Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Kandis Kip synjoined by staff writer Jane McGrath.
Speaker 1: Like canis Jane this morning, and I was having a
Speaker 1: bagel for breakfast, and I got to thinking about how,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a treat for me. It's sort of
Speaker 1: a luxury. Every now and then on the way to work,
Speaker 1: I'll stop at Einstein's and I'll grab a bagel, and
Speaker 1: I don't really question where my bread is going to
Speaker 1: come from. I have a loaf at home. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: stop by the Veigel shop. But for the people of
Speaker 1: France back around seventeen eighty seventeen eighty nine really took
Speaker 1: off bread was a huge point of contention because they
Speaker 1: didn't really have much. That's true, they were suffering from
Speaker 1: some really bad harvest and economic depression in general, and
Speaker 1: this was a problem. It means kind of a perfect
Speaker 1: storm sort of situation where um, not only were the
Speaker 1: people having the food issues, but the government was having
Speaker 1: any issues as well. And we don't typically think of
Speaker 1: the plague and other massive diseases as a good thing,
Speaker 1: but they kind of were in the sense that they
Speaker 1: kept France's population in check. But during this point in time,
Speaker 1: everyone was really healthy, they were living longer, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden there wasn't enough to go around. And
Speaker 1: there's been a couple of kings in the House of
Speaker 1: Bourbon who screwed a lot of things up. We had
Speaker 1: Louis the fourteenth, who was really excessive and had a
Speaker 1: lot of superfluous luxuries, and he didn't even like being
Speaker 1: in the middle of the dirty knts and squalor of Paris.
Speaker 1: So he built a castle called Versa. I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: all heard of it about um what was that twelve
Speaker 1: thirteen miles away from the city, so that you could
Speaker 1: have a retreat. And then Louis the fifteenth came in
Speaker 1: and he was more interested in being the boss at
Speaker 1: the bedroom than the boss of his subjects. And then
Speaker 1: Larie's sixteen, who we now married Marie Antoinette. He was
Speaker 1: the one who famously said, you know, help us God,
Speaker 1: we are too young to reign. And it's true, you know,
Speaker 1: if you look at our country today, we have a
Speaker 1: new presidental lect who's going to be taking on a
Speaker 1: massive financial deficit, and a couple of wars, and you know,
Speaker 1: he's coming into a really hard position. And we could
Speaker 1: say that the same was pretty comparable for living sixteen.
Speaker 1: That's a financial debt unhappy subjects, that's true. And um,
Speaker 1: you can see the contrast from then to now. Is
Speaker 1: that back then, the way they had it in France anyway,
Speaker 1: was that the nobles and the upper people in the
Speaker 1: clergy didn't even have to pay taxes and uh and
Speaker 1: this is sort of contrary to our sensibilities now where
Speaker 1: where the if the more money you have, the more
Speaker 1: money you owe to the country. Basically, and this was
Speaker 1: part of the financial problems is that the more um
Speaker 1: money problems they had, the more they wanted to tax
Speaker 1: people to raise money. But they could only tax the
Speaker 1: people who were suffering at this time when important tax
Speaker 1: I think it's called the gabelle um if I'm pronouncing
Speaker 1: all right, um, But it was a tax on salt actually,
Speaker 1: which not only was you know, an edit thing for food,
Speaker 1: but it was also very important for preserving food, you know,
Speaker 1: back then before they head refrigerators. Yeah, and so people
Speaker 1: at this time, if they didn't have the salt to
Speaker 1: preserve their food, they didn't have enough flower for bread.
Speaker 1: They were foraging as best they could, but you know,
Speaker 1: in urban areas like Paris that wasn't working too well
Speaker 1: because there wasn't enough land of forage in and then
Speaker 1: the outlying provinces there was, you know, such severe winters
Speaker 1: and hot summers that nothing was really working in anyone's favor.
Speaker 1: And so we see, like Jane said, the perfect storm
Speaker 1: at the beginnings of an uprising that would eventually blossom
Speaker 1: into the French revelation. That's right. And another element of
Speaker 1: the perfect storm is basically the ideas that were becoming
Speaker 1: more and more popular even among nobility. They were discussing
Speaker 1: these ideas brought up by Rousseau and Voltair of equality
Speaker 1: and liberty, and basically when all these things came together,
Speaker 1: a revolution bubbled up. And what's funny about these ideas
Speaker 1: and these Enlightenment thinkers is that these were very popular
Speaker 1: subjects and salons especially. People would get together and the
Speaker 1: people who at the time to really sit around it
Speaker 1: contemplate the universe and really to start thinking that aspects
Speaker 1: of their life weren't fair. But the poor people really
Speaker 1: didn't have the time and luxuries for this. But I
Speaker 1: think there were people in the middle class, in the
Speaker 1: upper middle class, and maybe even parts of the upper
Speaker 1: class who were looking out for them. And there were
Speaker 1: certain members who really started to contemplate the idea of
Speaker 1: equality and that it should be available to everyone. And
Speaker 1: one thing that was really sort of strange was um
Speaker 1: this idea of equality and death. And we have to
Speaker 1: remember that during this time a lot of middle age
Speaker 1: ideas still permeated the justice system in Europe, and so
Speaker 1: when people of a lower class war sentenced to death,
Speaker 1: it was done by scary things like quartering or being
Speaker 1: burned or be it wasn't browned. Yeah, and now it
Speaker 1: hurt that it hurt a lot. I'm sure we can't
Speaker 1: speak from personal experience. But whereas the nobles, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, they deserved a more humane death and less painful, yeah,
Speaker 1: a gentleman's death. They were usually beheaded, which again we're
Speaker 1: not saying that doesn't hurt. We really imagined that it does.
Speaker 1: But it was seen as more humane and faster death
Speaker 1: at least. Yeah. And something really interesting came out of
Speaker 1: this whole debate about being equal in death, and that
Speaker 1: was the creation of a death device by a member
Speaker 1: of the Constitutional Assembly named Joseph Gillotan, that's right, and
Speaker 1: he Um there were other machines similar to it in
Speaker 1: other European countries at the time that he Um kind
Speaker 1: of perfected it being introduced it to France, and it
Speaker 1: became synonymous with the French Revolution because of the ideas
Speaker 1: of equality bubbling up there and because of the eventually,
Speaker 1: although he didn't quite foresee this, the massive killings, and
Speaker 1: they would end up using this death machine basically a
Speaker 1: lot during the following years. And so it's ironic is
Speaker 1: that what was intended to be a humanitarian device was
Speaker 1: eventually repurposed into a death machine. And that's the crazy
Speaker 1: thing about the guillotine. And Um we were joking earlier,
Speaker 1: can you can you really say if if it hurts
Speaker 1: or if it doesn't because it is so quick And
Speaker 1: doctors today have done some research into the guillotine and
Speaker 1: they look at how it actually kills someone, and you know,
Speaker 1: they talk about, you know, the severing of the skin
Speaker 1: and then the bone and then the spinal cord and
Speaker 1: then the brain death that results. And people today look
Speaker 1: at it and say, I better it hurts a lot.
Speaker 1: It's considered hitarian as it was back then. No, not
Speaker 1: at all. And a really interesting rumor that sort of
Speaker 1: sprung up around the guillotine and the concept of decapitation
Speaker 1: is that after someone's decapitated, they're still sort of alive,
Speaker 1: at least for a couple of seconds, for a little while.
Speaker 1: Their legends surrounding one of the famous people who were killed,
Speaker 1: Charlotte Corday. Um legend is that the executioner actually picked
Speaker 1: up her head afterwards and it actually looked at him,
Speaker 1: I think, indignantly and look like, hey, come on. And
Speaker 1: Charlotte where Dave was famous because she was from one
Speaker 1: of the outlying provinces in France. She was she wasn't
Speaker 1: a revolutionary, or she was to a certain extent, but
Speaker 1: she was essentially, um, a provincial girl who had been
Speaker 1: hearing about all of the riots in Paris, and she
Speaker 1: was blaming everything on this one journalist name Murat. That's true,
Speaker 1: and he was quite I mean, you could say he
Speaker 1: was responsible for a lot of the violence. He intentionally
Speaker 1: instigated all all this violence through his propaganda and his writing, definitely,
Speaker 1: and she knew exactly where to find him. He had
Speaker 1: a really bad skin condition that required him to soak
Speaker 1: in a tub for a couple of hours a day,
Speaker 1: and she came to Paris with the intent of finding
Speaker 1: him and killing him. It's kind of ironic trying to
Speaker 1: prevent the violence fight killing this guy. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: was I was thinking, clearly, and it kind of backfired
Speaker 1: on her, right because he ended up being the martyr
Speaker 1: out of the situation, and people were celebrating when she
Speaker 1: was guillotined exactly. And that's how the French Revolution was.
Speaker 1: You know, a hero one day, a martyr the next,
Speaker 1: absolutely hated the next day. It was. It was crazy,
Speaker 1: these these turning hides. But you know, we could go
Speaker 1: on and on about some of these. The motley crew
Speaker 1: of the French revolutions, I like to call them that,
Speaker 1: just to get down to basics. I mean, we know
Speaker 1: who the main players are. We've got Louis and we've
Speaker 1: got his wife, Marie Antoinette. And there was so much
Speaker 1: ire directed toward her. She was a total spendthrift and
Speaker 1: she was expected to produce an air to the throne.
Speaker 1: She hadn't done that yet, and um, the people of
Speaker 1: France were just furious with both of them, and there
Speaker 1: were scandals surrounding everything that she did, right, Like, um,
Speaker 1: you wrote about these sort of scandals that that happened
Speaker 1: around her, and one of the articles on the site,
Speaker 1: uh where she would say let them eat cake and
Speaker 1: she was having supposedly affairs as well and having just
Speaker 1: in general just this extravagant lifestyle. Yeah, and some of
Speaker 1: the rumors surrounding her, like the hold at the meat
Speaker 1: cake thing. We know today that she didn't actually say that,
Speaker 1: but she did project an air of, you know, carelessness.
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson, who you know obviously have to referred to
Speaker 1: him and every single podcast we do, he apparently said
Speaker 1: about heard that if someone had shut that lady up
Speaker 1: in a convent, the French Revolution would never have happened.
Speaker 1: And that's a good point. And he was he was
Speaker 1: a relative sympathizer with the French Revolution, Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the French Revolution used as its model the American Revolution.
Speaker 1: And I think that when we look at the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence and the ideals of life, liberty and the
Speaker 1: pursuit of happiness, and then we look for the parallels
Speaker 1: and the French Revolution, you know, the sort of rallying
Speaker 1: cry there was um liberty, equality and brotherhood or brute
Speaker 1: galate and fraternity, I don't profess to be a native
Speaker 1: French speakers, and the acast him from the south. That
Speaker 1: um that that was the general governing idea, and it
Speaker 1: was important because no one had ever thought to go
Speaker 1: up against the king, and people in general wanted to
Speaker 1: love the king. You know, he was sort of the
Speaker 1: father of the country, and he was supposed to be
Speaker 1: looking out for everyone, and and there they kind of
Speaker 1: kept him around for a little while. Even after yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and there was affection for him, and even when their children,
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinete and Louie's children were born, there was genuine
Speaker 1: affection and celebration for the birth of the new king.
Speaker 1: But when things again things started going poorly, they tried
Speaker 1: to get the king on board with this idea of
Speaker 1: a new sort of constitution which therapy power more evenly
Speaker 1: divided among the classes. Jane was saying that the clergy
Speaker 1: and the upper classes, the airs doctor state, they had
Speaker 1: all the voting power. Essentially, they were maybe three percent
Speaker 1: of the population. They were making the laws that governed
Speaker 1: everyone else. And Louis was basically pigeonhouled into hiring a
Speaker 1: finance minister to sort everything out because things had gotten
Speaker 1: so financially messy, and he hired a man named Jacques Necker,
Speaker 1: and this guy became pretty important for doing something that
Speaker 1: hadn't been done in a hundred and seventy five years,
Speaker 1: and that was calling together, uh, these States General UM.
Speaker 1: And this was this group. Obviously the first and second
Speaker 1: Estates were the clergy and the nobles who had the
Speaker 1: most power, and the eard Estate UM at these meetings
Speaker 1: began to rise up and demanding, uh, just making demands
Speaker 1: of the king that he wouldn't give into. And one
Speaker 1: of the most important members of the third Estate was
Speaker 1: a lawyer named Maximilian robes Pierre, and he became a
Speaker 1: very outspoken advocate of the lower classes, and people really
Speaker 1: respected ropes Pierre. He had a lot of really silient
Speaker 1: things to say, and he was actually called the incorruptible
Speaker 1: because he seemed so ethical and so wise and everything
Speaker 1: that he did and then ended up not being quite true.
Speaker 1: And you know, at least at the beginning, it seemed
Speaker 1: like his heart was in the right place. And so
Speaker 1: the Estates General continued on with their work and they
Speaker 1: were you know, they actually included members of the upper
Speaker 1: class to come and meet with them because they weren't,
Speaker 1: you know, aren't supporters of the group, because obviously they
Speaker 1: saw their power being slowly cut off. But some would calm,
Speaker 1: they'd all meet and have their assemblies. And then one
Speaker 1: day they went to the palace to meet as usual,
Speaker 1: and the doors were shut and reality what was going
Speaker 1: on is that someone in the palace was preparing the
Speaker 1: room for an address that the king would give later.
Speaker 1: So they weren't shutting them them out. No, not exactly.
Speaker 1: I think that this has been interpreted in many ways
Speaker 1: throughout history, but I think the general of court is
Speaker 1: they were not being bolted out. It was just an
Speaker 1: unfortunate timing either way, though, they believed that they were
Speaker 1: being bolted out and that's all they needed to build.
Speaker 1: So they went to the closest room they could find,
Speaker 1: which was an indoor tennis court, and they made it
Speaker 1: that they would not rest until France had a new constitution.
Speaker 1: That's right, and this seems to be a very good
Speaker 1: step um in the people's um pursuit of more power.
Speaker 1: But actually um, by like the next month, the people
Speaker 1: were getting so frustrated they didn't think that peaceful reform
Speaker 1: was quite possible, and so they ended up storming the
Speaker 1: best deal, and they went there to get guns and
Speaker 1: gunpowder and essentially show Louis that they were not playing
Speaker 1: around anymore. And I think a really famous anecdoubt from
Speaker 1: the French Revolution is that Louis was out hunting the
Speaker 1: day that that happened, and when he got back in,
Speaker 1: one of his advisers told him what had happened, and
Speaker 1: he asked, is it a revolt? And his adviser said, no, sire,
Speaker 1: it's a revolution. Like it was a big deal, and
Speaker 1: I don't think Louis comprehended the gravity of the situation.
Speaker 1: And on that day the guards were slaughtered, prisoners were
Speaker 1: set free. And what's more, the best deal was this fortress,
Speaker 1: this medieval fortress, and it was a symbol to the
Speaker 1: people of the king's corruptibility because there were prisoners kept
Speaker 1: there who were convicted of crimes sort of outside the
Speaker 1: balance of common law, and no one knew what happened
Speaker 1: inside this prison, but there were awful tales that people
Speaker 1: were tortured and maimed and terrible things went on. So
Speaker 1: the people of Paris just started knocking it down, brick
Speaker 1: by brick by brick, and they certainly made their point
Speaker 1: with the storming of the best deal that it was
Speaker 1: a very dramatic episode. And so it seemed that the
Speaker 1: people of Paris had united, Louie was going to be
Speaker 1: forced into going along with the new constitution. Things were
Speaker 1: going pretty well until they were rumors swirling around town. Uh,
Speaker 1: courtesy of Mraz crazy newspaper. Well, I shouldn't say crazy,
Speaker 1: that's not fair. Uh, courtesy of his newspaper in which
Speaker 1: he broadcasts all this propaganda that the king and his
Speaker 1: courtiers had stomped on the treat Caluur, which was a flag.
Speaker 1: It's still the flag of France to day. It's the
Speaker 1: red and blue of France, separated by the white of
Speaker 1: the House of Bourbon, which represented the royalty. Anyway, rumors
Speaker 1: that they had stomped on the flag, they had desecrated
Speaker 1: the simpole of the the symbol of the revolution, certainly
Speaker 1: incented the people, and at this time the women of
Speaker 1: parish really took action, and they stormed first side. This
Speaker 1: time they went for bread, and they went for Marie
Speaker 1: Antoinette's head, that's right, and they just barely missed her.
Speaker 1: She had just fled from her room when they when
Speaker 1: they stormed in and but they eventually got what they wanted.
Speaker 1: They got what the this king to to sign away
Speaker 1: the Declaration of the Rights of Man and which basically,
Speaker 1: you know, took power away from him significantly and actually
Speaker 1: moved the royal family to toiletries as in the heart
Speaker 1: of Paris, so they were under lock and key. And
Speaker 1: then there were rumors again that Marie Antoinette was plotting
Speaker 1: with her relatives in Austria to take control of Paris,
Speaker 1: and they thought, well, you know, there's still a chance
Speaker 1: that the royal family can reclaim power. And Marie Antoinette's lover,
Speaker 1: han Zaxolovon first and actually orchestrated an escaped for the
Speaker 1: royal family, and they nearly made it to Austria. They
Speaker 1: were captured in Varenne, which was just miles from the
Speaker 1: Austrian border. So Louis was brought back. He just made
Speaker 1: him look worse, I'm sure, as trying to escape. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he didn't look like he was going to cooperate, no,
Speaker 1: and so any ire toward him always magnified a million times,
Speaker 1: and he was put on trial, and at this point
Speaker 1: he wasn't even referred to as King Louis anymore. He
Speaker 1: was called by his surname Cape, which actually wasn't even
Speaker 1: his surname. He was a Bourbon, so they got his
Speaker 1: name wrong too, you know, to add insult to injury.
Speaker 1: And this is when we see the National Assembly which
Speaker 1: a draft at the Declaration of the Rights Man, they
Speaker 1: had drafted this constitution. They seem unified until this point.
Speaker 1: And then when you have a monarch on trial and
Speaker 1: you have the extremists they want to put him to
Speaker 1: death like a common person, and you have some people
Speaker 1: who still have some loyalty to the crown, it was
Speaker 1: split and there was frustrations at this time as well.
Speaker 1: Keeping the king alive obviously might encourage um other countries
Speaker 1: with that were monarchies at the time, to go in
Speaker 1: and restore power, because the king was obviously uh he
Speaker 1: when he was writing to other powers trying to get help,
Speaker 1: he was saying like, look, what's happening here, The same
Speaker 1: thing could happen in your country, and so if you
Speaker 1: help me out, you know, we can we can stop
Speaker 1: this sort of revolutionary fever going on. And that's certainly
Speaker 1: was a factor. And I believe it was the Duke
Speaker 1: of Prussia who wrote the Revolutionaries the letter later published,
Speaker 1: and one of the newspapers, maybe Courtisy Murra, that if
Speaker 1: anything happened to Louis, they would come in and burn
Speaker 1: Paris to the ground. And that was all that a
Speaker 1: lot of people needed to hear. And so Louis was convicted,
Speaker 1: put to death, and that was the end of him.
Speaker 1: So Louie's dad, the National Convention is a split. We
Speaker 1: now over his death and now we see a new uprising.
Speaker 1: And we should mention that these different factions did have
Speaker 1: specific names. The moderates for the Giron downs, and then
Speaker 1: the radical members were the Jacobins, and that's where Robespierre was.
Speaker 1: So who was the leader of that? Do you remember
Speaker 1: robes Pierre? You're about to see him get really corrupt.
Speaker 1: A side note anyway, So then the other group we
Speaker 1: see emerges a song coo lot and that translates into
Speaker 1: those who do not wear breeches or those without breeches.
Speaker 1: And these were the artisans of Paris, and they weren't
Speaker 1: they weren't walking around without pants. They were walking around
Speaker 1: without the little knee shorts. And they're actually wearing longer pants.
Speaker 1: Wearing longer pants, yeah, because the custom was to wear breeches.
Speaker 1: And you know, cute little tights and the danky little
Speaker 1: buckle shoes and all the other things that sweet little
Speaker 1: pre revolutionary frands people wore. And these were people who
Speaker 1: were ruling the local areas. Was yes, yes, So we
Speaker 1: start to see power again shifting contracting, and the ideals
Speaker 1: of the revolution in the first place, or the ideals
Speaker 1: of the reform that people originally wanted, they start to
Speaker 1: get really muddied and confused because we know that at
Speaker 1: first the people had wanted sort of a constitutional monarchy. Well,
Speaker 1: obviously that wasn't gonna happen now because the monarch is dead,
Speaker 1: So who was going to rule? There was a really
Speaker 1: important question. And this is when Robespierre really gained in power.
Speaker 1: And uh he obviously he sort of filled the void
Speaker 1: of power at this time, and um, he was able
Speaker 1: to solidify it by killing a lot of his political
Speaker 1: enemies at the time, and he would eventually go on
Speaker 1: to condone these killings publicly. At first, like the events
Speaker 1: of the September massacre, he sort of turned his head
Speaker 1: away and he thought, you know, well, these are the
Speaker 1: people of Paris. They're the ones who are acting like
Speaker 1: like beasts and and killing their fellow countrymen. I'm not
Speaker 1: really a part of this, but later on, like during
Speaker 1: the Great Terror and the Great Fear, he himself would
Speaker 1: compose the lists of counter revolutionaries who would be put
Speaker 1: to death. And it's important to remember at this time
Speaker 1: that there was really not a lot of peace and France.
Speaker 1: You know, people were fearing every day that they would
Speaker 1: be accused of counter revolutionary activity. It was like a
Speaker 1: witch hunt, really was right, and they did have some
Speaker 1: semblance of justice when we tried to institute the revolutionary
Speaker 1: tribunals to try these people who were accused of anti
Speaker 1: revolutionary activity. But if you look at the stats, I
Speaker 1: think about nine out of ten people who were tried
Speaker 1: were found guilty and killed, and one of those was
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette. She wasn't going to be around for too
Speaker 1: much longer. She continued to be suspected of plotting with
Speaker 1: Austria to overthrow the revolutionaries, and she was put on
Speaker 1: trial and one of the most poignant charges that came
Speaker 1: against her was molestation of her own son. And Marie Antoinette,
Speaker 1: as we now, she had been you know, sort of
Speaker 1: a twit. No one really she but no, and that
Speaker 1: was absolutely not true. At all. It was a horrible,
Speaker 1: salacious rumor started and she sort of hung her head
Speaker 1: when all the other charges against her were red. But
Speaker 1: when that one was read, that was when she spoke
Speaker 1: up and said no. And she implored the other women
Speaker 1: in the room to sympathize with her and to really
Speaker 1: think about how they would feel if they were charged
Speaker 1: with such a terrible thing I can't image. And she
Speaker 1: won their sympathy for an instant and then like that
Speaker 1: it was gone. Yeah. And when Louis was put to
Speaker 1: death at the guillotine, he at least was driven up
Speaker 1: to the stand in an closed cart, but she was
Speaker 1: driven in an open cart, a common criminals cart, so
Speaker 1: people could throw things at her and spit and jeer,
Speaker 1: and so it seemed like the people hated her even
Speaker 1: more than they hated the king. And they did, they did.
Speaker 1: And when she went up to the stand, I think
Speaker 1: people really wanted to see her cry and prostrate herself,
Speaker 1: and that didn't happen at all. She was very dignified
Speaker 1: until the moment that she died. Pretty pressive. I couldn't
Speaker 1: do that, I know. But as much as the people
Speaker 1: wanted marantoin Net dead, and as much as her death
Speaker 1: symbolized for the people of France and for the revolution,
Speaker 1: it's off it. It wasn't enough. The revolution still was
Speaker 1: not over, that's right. And as you said, Rospierre was
Speaker 1: coming up with with lists of people that that he
Speaker 1: felt needed executed, and eventually he ended up executing one
Speaker 1: who used to be his ally, D'Anton um. And he
Speaker 1: was a leader of the opposing party with different ideas
Speaker 1: for where the revolution should be taken. And that's what
Speaker 1: was so crazy about the splits and the factions of
Speaker 1: the National Convention is that they kept splitting in factions
Speaker 1: that had split off, you know, split and enough themselves.
Speaker 1: And one of the biggest things that was really upsetting
Speaker 1: the people here in this assembly was that they feared
Speaker 1: so much that outside countries would attack France that they
Speaker 1: went to war to keep their borders clear. And that
Speaker 1: meant that there weren't enough people in the city to
Speaker 1: quell any violent uprisings that occurred. So people were either
Speaker 1: for the French revolute snary wars, they were for you know,
Speaker 1: fighting in the cities. No one knew where their affiliations
Speaker 1: really were. And danton and robes Pierre had been I
Speaker 1: to eye all along, but then ribes Pierre one day
Speaker 1: said nope, that's enough, Danton must die. And when he
Speaker 1: went to the guillotine, I think he famously said, um,
Speaker 1: I regret that I go before that rat Robespierre. So
Speaker 1: he knew that Robespierre would would come soon. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you can see the public opinion is starting to get
Speaker 1: um a little against Robespierre at the time, because Rospierre
Speaker 1: started looking a little crazy. Um. He actually a few
Speaker 1: months after he executed Danton, he uh, he started this
Speaker 1: festival of the Supreme Being and he had this paper
Speaker 1: mache mountain um that he paraded on through the streets
Speaker 1: of Paris, and he looked like he was making himself
Speaker 1: a god. Really. He had this sort of cult that
Speaker 1: he started was sort of he was a Daist cult,
Speaker 1: and he just wanted um morality um. As much as
Speaker 1: he wanted to get rid of Christianity in France, he
Speaker 1: thought that morality was pretty essential to to a civil society. Um.
Speaker 1: So he's tried to unite the people with the Supreme
Speaker 1: Being festival, when really it backfired on him and people
Speaker 1: are like, he's crazy, We've got to get him out
Speaker 1: of here. And he had done some other extremist things too.
Speaker 1: He tried, after the death of Luie and toward the
Speaker 1: shift away from the monarchy, to really really rid France
Speaker 1: of any feelings at all that it may have had
Speaker 1: towards the monarchy, or towards Christianity, or even toward time.
Speaker 1: That's right, and what was I found fascinating. I didn't
Speaker 1: know this until I started researching for this podcast, actually
Speaker 1: was the idea of UM changing the concept of time
Speaker 1: through what they called the Revolutionary Calendar, and they basically
Speaker 1: reconstructed the days in the hours and basically what they
Speaker 1: did UM they still had twelve months in a year,
Speaker 1: but they ended up renaming everything and they ended up
Speaker 1: taking out the seven day week and instead each month
Speaker 1: would have three decades decades. I don't know how it's pronounced,
Speaker 1: but UM three periods of ten days. And so this,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, UM is no longer seven
Speaker 1: day week. It would be a nine day week with
Speaker 1: one or sorry at ten day week with one day
Speaker 1: of rest in UM nine days of work. And so
Speaker 1: this was sort of an attempt to get rid of
Speaker 1: the the Christianity in the country, so they no longer
Speaker 1: have the sense of Sundays with the Catholic church or
Speaker 1: in these other sort of Catholic or a Christian sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Sunday being the proverbial day of worship. Unrest was
Speaker 1: based out completely with the hope that people wouldn't even
Speaker 1: recognize that this day was meant to be Sunday. That's right,
Speaker 1: And they actually they tried to constitute a new clock. However,
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure how this would work because they
Speaker 1: put extra seconds in the day from what we have UM.
Speaker 1: But at least what I read is that they each
Speaker 1: day had ten hours UM. Each hour had ten minutes
Speaker 1: or a hundred minutes, and each minute had a hundred seconds,
Speaker 1: which you can see how this dramatically the revolution, the
Speaker 1: whole sense of is trying to dramatically change how people
Speaker 1: thought about everything, and the people who had the masterminds
Speaker 1: behind these really radical change is are beginning to lose
Speaker 1: sight of what's going on in the streets. And meanwhile
Speaker 1: the people in the streets are harping on the bread again.
Speaker 1: You know, where's our bread? We're still going hungry. Nothing
Speaker 1: has changed. The only thing that really has is that
Speaker 1: we don't hate literally, we just live in a constant
Speaker 1: state of fear that we're going to be called a
Speaker 1: counter revolutionary. That could be something like you know, bad
Speaker 1: nothing gropes Pierre, or it could be something like plotting
Speaker 1: against the revolution, or even just calling someone madame or
Speaker 1: monsieur instead of citoyan, which meant citizen. So really it
Speaker 1: was time for a revelation to come to an end.
Speaker 1: I hadn't accomplished what it set out to accomplish. And
Speaker 1: there was a quick and sustinct way to do this,
Speaker 1: and that was to kill Ropes Pierre and all of
Speaker 1: his allies. And that didn't quite ended. They ended up
Speaker 1: setting up a directory after after that, right, and um,
Speaker 1: that didn't quite satisfy anybody's needs. Like there were two
Speaker 1: opposing views and this sort of tried to um straddle
Speaker 1: the middle, and it ended up satisfying no one. And
Speaker 1: so they called in one of the biggest war heroes
Speaker 1: at the French Revolutionary wars, and that was good, only
Speaker 1: appall lyambent apart. So he came in and he was
Speaker 1: supposed to reunite friends, and he did restore religions. That
Speaker 1: was something that he did accomplish with people of friends,
Speaker 1: and he did restore you know, a semblance of order
Speaker 1: and and there was food and there were resources for them.
Speaker 1: But as we know, he went on to become a dictator,
Speaker 1: that's right, and you wouldn't call himself king. Obviously they
Speaker 1: didn't have good idea stores as a king, but he
Speaker 1: did end up being what was called the first Console,
Speaker 1: and I think eventually the Emperor. So obviously France had
Speaker 1: a long way to go before it really reached the
Speaker 1: ideals of the revolution, if it ever did. And that's
Speaker 1: something that you can pursue more for yourself when you
Speaker 1: read How the French Revolution worked on how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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