[fella]

"All because the rabble-rousers (among them, the Marquis de Sade, of all people!) had whipped the crowd into a frenzy, lying about the nature of the prison and its prisoners, lying about the problems France faced, lying about the intentions of the mob’s leaders, who wanted nothing more than to take power for their own benefit, to get revenge for imagined slights, and to wield the awesome powers of public opinion and the guillotine for their own warped ends."

It was the "Fake News" of its day with the same kind of people behind it with the same goals.

[DesertRhino]

“Wanted power for their own benefit?”

I give you the popes and good old Louis 14th.
Is your argument that they should have left the power in the hands of the king and his followers?
Sorry, the people storming the Bastille were heroes. The revolution went damned rough later, but the problem wasn’t the people reacting violently to a Monarch. It was the fact that for centuries they lived under a system of government that unjustly dominated their lives, claimed absolute rights to do so, and had no intention of going anywhere.

There is only one way out of that situation.

We should all just thank god that wasn’t needed in America. When our revolution happened, there was no massive seat of Monarchy with thousands of hangers-on to be brought to heel. When we beat the British, we had a free hand to construct a free government in a virgin land. A blessed opportunity.