Posted on 07/19/2012 3:29:55 PM PDT by Aspenhuskerette
The French celebrated Bastille Day last week, 219 years after beheading Marie Antoinette in the French Revolution's Reign of Terror. To this day, she's the poster child for upper-class excess, entitlement and insensitivity — the ultimate “1 percenter.”
However, Think Again before believing every demonization you hear. In fact, though a privileged aristocrat, Marie Antoinette was not only a faithful Good Samaritan, she actually never uttered the notorious catchphrase “Let them eat cake.” Never mind — social justice was at stake!
French revolutionaries declaring “liberty, equality and fraternity” ushered in an anti-democratic period of unlimited governmental power, civil strife and economic despair, though eventually Enlightenment principles transformed France into a vibrant democracy.
Today, France has Europe's most state-directed economy
(Excerpt) Read more at aspentimes.com ...
You are approximately correct with regard to local effect. Although a great many of the colonial elite remained Loyal to the King, and for them presonally it certainly was a revolution.
Our Revolution was, however, most definitely a “revolution” from a world history POV. As can be seen from its defining language, the most revolutionary statement in human history. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, etc.”
From a purely provincial POV our Revolution was more or less a continuation and completion of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which turned Britain into a constitutional monarchy. Our revolt was a conservative revolution to protect the threatened principles of the 1688 revolution.
Give the last word to Washington’s great adversary, King George III. The king asked his American painter, Benjamin West, what Washington would do after winning independence. West replied, “They say he will return to his farm.”
“If he does that,” the incredulous monarch said, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/man-who-would-not-be-king
The king was right.
Depends on your definition of "great."
The most objective definition is determined by the person's impact on history, not their goodness.
By that definition all the "great" monsters of history were great men. Alexander, Atilla, Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, etc.
Napoleon was not a good man, by any definition I can think of. But he most definitely was a great man, with great accomplishments in multiple fields. Military, law, civil administration, armed robbery, looting, etc.
And he was probably the greatest soldier of all time. France had for centuries been fighting with its neighbors over a few square miles of borderland. Under Napoleon it conquered all of Europe. Were it not for 10 miles of saltwater, he might have conquered the entire world.
Though to be fair the revolutionary regime had already performed astonishing military feats before Napo came along.
“The American ‘Revolution’ wasn’t really a Revolution “
That’s the way the Marxists like to portray it.
But, to the contrary, it was much more a revolution than those that exchange one absolute power elite for another, as did the French and Russian, it put in place a Constitution that based tenure on election, rather than accident of birth, and that was a revolutionary idea in the 18th century.
One crucial difference between the French and American revolutions is that the French revolutionaries killed their wealthy aristocrats, and then fought over the division of the loot. In the American revolution, it was property owners (even a small farmer was a property owner) who wanted to prevent the Crown from taxing them dry.
“Were it not for ten miles of salt water....”
.
You seem to forget the Russian winter.
As in WWII, had the continental tyrant been able to eliminate all opposition on the western front before turning to the eastern front, things might have turned out very differently.
It is generally accepted among historians that the British were the most effective opponents of Napoleon, that indeed the Continental System he attempted to force on his “allies” was the main cause of the war with Russia.
Not so much. The Glorious Revolution of the previous century had given ultimate power to the electorate in Britain. The electorate, to be sure, was a rather small subset of the population, but the principle was obviously one that would be expanded. And Britain was more or less the only country where it applied, the rest of Europe being absolutist.
Our revolution was essentially an attempt to maintain these principles against what the colonists saw as threats.
The truly revolutionary idea was that "all men are created equal." Not just a privileged electorate.
Revolutions often start out with those principles, but devolve into civil war and military dictatorship. Ours could have gone that way, and a lesser man in charge would have staged a military coup when his officers demanded it of him.
Our revolutionaries included some radicals, called at the time levellors, but, cooler heads prevailed, and we had George Washington in charge of the army.
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