Making sense of this crazy world

Having looked at revolutions in England, America and France, the idea of liberty is what powers through most and it gave rise to a political ideology that we’ll be familiar with today: liberalism. So, this episode takes stock of where we are at in the wake of the French Revolution with liberal ideas.

This is the episode where I try to put the French Revolution in perspective. Just how significant was it?

I left things last week in France with the 18 Brumaire coup which had left France governed by three consuls: Abbé Sieyès, Napoleon and, just for the record, Roger Ducos. I called the last episode “Reaction”.  Well, I’m calling this one “Delayed Reaction” because that’s what it seems like to me. There is not a counter-revolution going on but a reaction to what was seen as the excesses of the revolution, and the first reaction that brought in those three consuls wasn’t seen as going far enough, not by Napoleon anyway. So, what kind of government did Napoleon bring about?

We left things last week with the death of Robespierre and the end of the Terror. In Paris, people were literally hugging each other in the streets, such was the relief that it was over. Well, in politics as much as in chemistry and physics, actions nearly always result in a reaction, and that’s what happened in France. Things had gone too far, time to rein the runaway horse in.

Last week I ended things with the execution of Louis XVI. This week I move on to look at the ways in which the French Revolution radicalised and resorted to terror.

Last week I mentioned that most of France thought the Revolution was over as the Constituent Assembly settled down to write a constitution for France but I also said a few weeks ago that the genie had been let out of the bottle, well, the bourgeoisie were still struggling to get the lid back on that bottle with the genie safely inside. And they were to fail. To go back to how I ended things last week, what it all goes to show, again something we see so much today, is that as more people get politicised, they splinter into different factions and head in different directions and it’s so much harder to regain control.

This week we’ll look at how, having pushed the revolution forward only to lose control, the bourgeoisie, men of property lest we forget, tried to haul the reigns in on the runaway horse and regain control.

We should, in so many ways, see the French Revolution as the model for future revolutions. Last week, I talked about “letting the genie out of the bottle” and that’s what happened, and it proved so difficult to put the cork back into the bottle. So, what we’ll look at today is the way in which the bourgeoisie, at least temporarily, lost control of events. Just as so often. those that start things today lose control.

This episode looks at the meeting of the Estates-General that, it was hoped, would decide the future of France and it was here that the bourgeoisie seized control of events from both the King and the aristocracy, and demanded a constitution.

It has to be one of the greatest ironies of history that the revolution that would ultimately remove the heads of many an aristocrat was actually started by the aristocracy, and by their selfishness at that. And that's what we'll look at in this episode and you will see its links to issues we face today.