Which faction would you have supported in the French Revolution?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Sorry for the bump, but I was actually reading the thread back when I was logged out, and it took me everything I had to avoid logging back in to sh*t on PSOL's laughably nonsensical takes. It takes a truly remarkable degree of buffoonery to be willing to write so confidently and pretentiously about something he is so clearly ignorant about. I would almost be impressed, if he wasn't talking about a period of my country's history I'm deeply passionate about and I've been studying since I was a child. As things stand, I just hope that any leftist who's interested in actual facts and not LARPy bullsh*t knows better than to listen to a word of his pseudointellectual drivel.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Sorry for the bump, but I was actually reading the thread back when I was logged out, and it took me everything I had to avoid logging back in to sh*t on PSOL's laughably nonsensical takes. It takes a truly remarkable degree of buffoonery to be willing to write so confidently and pretentiously about something  he is so clearly ignorant about. I would almost be impressed, if he wasn't talking about a period of my country's history I'm deeply passionate about and I've been studying since I was a child. As things stand, I just hope that any leftist who's interested in actual facts and not LARPy bullsh*t knows better than to listen to a world of his pseudointellectual drivel.

Hey Tony, welcome back and congrats on the pHd.

What is your take on the Feulliant club, and their leadership of by Barnave, de Lameth and Duport? Obviously they are far to oury right ideologically, but what's your stance on how they ran the Assembly and their downfall?

They're not the figures I'm most familiar with, so I don't want to make any definitive claims, but they strike me as generally sincere and well-intentioned in trying to make the constitutional monarchy actually work (which, while not ideal by any stretch, would certainly have spared France a lot of troubles). That said, their perspective in this regard was fundamentally flawed. Louis XVI could not be trusted as a working partner in a new liberal constitutional order. IIRC by that point, he was already plotting with the Austrians to crush the revolutionary government (which is why, to dispel another set of bad takes I saw in another French Revolution thread a while ago, he WAS unquestionably guilty). The flight to Varennes took place months before the 1791 constitution was even enacted, for crying out loud! If you really wanted the French monarchy to survive, the best thing to do might have been to force him to abdicate and replace him with Louis XVII (or even, in a preview of the 1830 revolution, with the Duke of Orleans). Even then, who knows if it would have worked, but it would have been less ridiculous than handing the keys of your constitutional castle to a guy who's sworn to tear it down.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I'd be a Dantonist, btw. Forgot to even bring that up. It was a complicated political world with no complete heroes and even very few complete villains (which clearly didn't stop *some people* in this thread from siding with one of those few, of course), but Danton and Desmoulins strike me as the only people who had something resembling a reasonable combination of the right political vision, sufficient political skill, and basic human decency to steer France in the right direction in these troubled times.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I would have [...] felt that France needed to be basically what it is today.

I don't think I would have liked the French Revolution at all and it really doesn't sound like any positive change came out of it.

That is a ... perplexing combination of sentiments to have in the same post.

...yeah. The French Revolution is the kind of event that's had so many consequences that it's pointless to even try to decide if it was good or bad in some broad sense, but certainly, we should be able to agree that some of its long-term consequences were extremely good.