So Robespierre was really just riding the tiger? Thanks for that!
(I'm reminded again of Cromwell, who I think was also an idealist who found himself placed in charge without really wanting the role - except that, in his eyes, there was nobody else who could be trusted to do the job properly without betraying what they'd fought for.)
For some reason the French Revolution was never something I was able to study either at school or university - it fell between the gaps of the syllabus every time. However, we did take a detailed look at the Russian Revolution and there seemed to be a general assumption that we should already know what happened in 1789-onwards, because of all the comparisons people made both at the time and afterwards. (One interesting snippet of information is that when the people were rioting in Petrograd in February 1917, the Tsarist authorities first started to get worried when the crowds started singing La Marseillaise... I don't know if they were singing it in French or in a Russian translation, though. :)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-04-21 12:10 pm (UTC)(I'm reminded again of Cromwell, who I think was also an idealist who found himself placed in charge without really wanting the role - except that, in his eyes, there was nobody else who could be trusted to do the job properly without betraying what they'd fought for.)
For some reason the French Revolution was never something I was able to study either at school or university - it fell between the gaps of the syllabus every time. However, we did take a detailed look at the Russian Revolution and there seemed to be a general assumption that we should already know what happened in 1789-onwards, because of all the comparisons people made both at the time and afterwards. (One interesting snippet of information is that when the people were rioting in Petrograd in February 1917, the Tsarist authorities first started to get worried when the crowds started singing La Marseillaise... I don't know if they were singing it in French or in a Russian translation, though. :)