchical structures in favor of “meritocracy”
Given the fact that the more brutal Directorate—made up of upper merchants and middle noblemen—failed repeatedly in providing any stability externally and internally and were simultaneously sidelined and jumped ship to Nappy I, the Montagnards and Hebertists especially are forever absolved of wringing of “oppression” and “radicalism”.
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