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REIGN OF TERROR: The French Revolution, Part III

2010-11-11 · John · watch on YouTube · History & curiosities · explainer learning

John finishes his French Revolution explainer (price controls, the Committee of Public Safety and the Terror, the calendar, the Directory, Napoleon), concludes France went from one supreme ruler to another, and argues history is worth studying because the past still shapes the present and studying it is an exercise in empathy.

What is said

00:00:13 — Famine unfixed: the sans-culottes riot, price controls for bread fail, the army steals grain from the countryside

  • ★★ John says no one had yet done anything about the famine, so the sans-culottes, poor labourers, started rioting. — 00:00:13
  • ★★★ John says the sans-culottes and Jacobins answered the famine with bread price controls, worse even than war with Austria; it failed miserably, and eventually the army was sent to take grain from the countryside. (playful) — 00:00:25

00:00:46 — The Committee of Public Safety and Robespierre; the Terror's 16,000 guillotinings and Marie Antoinette; decline of religion and class; guns vs guillotine; Robespierre's own death and the lesson of paranoia

  • ★★ John says this happened under the Committee of Public Safety, led by Maximilien Robespierre, a paranoid despot who foreshadowed Kim Jong-il, Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin. — 00:00:46
  • ★★★ John says Robespierre and the Committee, hating anyone tied to the Church or royalty, oversaw over 16,000 guillotinings in 1793–94: nobles, insufficiently revolutionary revolutionaries, oath-refusing clergy and Marie Antoinette. — 00:01:03
  • ★★ John says Marie Antoinette never said 'let them eat cake' and, like almost everyone killed in the Terror, posed no threat to the government. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ John says the former First and Second Estates became enemies of the new secular state, which led to a lasting decline in the relevance of religion and class to European governments and economies. — 00:01:38 · Europe
  • ★★ John says the Terror's guillotining is often seen as Enlightenment thinking run amok, but in fact more people were killed by guns during the Terror than by the guillotine. — 00:01:52
  • ★★★ John says Robespierre, paranoid that people wanted to kill him, inevitably got himself guillotined: a great lesson of history and life is that acting out of paranoid fear makes the feared thing happen. — 00:02:05

00:02:25 — Aside: the Revolutionary calendar (10-hour days, 100-minute hours) as Enlightenment thinking run amok

  • ★★ John says that amid famine, bankruptcy and many wars the Committee replaced the 'irrational and religion-y' calendar, renaming the months and making days of 10 hours and hours of 100 minutes. (playful) — 00:02:28
  • ★★ John says the calendar change, not the guillotine, would be an example of Enlightenment thinking run amok. — 00:02:53

00:02:57 — The Directory, the first military draft and Napoleon's seizure of power: from one supreme ruler to another

  • ★★ John says that after the Committee collapsed France passed a new constitution and from 1795 to 1799 was run by directors who stole elections and bungled the economy but did not behead 16,000 people. (playful) — 00:02:57
  • ★★ John says the French military succeeded largely because in 1793 France instituted the first military draft, giving it far more soldiers than anyone else. — 00:03:13 · France
  • ★★ John says the military was the only institution people trusted, which is why they were initially pleased when General Napoleon Bonaparte seized power. — 00:03:23
  • ★★★ John sums up: after more than a hundred thousand lives lost, a decade of suffering and a continent-wide war, France went from one supreme ruler to another. — 00:03:34 · France

00:03:44 — Zhou Enlai's 'too soon to say'; why study history: the past isn't past, history as an exercise in empathy, rational people killing

  • ★★ John calls the best quote on the French Revolution former Chinese president Zhou Enlai's answer, when asked in the 1960s about its impact, that it was too soon to say. — 00:03:44
    • number check: the 1960s — doubtful
  • ★★★ John says it is in a way still too soon: the Revolution brought forward conflicts that still define modernity, between secularism and religion, idealism and pragmatism, oligarchy and democracy. — 00:03:55
  • ★★★ John's first answer to the student question of why study history: the past isn't past; it still shapes the present. — 00:04:08
  • ★★★ John says that more than that, the study of history is essentially an exercise in empathy: imagining being a peasant, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette or Robespierre. (hedged) — 00:04:17 · perspective-taking > «the study of history is essentially an exercise in empathy.»
  • ★★★ John says history forces us to confront how people acting rationally, in their own and their countries' interest, can end up killing so many people and often themselves. — 00:04:31
  • ★★★ John believes thinking about those questions makes us better at living our little lives. (hedged) — 00:04:46

Humor (significant)

  • Recapping a France at war with almost all of Europe, John turns to the famine with mock restraint. — 00:00:13 > «Meanwhile, and I don't want to overemphasize this, no one has done anything to fix the famine!!!»
  • John explains the name of the poor labourers called the sans-culottes. — 00:00:18 > «known as the sans-culottes because they wore pants instead of shorts or... humorous outfits»
  • Having failed to steal grain from the rest of Europe... — 00:00:35 > «the French government sends its army into the countryside to steal grain from itself.»
  • John introduces the Committee of Public Safety. — 00:00:46 > «We suck at protecting public safety»
  • The Directory stole elections and bungled the economy... — 00:03:05 > «but didn't cut off sixteen thousand people's heads, so... bonus points for them.»
  • History makes us better at living our little lives... — 00:04:51 > «even if it is in a less fancy costume. In my case... a much less fancy costume.»

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