There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
I wasn’t born in early 1800 but my school never mentioned the french revolution executions in a bad way but like “lol those fancy inbreds got axed”, they did mention “The Terror” as something about infighting among the revolutionaries, which was depicted as something sad.
But as you can clearly see, I remember dick about all that.
Anglos were/are extraordinarily freaked out about the terror
neither the French nor anyone else care about it quite so much
take from that what you will
Curious thing, eh?
Regardless of what they actually told me my takeaway was “axing kings=good, axing among revolutionaries = bad, which led to Napoleon, yet ultimately good cuz thanks to Napoleon latam colonies were able to declare independence, but actually meh cuz the people who ended up ruling the new countries were spineless bourgeois shitstains or feudal war lords”
They never mentioned dick about the Restitution or whatever was called that period where France got monarchs again, nor how eventually those shitstains got couped anyways.
