When eminent historian Francois Furet marked the Revolution's bicentenniel with the bold prognostication, "La Revolution est finie," he was bidding a fateful adieu to the strife, bloodshed, glory and tears that have marked the two centuries since Napoleon declared the same thing in 1799. Yet the very passion with which the Bicentenniel was celebrated belie the weakness of such a sumation. While most of France and the world hurrahed the Revolution with renditions of Les Marseilles and firecrackers on July 14, descendents of massacred Vendeans picketed the streets in protest of celebrating the Moloch Revolution. Many aristcrats wore black arm bands. The guillotine and Robespierre were scrupulously avoided at the official ceremonies with the words "That is not the Revolution we want to remember" while street-side hawkers sold the Revolution's gorrier side to tourists. Perhaps we have finally moved beyond the "Mother of Revolutions".....and maybe we still live in her wake. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the legacies the French Revolution has bequeathed to the modern world and how they will shape the world of the future.
The Revolution took its toll on France. With the final fall of the Napoleonic Empire, France was left exhausted, exsanguinated and embittered. At the beginning of the Revolution, France had been the most prosperous country in Europe. Economic growth would be crippled for a quarter century after 1815. France lost the international and industrial lead to its arch-rival England and would never be the imposing superpower of the absolute monarchy. Although people had been given a greater say in their government, this manifested itself more by unrest than actual solutions. The gap between rich and poor was greater than ever, and growing with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. France had a hard time settling into republicanism, haunted forever by the gory momentos of 1794, and would have 4 republics and 4 times as many constitutions before settling into the Fifth Republic of today.
The impact that the French example had on other countries was equally as great and disturbing. For the two hundred years since the Bastille fell, countries from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America have been inspired by the French Revolution. Often, the revolutions that have resulted have been even deadlier than the original. The French Revolution, as the "Mother of Modernity" as well as the "Mother of Revolution" is responsible for the conception of the three basic and sometime intermingling political undercurrents of the past two centuries; democracy, communism, and fascism.
The French Revolution, much more than its American predecessor, gave wing to the ideals of all those who yearned for the equality and tolerance of Enlightenment to be applied to governments. France, the most powerful nation of its time, was in a far more influential position than the break-away American colonies and naturally captured the attention of those sympathetic to democratic ideals from around the globe. And the French Revolution did give birth to democracy as we now know it
In the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 all men were declared equal under law and God. People were stated to have the right to governments that didn't oppress them. Freedom consisted of "being able to do that which does not harm others." Freedom of the press was declared, as was freedom of speech, religion and jury by one's peers. The French Republic was the first government to allow universal suffrage regardless of property. It was the first major country to have a black representative in its legislative. The French Revolution ended legal discrimination by race, ethnicity or religion. It did away with tax priveleges granted on the grounds of family name or established lineage, and provided equality of opportunity under law. In 1793, the French Republic became the first major country to use "democracy" to describe something that was actually desired rather than as a despicable state of mob anarchy. The early phase of the French Revolution was, and continues to be, very inspiring to all those who dreamed of more equity and liberty in their own nations.
By far the most menacing of all aspects of the French Revolution's legacy is the undeniable impact it had on the development of totalitarianism. The Terror and its invention of such modern concepts as genocide, nationalism, war-mobilized economy, and military-related youth groups has haunted the twentieth century imagination. Although the Committee of Public Safety was firmly committed to establishing a republican form of government, the methods it used were those of radical war dictatorship. The genocide that occurred in the Vendee and in rebelious towns such as Lyons, Nantes and Arras, where generals and proconsuls were ordered to "let them perish" was the first of its kind; murder not for a king, or a religion, but for the State. It served as the predecessor for the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge and the Holocaust of the Nazis. Entire cities were destroyed, children, women, old people, shot and drowned, because of actions undertaken by a fraction of the population. In such cities as Marseilles and Lyons, the names of the places themselves were erased. "Lyons made war on liberty, Lyons is no more." In Paris particularly, the Law of 22 Prairal, which abolished the use of witnesses, lawyers and juries for the accused, would pave the way for dictatorships where justice, supposedly sanctioned by the "people" was a completely arbitrary affair. Saint-Just, perhaps the most modern of all the Committee-members, once advised that instead of guillotining people that they be sent to perform grueling public labor. The Angkor Wat of Cambodia and Stalin's gulags would run on the same principle. Saint-Just's dream of a state were male children belonged to the Nation at 5, his and Robespierre's interpretation Rousseau's General Will to mean the annihilation of all opposed to what the "people" want, beat a clear path to Hitler and Lenin. As R.R. Palmer put it writing during World War II, "the revolutionary methods now used to overthrow democratic society were once used to bring it into being, and in that time it was not those methods that succeeded."
