Which faction would you have supported in the French Revolution?

[progressive85]

Don't know anything about it except that I believe the ideas of "right" and "left" came from the French Parliament around that time?

I would have strongly opposed the guillotine and the madness but also 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.  Les Miserables, the classic book by Victor Hugo (and amazing Broadway musical), is about a student revolution that fails in maybe the 1830s or around that time?

Got to really explore French history more and hopefully in school I'll take a class on France from about 1600 to the present day.

[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.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

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.

[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.

[Diabolical Materialism]

Any good book recommendations for an introduction to the French Revolution? I just finished Alan Taylor's American Colonies and am in the mood for something on the other side of the pond.

[Geoffrey Howe]

felt that France needed to be basically what it is today.

How on earth can anyone (of any ideological conviction for that matter) think this?

[Cassius]

Any good book recommendations for an introduction to the French Revolution? I just finished Alan Taylor's American Colonies and am in the mood for something on the other side of the pond.

The Oxford History of the French Revolution by William Doyle is pretty good and is written in a relatively measured, even handed style (in contrast to Simon Schama’s contemporaneous Citizens, which I haven’t read but I’ve heard is a little florid).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

(in contrast to Simon Schama’s contemporaneous Citizens, which I haven’t read but I’ve heard is a little florid).

Schama has a style that isn't to everyone's taste,* but it's a very good book and has an important place in the historiography of the French Revolution and, well, of Modern History generally. Essentially impossible to credibly write or even think about the French Revolution in the old way after its publication, though some people have tried anyway.

_{*And he can be a bit of a troll: a few years after Citizens he wrote Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations, which really wound up certain serious-minded people, much as it was intended to.}

[VPH]

Feuillant probably

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Don't know anything about it except that I believe the ideas of "right" and "left" came from the French Parliament around that time?

I would have strongly opposed the guillotine and the madness but also 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.  Les Miserables, the classic book by Victor Hugo (and amazing Broadway musical), is about a student revolution that fails in maybe the 1830s or around that time?

Yes. To sum up, in 1830 the Restored Bourbon Monarchy, led by the youngest brother of Louis XVI, Charles X, was toppled via a popular insurrection in Paris after Charles, a far right loon, tried to abolish freedom of the press, disenfranchise the middle class and overturn recent elections. Concurrent to the insurrection and forced exile of the king, the official political liberal-conservative opposition, along with their backers in the press and finance installed the King's cousin, Louis-Philippe of the cadet Orleanist branch, as the new monarch. Much of the popular support behind the insurrection was mollified by the support of Lafayette, one of the few surviving revolutionaries who had some weight to throw around, who believed that he was lending his support for a monarchy with Republican institutions; but this wasn't enough for many of the veterans, artisans and students who had manned the barricades who despised the new July Monarchy, especially as the monarchy itself turned Right, with liberal ministers - including Lafayette himself - being outfoxed in the political Game of Cards, and  Charles X's former ministers being "left off easy" with life in prison.

The group in Les Mis is based on a group of neo-Jacobin students called Friends of the People, who used the death of a liberal Bonapartist General to launch an insurrection against the July Monarchy, like the one that had killed the Restoration Monarchy in the 1930, but planned this time so the suits couldn't take it over this time. Apparently the big plan was amidst the chaos was to grab Lafayette and essentially force him to declare a new Republic with himself as President (Lafayette was tipped off and quickly fled). The tragedy was, although the men of the 1832 June Revolt were passionate and probably right, they misjudged the mood of the nation: the Parisian people largely did not join them in the barricades, the National Guard did not defect as it did in 1830 and the professional liberal politicians did not touch this hopeless cause.

[progressive85]

felt that France needed to be basically what it is today.

How on earth can anyone (of any ideological conviction for that matter) think this?

Excuse my ignorance, but is France today a sh**tshow or something?

[Geoffrey Howe]

felt that France needed to be basically what it is today.

How on earth can anyone (of any ideological conviction for that matter) think this?

Excuse my ignorance, but is France today a sh**tshow or something?

Um, yes...

[Georg Ebner]

Any good book recommendations for an introduction to the French Revolution? I just finished Alan Taylor's American Colonies and am in the mood for something on the other side of the pond.

The famous specialists are AULARD, MATHIEZ, H.LEFEBVRE, SOBOUL - but amusingly they have realiter not achieved anything else than confirming the basical correctness of BURKE...

[Georg Ebner]

(in contrast to Simon Schama’s contemporaneous Citizens, which I haven’t read but I’ve heard is a little florid).

Schama has a style that isn't to everyone's taste,* but it's a very good book and has an important place in the historiography of the French Revolution and, well, of Modern History generally. Essentially impossible to credibly write or even think about the French Revolution in the old way after its publication, though some people have tried anyway.

_{*And he can be a bit of a troll: a few years after Citizens he wrote Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations, which really wound up certain serious-minded people, much as it was intended to.}

I have never read it: Its SubTitle "Chronicle" and various DeScriptions of its method let me
assume - and several ReViews shared my suspicion - , that it doesn't provide an OverView (perhaps the latter stands behind or between the lines, but then it is still a failed concept).
His central thesis seems to be, that the terror was an integral part of the whole revolution - what is right and doubtlessly better than those naive historians (especially AngloSaxons), who love to differentiate a "healthy" 1789 and a "strange" 1793. But He should have also asked, which ideas caused le terreur and then He would have seen, that they came not even from "Les Philosophes", let alone from real PhiloSophers like DESCARTES or HUME, but from nowadays forgotten and per se unimportant journalists&publicists (a la BONNEVILLE, FAUCHET, MERCIER, PONTARD, RESTIF), whose "rationalism" was a weird mixture of occultism, envy, imposture, gullibility.
"The French Revolution seems admirable to those, who know it badly; terrible to those, who know it better; grotesque to those, who know it well." (GOMEZ DAVILA)

[Aurelius]

Probably the Feuillants. I admire a lot about the Girondins, but they played a big part in greasing the wheels for the period of Jacobin rule and all its unspeakable horrors. Best of a bunch of imperfect options.

If I were a peasant, definitely whatever faction the Vendee rebels were.

[Senator Incitatus]

Federalist Party.