On May 16, 1966, the Chinese Communist Party released a document expressing concern that bourgeoisie and counterrevolutionaries were trying to hijack the party. The May 16 Notification, as it became known, would spark the Cultural Revolution, an all-encompassing political movement that sought to purge the country from anti-Maoist opposition and thought.

Millions of people were arrested and terrorized by the Red Guards, the Cultural Revolution’s paramilitary youth organization. Those arrested were forced to endure brutal “struggle sessions,” where they were tortured and humiliated in public.

By the time the revolution ended in 1976, possibly as many as three million people had been killed. The violence and persecution during the revolution was catastrophic, and the decade arguably ranks as one of China’s darkest periods.

10 The Execution Of Fang Zhongmou

Fang Zhongmou, a Communist Party member and veteran of the People’s Liberation Army, felt proud when her two older children got caught up in the furor of the Cultural Revolution and became Red Guards. Fang’s enthusiasm, however, began to wane after her daughter got sick and died following a trip she made to see a Mao Tse-tung rally in Beijing.

Her husband was then accused a few months later of being a capitalist roader, a vague Maoist slur which referred to somebody who was working to betray the ideals of the Communist Party and lead China to a capitalist system.

Due to a past accusation of her father being a Nationalist spy, it wasn’t long before Fang was suspected of being a dissident as well. Like her “capitalist-roader” husband, she was put in detention multiple times and subjected to struggle sessions by the authorities. While home one day in 1970, Fang angered her husband and her son Zhang Hongbing after criticizing Mao Tse-tung.

Fang’s family duly reported her to the authorities, and she set the family portrait of Mao on fire in retaliation. She was then taken away by a soldier but not before Hongbing beat her on orders from his father. For the crime of “attacking Chairman Mao Tse-tung,” Fang was executed by firing squad on April 11, 1970. Neither Hongbing nor his father attended the execution.

In the years following his mother’s death, Hongbing realized what a terrible thing he and his father had done. With the help of his uncle Feng Meikai, Hongbing was able to influence his province’s legal system to clear his mother’s name in 1980. He has since become a lawyer, active in raising awareness of the Cultural Revolution’s victims and fighting to have his mother’s grave turned into a memorial.

9 The Paralysis Of Deng Pufang

From ordinary peasants to high-ranking party members, nobody in China was truly safe during the Cultural Revolution. Not even Deng Xiaoping, the high-ranking leader best remembered for his post-Mao capitalist reforms in China in the 1980s, was safe from the revolution’s purges.

In 1967, while serving as the Communist Party’s general secretary, Deng was denounced as a capitalist roader and removed from his position. He then spent the next two years under house arrest in Beijing, forbidden to leave or see his children.

While the worst thing that most of his children suffered was being forced to work in the countryside, Deng’s oldest son, Pufang, became paralyzed after an encounter with the Red Guards. In 1968, a group of Red Guards captured Pufang on the campus of Beijing University and tortured him for the sole reason of being his father’s son.

After clubbing him, the Red Guards locked a dazed Pufang in a fourth-story room. Pufang has never been able to remember what happened next. Either his torturers pushed him out an open window or he attempted suicide by jumping out the window himself.

Fortunately, Pufang survived the fall. But he did break his back and become paralyzed. Since the Dengs were political pariahs, Pufang was denied the treatment he needed. By the time some specialists finally examined him in 1974, Pufang was already permanently paralyzed.

While still bound to a wheelchair today, Pufang has worked tirelessly the past few decades for the rights of the handicapped in China. In 2003, he was awarded the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights for his humanitarian efforts.

8 The Murder Of Bian Zhongyun

One of the earliest victims of the Cultural Revolution was Bian Zhongyun, a 50-year-old vice principal at the prestigious Beijing Normal University Girls High School. In June 1966, some of the school’s students began to criticize school officials and organize revolutionary meetings.

Bian’s college degree and bourgeois background made her a natural target for the revolutionaries, although many of them were ironically from privileged families themselves. Over the next two months, Bian was repeatedly harassed by her students and even beaten during a meeting.

On August 4 of that summer, Bian was tortured and warned not to come to school the next day. But she decided to come in that morning anyway. It was a courageous decision that would cost Bian her life.

First, her teenage students beat and kicked her. Then they whacked her with nailed-filled table legs. The attack was so terrible that Bian soiled herself and was knocked unconscious before dying of her wounds. Nobody was ever punished for her murder, and even today, the perpetrators have yet to step forward.

In January 2014, Song Binbin, a famous Red Guard and one of Bian’s students at the time she was killed, made a public apology for her death. Although Song claimed that she had no direct part in Bian’s beating, she felt guilty for not being able to stop it.

Some critics, however, felt the apology was insincere and that Song had a larger role than she was willing to admit. Bian’s husband, Wang Jingyao, was also not impressed with the apology. In one interview, he said that Song was a “bad person,” although he believed that the Communist Party and Mao Tse-tung were also responsible.

7 The Down To The Countryside Movement

The Down to the Countryside Movement was a massive relocation program that ultimately sent over 17 million young urban Chinese into rural areas across the country between 1968 and 1980. While some of these “sent-down youth” left the cities voluntarily, the vast majority were coerced against their will.

Due to a variety of factors, including urban unemployment and the Cultural Revolution’s disruption of the education system, Mao Tse-tung proclaimed in 1968 that it was “very necessary for the educated youth to go to the countryside and undergo reeducation by the poor peasants.”

Ideally, the relocation program would cultivate the sent-down youth’s commitment to party ideology and foster economic growth in underdeveloped areas. The young urbanites, fresh from high school, university, and even elementary school, were forced to endure backbreaking labor jobs and the extreme poverty common in the countryside at the time. Although some of the youth saw the policy as a great opportunity for adventure or patriotism, others resented the harsh work and poor living conditions and yearned to return home.

Most of the sent-down youth did eventually return home, but the many years they spent in the countryside remained lost. They’ve become known as a lost generation, an immense group of people who were denied the chance to finish school and maximize their potential. As one Beijing history professor put it, “From the perspective of a historian, from the perspective of the entire nation’s development, this period must of course be negated.”

6 The Ping-Pong Spies

Rong Guotuan, Fu Qifang, and Jiang Yongning were three of the biggest names in Chinese ping-pong during the 1950s and 1960s. Rong was especially popular, and he was considered a national hero for being the first Chinese to win the World Table Tennis Championships in 1959. Despite playing for the Chinese, all three men had originally come from Hong Kong, which at that time was controlled by the British.

As foreigners, the three ping-pong greats were deemed untrustworthy by their countrymen during the Cultural Revolution, and they were all accused of being spies in 1968. Fu was subjected to struggle sessions and beatings by his own teammates, and he eventually committed suicide on April 16 of that year.

Jiang would hang himself a month later. His hobby of reading newspapers, along with a childhood picture he had of himself wearing a Japanese flag during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, was enough to convince the authorities that Jiang was a Japanese spy.

Given the humiliating accusations against him, Rong decided to follow in Fu’s and Jiang’s footsteps. Early in the morning of June 20, Rong wrapped a rope around the branch of an elm tree and hanged himself. In his pants pocket, Rong left a note that pleaded for his innocence.

“I am not a spy,” he wrote, “Please do not suspect me. I have let you down. I treasure my reputation more than my own life.” The National Sports Commission remained unconvinced, however, insisting that the three men were operating a Hong Kong spy network.

5 The Death Of Lao She

Lao She, the pen name of the Manchu writer Shu Qingchun, is widely regarded as one of the greatest authors of modern Chinese literature. His 1937 novel Rickshaw Boy, the tragic story of a poor rickshaw puller in Beijing, is so popular that there’s a statue of the main character on the city’s Wangfujing Street. Such was the admiration for the “people’s artist,” as Lao She was nicknamed, that Chou En-lai, China’s first premier, asked him in 1949 to come back to China after he had moved to New York three years earlier.

On August 23, 1966, as the Cultural Revolution began to gain steam, Lao She and 20 other writers were transported to Beijing’s Temple of Confucius, where a mob of 150 teenage girls beat them with bamboo sticks and theater props in a brutal struggle session. Later that night, after the writers were taken to the city’s Culture Bureau offices, Lao She was beaten for hours without end after he refused to wear a placard that said he was a counterrevolutionary. Finally, around midnight, the mob stopped and Lao She was allowed to go home.

The next day, after earlier leaving his house in the morning, Lao She’s body was found drowned in a lake. It’s believed that the humiliation Lao She suffered during his struggle session drove him to kill himself, although his wife Hu Jieqing suspected that he was murdered.

The exact circumstances surrounding Lao She’s struggle session are shrouded in mystery. It’s uncertain who organized the session and whether Lao She attended voluntarily or against his will. If Lao She did go freely, he might not have known what the unidentified organizers—possibly a trio of younger writers who disliked him—were plotting.

4 The Dao County Massacre

In summer 1967, a rumor began to spread around Hunan Province’s Dao County that there was going to be an invasion of mainland China by Taiwan. The Kuomintang, Taiwan’s ruling party and the former rulers of China from 1928 until 1949, was allegedly going to cooperate with antirevolutionaries to take back the mainland.

The antirevolutionaries were also planning to conduct a massive purge in the county, wiping out all the members of the Communist Party and the peasant leaders in the local government. The invasion was a completely groundless rumor, but the county government’s confirmation that it was true set off a massacre that claimed the lives of over 4,500 people in only two months.

Many of the victims were members of the Five Black Categories, a group that the Communists identified as landlords, rich farmers, counterrevolutionaries, bad influencers, and rightists. Some of the victims were killed by armed militias in their own homes, while others were given a mock trial and then killed by mobs.

Victims were variously shot, decapitated, buried alive, and in some instances, blown up with explosives. The violence got so out of hand that it spread to nearby counties, eventually resulting in another 4,000 deaths.

When all was said and done, over 14,000 people were thought to have participated in the massacre in Dao County. By the 1980s, 52 of the participants had been arrested and given prison sentences, but the vast majority were never punished.

3 The Cleansing The Class Ranks Campaign

To “cleanse the class ranks” of counterrevolutionaries and capitalists, the Communist Party operated revolutionary committees nationwide to root out its perceived enemies. From 1968 until 1971, the committees launched a campaign of terror across the country. One area especially hit hard was Inner Mongolia, where an alleged secret Mongolian separatist party was said to be carrying out counterrevolutionary activities. Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Mongolians, were arrested, maimed, or tortured. Another 22,900 people were killed.

Other provinces, such as Hebei and Zhejiang, also experienced huge purges. As part of a crackdown on an alleged Kuomintang spy ring, 84,000 people were arrested in Hebei. Over 2,900 suspects are recorded as having died from injuries they received from being tortured. In Yunnan, as estimated by the province’s Cleansing the Class Ranks Office, almost 7,000 people suffered “death from enforced suicide.”

The Cleansing the Class Ranks Campaign began to fizzle after only a year in 1969, although it lasted in some areas until 1971. The large-scale arrests and executions eventually unnerved Mao Tse-tung, who feared that the purges had gone too far and could hurt his public image.

2 Project 571

During the 1960s, the great general Lin Biao was one of Mao Tse-tung’s most trusted men. He was vice chairman of the Communist Party and Mao’s designated successor. While Lin survived the early purges of the Cultural Revolution unscathed, Mao became increasingly worried about his influence in the party. By 1971, Lin and his supporters had fallen out of favor with the Maoists, and Lin found himself isolated from the party leadership.

On September 13, 1971, Lin, his wife, and his son Liguo boarded a plane and tried to flee to the Soviet Union. The plane’s fuel was low, and the Lins were in such a hurry that they didn’t bother to bring a copilot or navigator with them. As government officials followed the plane on radar, it passed over Mongolia and then crashed. There were no survivors, and while the nine corpses that were aboard were scorched, autopsies conducted by the Soviet Union were later able to identify the remains of the Lins.

In the days before the crash, the Chinese government had uncovered a conspiracy by Lin Biao to launch a coup. The plot, code-named Project 571, also intended to assassinate Mao Tse-tung. According to the party’s account, the Lins attempted to escape China after the coup failed. Their plane crashed, however, after running into technical difficulties.

Despite what the Communist Party maintains, there is still a great deal of controversy over Project 571. Critics believe that it was Lin Liguo, not his father, who was probably the head of the conspiracy. In fact, Lin Biao might have been entirely innocent.

The cause of the plane crash has also been disputed. Some skeptics have suggested that the plane was sabotaged or shot down. Strangely, the plane’s pilot Pan Jingyin was posthumously given the honorary title of “Revolutionary Martyr.”

1 Cannibalism In Guangxi Province

According to the research of Zheng Yi, a Chinese dissident and writer, hundreds or possibly thousands of people were cannibalized in the province of Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution. During his time as a Red Guard in Guangxi, Zheng heard stories about the cannibalism, but he never witnessed any incidents himself. In the mid-1980s, Zheng returned to Guangxi to see if the stories had any truth to them. Shockingly, he found and interviewed many participants, and few of them spoke with any remorse or fear of reprisal.

Zheng found that the participants ate their victims not out of starvation but as a commitment to political ideology. Simply killing the revolution’s enemies wasn’t enough. They believed it was necessary to eat and completely destroy them.

Participants ate brains, feet, livers, hearts, and even genitals. They held human flesh barbecues and banquets with their friends and families. In Wuxuan County, where the cannibalism was most prevalent, victims would be stalked by crowds and then pounced upon. Some of the victims were cut and skinned while they were still alive.

In one incident in 1968, a man was beaten on the head, castrated, and then skinned and cut open alive by a mob. Children and elderly people also took part in the cannibalism. One old woman was infamous for cutting out and eating victims’ eyeballs. In another incident, a female teacher was killed by her students and barbecued at their school.

The incidents of cannibalism in Guangxi remained unknown outside of China until Zheng left the country and publicized the episode in his book Scarlet Memorial in 1993. The Chinese government has banned Zheng’s book, and even today, officials are reluctant to talk about what happened in Guangxi.

Tristan Shaw is an American blogger interested in crime, literature, and history. His first two books, Mexico’s Unsolved Mysteries and 20 Unsolved Mysteries of Japan, are now available on Amazon for Kindle.

The American Revolution may have guaranteed our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But for better or worse, America and the rest of the world still owes a great deal to the French Revolution.

Many of the ideas and ideals on which our societies are based were born in the rebellious fervor that accompanied the French Revolution. But it also influenced changes in less critical areas like food, fashion, and zoos.

10 The Idea Of Equitable And Humane Capital Punishment

Championed by Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the head-chopping machine was adopted in 1792 as the sole method of execution approved by the state. And it was, truly, a huge improvement over other methods of execution, such as death by hanging, drowning, or burning. Worst of all was the wheel, which broke the arms, legs, and backs of the condemned as their bodies were draped over wheels with their faces “turned to Heaven, to remain until it pleases God to dispose of them.”

Promoted for its effectiveness and efficiency by French surgeon Antoine Louis, the guillotine was first nicknamed the louisette or louison. Later, it became known as the national razor.^[1]

Though the number of lives taken by the guillotine is impossible to confirm, the machine was truly a national phenomenon. Records estimate the number of executions by the guillotine to be between 520,000 and 650,000. In Paris alone, 1,376 counterrevolutionaries were beheaded between June 10 and July 28, 1794.

Another revolutionary nickname for the guillotine was “the widow” because 88 percent of the decapitated were men. Post-revolution and until its last use in 1977, less than 1 percent of those who found their necks under the blades of the louisette were women. Comparatively, just 3.6 percent of those executed in the US are women.

9 The Metric System

In 1793, the meter was invented to standardize and unify the over 800 measurement units that were used in France prior to the revolution. Based on the distance from the North Pole to the equator along the Paris meridian, the new system replaced a panoply of units often based on the extraordinarily variable human body, such the foot (pied) and thumb (pouce). Other measures included the bushel (boiseau) and the acre (arpent or septier).

As the Englishman Arthur Young wrote when he was traveling in France from 1787–1789, “[In] France, the infinite perplexity of the measures exceeds all comprehension. They differ not only in every province, but in every district and almost every town.”

So it was a helpful innovation to have measures that crossed town borders and were used by everyone. Still, the new democratic system was not immediately embraced and did not become the law of the land until 1799.^[2]

All things considered, the French transition was nonetheless a rapid success. On the other side of the Atlantic, Thomas Jefferson gave conversion to the metric system a shot in 1789. Alexander Graham Bell tried again in 1906, and the US government has written act after act to encourage its adoption—in 1866, 1968, 1975, 1988, 1996, and 2004.

Nothing doing. The US general population is very attached to its feet and yards.

8 The Baguette (‘Equality Bread’)

In 1793, an official government decree stipulated that all bread must be created equal. No more heavy round balls of bread (the boule) for the poor and light, flaky loaves for the rich. Everyone would eat the same staple.

Whether this new loaf was truly the baguette is open to debate. Several legends circulate and are difficult to prove. But it is incontestable that the baguette was born in the revolutionary period.

One theory attributes the invention of the baguette to tax evasion. In 1790, there was talk of levying both an indirect and a direct tax on bread—on the boule. By changing both the flour used and the form confected, boulangers could sell what they liked, tax-free.

Another theory is that the baguette was introduced by a young Viennese officer–turned-baker who arrived in Paris around the time of the Second French Revolution in 1830, bringing with him recipes for beer-leavened, vapor-baked bread in an elongated form.^[3]

Those who want to hang on to the Frenchness of the baguette might prefer to attribute it to Napoleon’s Great Army. The baguette’s cylindrical shape and lighter weight was so much easier for soldiers to pack and transport, especially since the average boule weighed 1–3 kilograms (3–6 lb).

7 The Fabulous Restaurant Scene In Paris

Prior to the revolution, the French population, estimated at 26 million, included some 400,000 nobles. After the revolution, about 15,000 remained. So there were multitudes of excellent cooks and serving staff out of work, looking for something to do. Many opened a new sort of restaurant where diners could sit at their own tables rather than common ones. They could also eat their choice of dinner on fine china and served with flourish and grace.

The word “restaurant” originally designated a restorative bouillon of concentrated meat juices. By the middle of the 18th century, just before the political turmoil, the term had come to represent the place that provided such restauration. The first restaurant to offer choices beyond the restorative bouillon opened in Paris in 1872.

With the flight of the aristocracy, 1789 saw the appearance of some 100 Parisian restaurants in the modern sense.^[4] By 1819, there were over 3,000 of them.

6 Standardization Of Language And The Invention Of ‘Canadian French’

Fashioned in China in the early 16th century, the toothbrush made its way to Europe 200 years later. The first toothbrushes appeared in England in 1780. They were precious sorts of objects, made of silver or ivory and often embedded with jewels.

Dental hygiene was certainly not foreign to France prior to the revolution. But the toothbrush was looked upon with suspicion and was not popularized in the Hexagon until Napoleon favored it during the First Empire.

In Louis XVI’s day, the mouth was not a pleasant place. As such, vowels were kept closed. Moi was pronounced “moy,” with only a slight opening of the mouth. Peasants, who had a few other worries, pronounced the word “mwa” with little concern for whatever odors they might be releasing to their company.

In 1789, not many peasants actually spoke French, though. With 30-odd dialects, French was a foreign language to the majority of its population. Unifying the country linguistically was a big deal.

In 1793, “linguistic terror” imposed French on the entire population of the territory. Popularization of the language, though not immediate, was a priority. The country would no longer speak the king’s French. Instead, it would open its mouth for greater inclusion.^[5]

Although the Treaty of Paris in 1763 had effectively put an end to France’s presence in North America, Canadians remained attached to the French monarch. They felt no need to abandon their accents for the popularized version being promoted in Paris. Thus, Canadian French was born.

5 Fashion For All

Goodbye culottes. No more tights for men!

Under the Old Regime in France, clothing was dictated by one’s rank in society. At the National Assembly, for example, nobles wore cloaks and vests embroidered with gold and hats adorned with feathers. The clergy wore ecclesiastical robes in red, purple, and gold.

Both of these privileged classes also wore culottes (breeches). The rest of the representatives, the Third Estate, dressed in plain black suits with white ties and simple hats. This mandated dress code was a visual demonstration of inequality.

By 1792, revolutionaries were flying banners criminalizing culottes. True republicans were “free and without breeches.” Dressing according to the mandates of the Old Regime could be life-threatening for a nobleman, whose feathered hat risked permanent removal from his breeches.^[6]

Fashion was also revolutionized and democratized for women. A noblewoman in Old Regime France would have been hard-pressed to get dressed without help. By the time Josephine took the throne beside Napoleon, fashions had changed.

Josephine was as interested in fashion as Marie Antoinette was, but much of what Josephine wore could be slipped on single-handedly. Skipping forward a couple of centuries, Coco Chanel, an impoverished, orphaned child raised by Catholic nuns, would dominate the Paris fashion world for nearly six decades.

4 The Public Zoo

Although the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes dates back to the end of the 16th century, it did not become a modern zoo until the animals of exiled or guillotined aristocrats needed a new home.

In November 1793, three private collections of live, exotic animals that had been seized by the government from aristocratic families found a home in the Jardin des Plantes. That same year, a decree was passed outlawing the presence of wild animals in the streets of the capital. They, too, made their way to the Jardin des Plantes.

Finally, in 1794, the surviving animals from the royal collections in Versailles and Raincy joined the others and a true zoo with 58 animals was officially opened by a decree passed by the Convention.

Today, the zoo is home to more than 1,200 animals in the heart of Paris.^[7]

3 The Democratization Of Gastronomy

The Almanach des Gourmands, first published in 1803, refers specifically to the culinary revolution that necessarily followed the political one. With such a sudden and dramatic redistribution of wealth, the Almanach was something of a how-to guide for fine dining.

The first edition was dedication to a famous gourmand, Monsieur d’Aigrefeuille, and mentions Jean-Jacques-Regis de Cambaceres specifically as having the most distinguished table in all of Paris.

Cambaceres and d’Aigrefeuille were revolutionary figures from Montpellier in the south of France. As Napoleon’s Second Consul, Cambaceres spent exorbitant amounts on cuisine. A full third of his official budget was spent in his kitchen.

He sent for regional specialties from across Europe and beyond. His ox came from Hamburg, his hams from Westphalia, and his wines from Oporto, Madeira, and Malaga. Promoting good food was definitely on his revolutionary agenda.

Today, France’s Gastronomic Encyclopedia includes the entry “a la Cambaceres” as a method of cooking certain delicacies including lobster, pigeon, and foie gras. Cambaceres’s most lasting contribution to the world of cooking, though, undoubtedly lies in his popularization of it.^[8]

2 Revolutionary And Modern Medical Techniques

Under the Old Regime, medicine in France was as stratified as the rest of the society. Physicians had authority over surgeons. Not just anyone could become a doctor, and if you were able to become a surgeon, then you could not become a physician. The two branches of medicine were subject to different laws, different rights, and different social standings.

By 1792, the ideals of liberty and equality had spread to medicine. Wars following the revolution provided the context for surgeons to influence and change the medical world as never before.

In 1792, Dominique Larrey, a surgeon in the Imperial Guard, introduced the idea of triage, from the verb trier (“to sort”). Etymologically, trier means to separate into three, which is what Larrey did on the battlefield.

Some wounded were beyond hope (group 1), others may or may not have survived with medical intervention (group 2), and still others stood a good chance of recovery (group 3). Naturally, the last group was given priority by the triage nurse, a newly created position on the battlefield and in hospitals across the country.^[9]

1 The Implementation Of A Red Cross–Like Medical Service

Larrey and fellow surgeon Dr. Pierre-Francois Percy practiced Red Cross services three-quarters of a century before its establishment. Larrey invented the horse-pulled, “flying ambulance” (ambulance volante) that could transport up to four wounded quickly and in relative comfort to the nearest hospital. Then Percy went a step further. In 1799, he introduced the mobile surgical unit that could take the operating table onto the battlefield.

This new French mobile medicine did not take nationality or affiliation into consideration when treating the wounded. Larrey and Percy treated all without differentiation—to the extent that they could. Even if it took another few decades for the idea to catch on universally, the pilot program was successfully in place, thanks to the belief in liberty, equality, and fraternity born of the revolution.

Incidentally, the move toward universal health coverage and socialized medicine in France is largely attributable to Dr. Guillotin, who oversaw the establishment of the first health committee in parliament in 1790.^[10]

Vive la Revolution!

The French Revolution changed everything. France’s kings were replaced almost overnight by the most radical government the world had ever seen. France was suddenly a beacon of freedom: “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” was the motto of the revolution: it is still used to defend liberalism today.

But the revolution wasn’t all positive. Thousands of innocent people lost their lives and the country was torn between different groups who used force to crush rebellion. It led France into dictatorship and, eventually, back to the days of kings. Here, we’ve rounded up ten of the most dreadful atrocities of the French revolution.

Top 10 Pretenders to the Thrones of Europe

10 Beheading Louis XVI

The beheading of Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette was one of the biggest events of the French Revolution, but it didn’t have to happen. Before he was king, Louis XVI was quiet, dedicated to his studies and painfully shy. It took him seven years to consummate his marriage to the beautiful and intimidating Hapsburg heiress. When he became king he was cautious and indecisive, eager to be loved. In another age he would have been a great king, but he was entirely unsuited to the political crisis of the time.

People around him took advantage of his weakness to seize more power. Louis was little more than a figurehead. It was no surprise when the new government voted to abolish the monarchy shortly after.

Some revolutionaries argued against executing Louis, but the revolution was in full swing and the public hated him. Louis XVI was killed by guillotine in January 1793.

The move shocked many across the world since Louis had always been seen as a moderate king. His death enraged nearby European countries and led to a war that might have been avoided. He faced his death fearlessly: with his final breath, he forgave those who condemned him and hoped that no more blood would be spilled.^[1]

9 Toppling Of Statues

Executing Louis wasn’t enough: later that year, the rebels decided to remove all trace of the old kings from the country. They started with the tombs of St Denis, the traditional resting place of France’s royals.

To begin with, the masons were happy just to destroy the old Carolingian statues and other symbols of royalty. But within a month they were hammering into the old vault that held the kings from the House of Bourbon. When they were in, they started destroying the old coffins. Some of the kingly remains were put on public display, while others were dumped into a large burial pit, to cries of joy from the crowd. Many people came to watch—so many that the labourers struggled to do their work. According to eyewitnesses, members of the crowd grabbed at the bodies when they could, taking stray hairs, teeth and other things as personal mementos. These acts were later condemned both within France and across the world, but by that time it was too late.

After the Bourbon Restoration, the kings were retrieved from the pit and moved to the crypt in the basilica, but the damage was already done: many of the kings were unrecognisable.^[2]

8 The Law of Suspects

The revolution started because the rebels wanted everyone to be free and equal. After they won, though, their anger didn’t come to an end: instead, they started hunting down anyone who might be a threat. This period is now known as the Reign of Terror, and it resulted in thousands of innocent deaths.

The Reign of Terror started with the Law of Suspects, which granted the government the power to accuse pretty much anyone of being a rebel. They attacked the priests, who were driven underground—for a while, being Catholic was actually illegal. In the end, anyone who might have been connected to the old nobles could be imprisoned and executed.

Over two years around 500,000 people were accused—a huge number for the time. So many were accused, in fact, that the prisons were too full and people had to be put under house arrest. Though most were eventually allowed to walk free, around 16,000 people were killed—and many thousands more died in prison. Under the law, anyone whose “conduct, relations or language [showed them to be] partisans of tyranny … and enemies of liberty” was arrested and put on trial.^[3]

7 Lyon Erased

Not everyone in France supported the revolution. The city of Lyon backed the moderate Girondins, a group who were part of the revolution but were not as bloodthirsty as the others. The rebel leaders considered Lyon a centre of royalist support, so they laid siege to it in 1793. Over the course of the fighting over 2,000 people were killed in Lyon and the city was conquered. The revolutionaries had won, but they had further plans for the city.

In October, the National Convention issued a decree calling for Lyon to be destroyed. Everyone who lived in Lyon was to have their weapons taken away. They would be given to revolutionaries. Any building “inhabited by the wealthy” was to be torn down, leaving only the homes of the poor, factories, and some monuments.

They even planned to purge the city’s name from history. The city’s name would be erased: Lyon would be called Liberated City (Ville Affranchie) instead. They planned to build a column with an inscription on it saying: “Lyon made war on Liberty; Lyon is no more.” Fortunately, this project was never finished.^[4]

6 Girondins Executed

France’s new government had two main groups: the Girondins and the Montagnards. The Girondins were moderates: they wanted to build a free, capitalist, democratic country where everyone had a say in how they were ruled—regardless of who they were. They were supported across France but the people of Paris liked the Montagnards more.

They were extremists who “wanted everything levelled”. Anyone seen as elite had to give up their status or be executed. The groups got along well to begin with, but fell out over Louis’s death. The Montagnards wanted to kill him, but the Girondins wanted the country to vote on it. The Montagnards said they were plotting to save the king and called them traitors.

Things boiled over on the streets of Paris. A group of soldiers and citizens surrounded the government buildings and demanded the Girondins be kicked out of the government. The Montagnards duly did so. Some Girondins were able to escape, but a few months later, those who were left were rounded up and guillotined.^[5]

10 Real Countries Straight Out Of The Handmaid’s Tale [DISTURBING]

5 Drownings at Nantes

The city of Nantes was a center of revolution, but much of the countryside surrounding it was royalist. The region rose up in rebellion, leading to the Battle of Nantes. After this, the new French government decided to purge the city of anyone who still supported the monarchy. To do this, they sent Jean-Baptiste Carrier, one of their most committed supporters.

Jean-Baptiste took his job very seriously. In around five months, between 12,000 and 15,000 people were killed by his order. Nantes lies on the Loire, which Jean-Baptiste called “the national bathtub”. He and his men built special boats called lighters which were specifically designed for drowning prisoners. The captives would be shackled to each other, often naked, and herded onto the boats—which had trap doors on the bottom. The boats were then sunk with the prisoners on board. The elderley, pregnant women and children were all drowned without distinction.

In the end Jean-Baptiste’s methods were too extreme even for the revolution: he was recalled to Paris by the Committee of Public Safety, put on trial and executed by guillotine.^[6]

4 Law of 22 Prairial

Over the course of the Reign of Terror, thousands of people were imprisoned, some for absurd reasons. By June 1794, the prisons of France—particularly Paris—were overcrowded, so action had to be taken. Robespierre and his allies drafted a new law which would allow trials to be concluded much quicker: they pushed this law through the Convention and it was passed on 10 June 1794.

It meant that people could be put on trial for simple things like ‘spreading fake news’ or ‘seeking to inspire discouragement’. Citizens were expected to confront or report their neighbours if they expressed any kind of opposition to the government.

When these people were put on trial, they weren’t treated fairly: the judges and jury only had three days to come to a conclusion, and they had to choose whether to allow the accused to go free or be put to death.

This new law marked the beginning of the Grand Terror. Executions per day increased dramatically across France, and most of those killed were undoubtedly innocent. The Grand Terror came to an end after two months, but not because people were horrified by the killings. No, the new law had also made it so members of the Convention could now be put on trial. Looking to preserve their own skins, the members of the Convention removed Robespierre and guillotined him, bringing an end to the killings.^[7]

3 The Massacre in the Vendee

The revolution was supposed to be a movement that freed the French lower classes and gave them liberty and security. But anyone who opposed the new government was harshly punished, even those who were lower class. In the early days, the church was singled out for its wealth and excess. The revolutionary government veered between atheism and a new state religion, the Cult of the Supreme Being, but they were united in their desire to destroy the old Catholic system.

In the Vendee, however, the people rose up to protect their priests and churches from the new revolutionary government. When the government ordered them to form a conscript military unit, they rebelled, joining together in local militias which were collectively known as the Catholic and Royal Army. This alarmed the new government, who sent the army to tackle the problem. After a series of pitched battles, the Catholic and Royal Army was defeated.

But the government didn’t stop there. Determined to prevent another such uprising, the government sent General Louis Marie Turreau with twelve columns of troops to destroy to Vendee. Farms, villages, supplies and forests were destroyed, and the soldiers killed without restriction. When it was over, General Francois Joseph Westermann wrote a letter back to the government saying: “There is no more Vendée… According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all.”^[8]

2 Law of the Maximum

Unlike many other atrocities on this list, the Law of the Maximum was implemented with good intentions—though the government was forced to do it. One of the biggest reasons people joined the rebellion in the first place was because food was too expensive, but by 1793 even the basics were going back up in price. The enrages, a collection of anti-elite protestors who might today be called Marxists, argued that the nobility had been replaced by greedy merchants. Action was needed to take away their wealth and help the poor.

The government passed the Law of the Maximum in response. It set a maximum price for goods, from bread and wine to iron and shoes. Merchants had to display a list of prices outside their stores and, if any of their prices were above the maximum, they would be fined. Instead of going to the government, the fine went to whoever informed the authorities about the illegal pricing, encouraging people to rat out merchants who ignored the law.

It had a disastrous impact on France. While merchants did reduce their prices, it left them with almost no money. The less honest shopkeepers began watering down their goods, disguising ash as ground pepper, starch as sugar and pear juice as wine. Farmers in rural areas began hoarding their produce because they couldn’t get a good enough price in the cities, meaning that people in the cities starved.

The result was a black market where the rich could still buy the goods they needed, while the poor had no access to food at all. These famines were fixed temporarily when the government sent soldiers to take food from the farmers and bring it to the city by force, but this only caused more unrest.^[9]

1 September Massacres

After Louis was killed, the government fell into chaos. No-one knew who was in charge. In the meantime the Paris Commune, who were supported by the armed mob, had all the power. Chaos reigned as the new government fought over who should be in power, alongside issues like the economy, the army, and the justice system.

What dominated, however, was a fear of counter-revolutionary backlash. The new movement had been denounced in Britain, Austria and Prussia, and war loomed on the horizon. Meanwhile, French royalists were gathering support in other parts of the country. The revolutionaries feared that, if a royalist army was to attack Paris, the new revolutionary government would fall. In particular, they came to believe that the inmates of the city’s prisons would join with the counter-revolutionaries if given a chance. These fears were exacerbated when it came time for the new army to leave the city, with the people believing it would leave the city vulnerable to a prison break.

Between the 2nd and 6th of September 1792, the inmates were attacked by revolutionary mobs, with over 1000 being killed in the space of a single day. Half the city’s entire prison population was massacred, with corpses left mutilated in the streets. The revolutionary government sent letters to regional governments saying that conspirators in the city’s prisons had been executed. The act was repeated elsewhere: murders of prisoners took place in 75 of France’s 83 departments.^[10]

10 Things We Owe To The French Revolution

There are many heroes of the American Revolution, some of them near mythological figures, such as Molly Pitcher, Paul Revere, and Nathan Hale. Many others, whose sacrifices and services contributed immeasurably to American independence are overlooked by the historical record, at least by most Americans. For every Lafayette, steeped in fame and remembrance, there are others whom history has, by and large, consigned to near oblivion. They shouldn’t be.

Without the ten men listed here, the Revolution would likely not have been won. Each willingly put their lives or fortunes on the line in the interest of establishing American independence from the British Empire. Yet their efforts, and their sacrifices, are overlooked by most Americans. Here are ten forgotten heroes of the American Revolution who earned the recognition and gratitude of succeeding generations.

10. Abraham Whipple

Abraham Whipple, despite possessing a meager formal education, taught himself advanced mathematics and the principles of navigation. As a seafarer in colonial Rhode Island he developed the reputation of an honest tradesman and highly capable mariner. He achieved personal wealth as both a merchant seaman and a privateer during the French and Indian War. Siding with the patriots early during the troubles with Great Britain in the 1770s, it was Whipple who captured the British revenue cutter Gaspee, one of the earliest acts of American defiance against the Crown.

When the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775 Whipple commanded two ships under the authority of rebel leaders in Rhode Island. After transporting badly needed gunpowder from Bermuda to Philadelphia the Continental Congress confiscated his ships, assigned them to the newly formed Continental Navy, and commissioned Whipple as the Navy’s first Captain. He served for the next five years in several ships, capturing or destroying more British vessels than any other officer of the Continental Navy, including the far more famous John Paul Jones. In 1780 the British captured Whipple ashore when the city of Charleston fell.

Whipple turned to farming after the war, becoming one of the founders of Marietta, Ohio. Except for in that region, and in his ancestral Rhode Island, he is a forgotten man, though his contributions to the success of the patriotic cause were substantial.

9. John Stark

John Stark served in the celebrated Rogers’ Rangers during the French and Indian War, where he developed a life-long contempt for the “gentlemen” officers of the British Army. He farmed in New Hampshire after that conflict, and on April 23, 1775, following word of the fighting at Lexington and Concord, Stark rejoined the militia as a Colonel, commanding the First New Hampshire Regiment. By early June Stark and his regiment were with the Continental Army surrounding Boston.

Stark led his men with distinction at Bunker Hill, where his regiment provided the rear-guard action when the Americans were forced to retreat. He then served in the siege of Boston, the ill-fated invasion of Canada, and the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. Following the latter he returned to New Hampshire to recruit more troops for Washington’s army. There he encountered political machinations over promotion and resigned his commission. His service was not yet finished however.

When Burgoyne and his Indian allies swept down upstate New York from Canada, Stark returned to service, commanding New Hampshire and other Continental troops during the Saratoga Campaign. Stark commanded the American troops during the crucial victory at the Battle of Bennington. The victory over Burgoyne’s Hessian troops forced the British to stop their advance while deep in the New York woods. Stark remained active with the American Northern Army for the remainder of the war, when he returned to his New Hampshire farm, and the relative obscurity he retains today.

8. Thomas Sumter

In the 2000 film The Patriot, Mel Gibson portrays an American planter and guerrilla fighter named Benjamin Martin, said to be loosely based on Francis Marion, South Carolina’s famed Swamp Fox. The character also follows the exploits of another, lesser known South Carolina guerrilla fighter named Thomas Sumter, known to his men and enemies as the Carolina Gamecock. Like the fictional Martin, Sumter had a plantation in the High Santee which the British burned, commanded irregulars in a campaign against the British, and had his command nearly wiped out.

Sumter earned his nickname after fighting British Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s detachment at the Battle of Blackstock’s Farm. Tarleton reported to his superior, Lord Cornwallis, that the American fought like a gamecock. The battle itself was a small affair, one of several harassing actions conducted by the Americans to disrupt British communications and supply lines in the Carolinas. Sumter’s continuous harassment of Cornwallis led the British commander to identify the Gamecock as his “greatest plague”.

Following the war Sumter entered politics, serving in the US House of Representatives and in the Senate until he resigned in 1810. He was one of those men who possessed a personality enabling him to alienate even his friends, perhaps one reason his fame, considerable during his lifetime, did not last long following his death. He outlived all other generals of the American Revolution, dying in 1832. Fort Sumter, site of the first shots of the American Civil War, was named for him.

7. Haym Salomon

Born in Poland in 1740 to a Sephardic Jewish family, Salomon became well-versed in European finance and learned to speak and write several languages, including German and French, before moving to England. In 1775 Salomon left for New York, where he entered the mercantile trade as a financial broker. In New York he found his sympathies lay with the Sons of Liberty. During the war he commanded no troops, fought in no battles, and wrote no stirring documents in support of the cause. His heroism was more subtle.

Salomon conducted espionage activities along with others of Washington’s spy rings, leading to his arrest in New York. The British could not convict him, though they held him captive, forcing him to serve as an interpreter for their Hessian mercenaries. Salomon used the position to encourage the German troops to desert. He was again arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death. He escaped, fled to Philadelphia, and established an office as a broker, helping to raise funds for the Continental Army. Salomon succeeded to the point he eventually raised the equivalent of $16 million in today’s money for the Revolutionary effort.

Without his efforts the final major campaign leading to the British surrender at Yorktown could not have been undertaken. During the war Salomon purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars using his personal fortune. After the war the debt was worth less than ten cents on the dollar, and he died, age 44, in Philadelphia in 1785, penniless for all intents and purposes.

6. Seth Warner

During the late colonial period, the region which is today’s Vermont was known as the Hampshire Grants. Claimed by both New York and New Hampshire, the residents of the area found the idea of independence from either colony more appealing. The Green Mountain Boys formed to counter the authorities, particularly those of New York, under the leadership of Ethan Allen and Seth Warner. Both were oversized men for the day, towering over six feet, and both were locally famous (or infamous, depending on one’s point of view).

Allen became nationally famous for seizing Fort Ticonderoga from the British in 1775, a feat for which he remains notable today. Warner is less known, though his contributions to the success of the American Revolution dwarf those of his contemporary. After serving in the invasion of Canada Warner fought throughout the Saratoga Campaign, working closely with both John Stark and Benedict Arnold, and was instrumental in the patriot victory at Bennington. Warner served the patriotic cause in New York, despite being officially outlawed there for his earlier actions with the Green Mountain Boys.

Warner felt his influence in Vermont falter after the war, as Allen entered politics and came to dominate affairs in the region. His health destroyed by his many campaigns, he died in 1784 at the age of just 41. Since his death, Ethan Allen has overshadowed Warner’s contributions to the American Revolution, and, except in Vermont, Seth Warner is largely unknown.

5. John Barry

Like Abraham Whipple, John Barry’s services to the patriot’s cause during the American Revolution are overshadowed by the more well-known John Paul Jones (who served under Barry). But those services were such that the US Navy recognizes Barry, along with John Adams, as the “Father of the United States Navy.” Barry was an Ireland born Philadelphia shipmaster, 21 years of age, when the Revolutionary War began. His sympathies were entirely anti-British (being Irish), and he offered his services to the Continental Congress, which commissioned him as a Captain and assigned him to command the brig Lexington.

Over the course of the war he commanded several ships of the Continental Navy, and between commissions put to sea in a privateer. He captured several prizes, suppressed at least three mutinies, and trained several young officers who went on to distinguished careers in the American service. Barry commanded USS Alliance when that ship took part in the last battle of the American Revolutionary War on March 10, 1783. Barry drove off two British ships, leading the Captain of one, HMS Sybil, to comment he had, “never seen a ship so ably fought as the Alliance.”

After the war, when the United States Navy was authorized by Congress, Barry received the first commission ever offered by that service, Commission 1, signed by President George Washington. The US Navy recognizes him as its first commissioned officer, as well as its first Flag Officer, with the rank of Commodore. Yet he is barely remembered elsewhere.

4. Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

Beaumarchais was a French playwright and philosopher who wrote The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, and The Guilty Mother, all featuring the character Figaro. The son of a humble watchmaker, he invented a new mechanism which made clocks and watches considerably more accurate. When another watchmaker claimed Beaumarchais’s invention as his own, he defended his invention, won public acclaim, and became a favorite in the French court.

By the time of the American Revolution, Beaumarchais had extensive business interests in Spain and France. He used these connections to create a fictional company, Hortalez et Cie, to provide arms, clothing, and money to the rebellious Americans. At the same time he used his connections within the French court to lobby for overt assistance for the Americans against the British, France’s ancient enemy.  

Beaumarchais and his business partners spent their personal fortunes providing aid to the Americans before France formally entered the Revolutionary War. Not until 1837 was any of the money repaid to his heirs, and then only partially. Without his efforts the Continental Congress could not have supplied Washington’s army during the first three years of the war. Today, he is chiefly remembered as the creator of Figaro, his services to the United States a mere footnote of history.

3. Daniel Bissell

In late summer of 1781, George Washington’s Continental Army camped around New York City, occupied by the main British army in North America. Following Benedict Arnold’s treachery, Washington was obsessed with obtaining information regarding British plans and espionage activities. He recruited Daniel Bissell, a soldier of the Connecticut line, to pose as a deserter and enter the British lines in New York. Bissell faced certain death by hanging if his ruse was unveiled.

Bissell went to New York, enlisted in the British army regiment commanded by the traitorous Benedict Arnold, and observed all he could of British activities, committing his observations to memory. In September, 1782, a year after the British surrender at Yorktown, Bissell deserted the British army and returned to the American encampments around New York. There he provided Washington with information regarding the British defensive works, as well as that the British had no intentions of venturing out of their positions.

Bissell was awarded the Badge of Military Merit for his services as both a soldier and spy. The Badge of Military Merit was the only award authorized for troops during the American Revolution, the forerunner of today’s Purple Heart. Designed personally by George Washington, it is the second oldest military award in existence. Bissell died in 1824. His tombstone noted his service, inscribed “He had the confidence of Washington and served under him.”

2. Henry Dearborn

Henry Dearborn’s Revolutionary War service began as a captain, commanding a company of New Hampshire militia in John Stark’s regiment. He fought at Bunker Hill, and then participated in Benedict Arnold’s invasion of Canada via the Maine backwoods. That invasion included one of the epic military marches of all history. Much of what is known of it today is thanks to the journals recording the men’s struggles kept by Dearborn. He was captured by the British during Arnold’s assault on Quebec on New Year’s Eve, 1775 and held prisoner until paroled in May of the following year.

After he was formally exchanged in 1777 he returned to the Continental Army and served during the Saratoga campaign. He then joined the main Continental Army under Washington, and was present during the winter at Valley Forge. Dearborn fought at Monmouth Court House, in John Sullivan’s punitive expedition against the Iroquois, and in the Yorktown Campaign. He thus witnessed the two major surrenders of British armies during the Revolution, Saratoga and Yorktown.

His fame was such that Fort Dearborn (Detroit) was named for him, as well as Dearborn County in Indiana, and Fort Dearborn in Illinois. Following his service in the War of 1812, which was less than stellar though honorable, his fame subsided. He served in several government posts, including as Minister to Portugal in the 1820s, but his exploits during the American Revolution faded from history books, and by the mid-19th century he was largely forgotten.

1. William Alexander, Lord Stirling

Though he was born in New York, the son of a successful lawyer and businessman, William Alexander claimed the extinct title of the Earldom of Stirling, a Scottish peerage. His father had not claimed the title. William’s claim was upheld in Scottish courts, ignored by the British House of Lords, and his styling of Lord Stirling was accepted by Americans. His lavish lifestyle, which he felt befitting for a peer, drove him into debt, and when the Revolutionary War began he formed and equipped a regiment, the First New Jersey Regiment, at his own expense, indebting him even further.

At the American defeat in the Battle of Long Island, his regiment proved one of the few American units to stand against the British regulars. It suffered heavy casualties, and Lord Stirling was captured by the British when his men were finally overrun. Exchanged, he was promoted to Major General and played prominent roles in the battles of Trenton, Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and others. He was held in such high regard by Washington that he was assigned to command the troops surrounding New York, left behind when the main army departed for Virginia and Yorktown in 1781.

Lord Stirling died in Albany in January, 1783, before the Revolutionary War ended. He had proved himself one of Washington’s most capable commanders in battle, and his participation in nearly all of the major battles fought by the main Continental Army should have made him famous. History has treated him diffidently. Outside of New Jersey, where he maintained his baronial estate, he is all but unknown. His claim to the Scottish Earldom of Stirling died with him, and the title returned to extinction.

If ever we needed a real-world example of the mythological Pandora’s box, the French Revolution would suffice. What began in the late eighteenth century in a united spirit of brotherhood and rooted in the principles of the Enlightenment quickly descended into utter chaos, taking thousands of lives with it and forever changing the course of Europe and the rest of the Western world.

As the 1789 revolution was only the first of several in France, it is difficult to evaluate it in isolation. There can be no doubt, however, that many of the events that followed it were not in line with the principles that had inspired it. From a complete breakdown of social order to the eventual restoration of the ancient royal line, here are 10 unintended consequences of the first French Revolution.

10 From Starvation to War

The years leading up to the revolution were not easy. Decades of fiscal mismanagement had caused an economic crisis. Recurrent bad harvests coupled with an increasing population also led to widespread hunger and discontentment among the lower classes. Many facets of French society were outright medieval, including some agricultural methods and the continuing existence of serfdom in practical terms.

Those were the issues that prompted the revolution, but it soon snowballed into one of the most cataclysmic dramas in European history. No sooner had the initial incursions been made than extremist factions took the reins and set the country literally on the warpath. By 1792, France had declared war on Austria, the birthplace of the French king’s wife, Marie Antoinette. For the lowliest of French citizens, who’d gone from no bread to no peace, this could hardly have been an improvement.^[1]

9 Widespread Looting and General Disorder

Far from stabilizing the underlying tensions of the years leading up to it, the revolution quickly led to episodic breakdowns in law and order. As soon as one small step toward meaningful reform was taken, dissatisfaction quickly set in. France’s problems were far too complex to be swept away as easily as converting the absolute monarchy into a constitutional one, and patience was in short supply. Rioting, looting, and a general threat to the public order became commonplace.

In truth, the beginning stages of the revolution were dominated by moderate reforms compared to what came later. The men at the center of these changes were largely on the side of orderly progress and respect for the law. Unfortunately, steps like abolishing noble titles didn’t magically put bread on people’s tables. With the king no longer in control, the masses, who’d been promised change but had little to show for it, turned on authority in general.^[2]

8 New Aristocracy of the Rich

As influenced as they were by Enlightenment principles, the revolutionary powers that be were willing to take their agenda only so far. Universal suffrage was out of the question. Basically, to have any say at all, you had to be a property-holding man who paid taxes. This was a voting bloc of some few million male citizens, compared to an overall population approaching 30 million.

This pool of male property-holders elected fellow tax-paying representatives to act on their behalf. It was these higher-taxed representatives who themselves elected the men who actually ended up in office. This created a system whereby men with money chose men with more money to put other men they trusted into government. The old aristocracy, of birth and privilege, was replaced with a new aristocracy of wealth and concentrated voting power. Dissatisfaction with this new system eventually provoked more radical action.^[3]

7 Enduring Inequality of Women

Considering the pivotal role women played in the early days of the revolution, you’d think the movement’s leaders would have been more amenable to feminist causes. That certainly would’ve lined up philosophically with their dismantling of the feudal system and other structures of arbitrary privilege. Unfortunately, as far as women were concerned, pre- and post-revolutionary France were two heads of the same beast.

As their American counterparts had done, the French revolutionaries drew up a new constitution that provided equality for all men. In both cases, women were not even mentioned. Rightly incensed at having been left behind, in 1791, political activist Olympe de Gouges authored a woman-centered companion text to the famous “Declaration of the Rights of Man.” Not long after, Gouges became yet another casualty of the revolution.^[4]

6 Disestablishment of the Church

Some of the revolutionaries’ early religious reforms were supported even by members of the Roman Catholic clergy in France, but these were soon overtaken by increasingly zealous changes. Within the space of a few months, the Church’s income was abolished and its lands forsaken, making it dependent on the state. In 1790, a glimpse of the radicalism that would soon consume France came in the form of the clerical oath. This was a requirement for all clergymen to swear allegiance to the new constitution.

Half refused, including most senior clergymen, on the grounds that their allegiance was to their faith. The Pope himself denounced the actions of the revolutionaries, who also intended to open up clerical appointments to popular elections, thereby restructuring the internal governance of the Church. Priests who refused to publicly endorse the new constitution had no option but to flee into exile. These changes politicized religion and turned the Vatican into an enemy of the revolution. Disestablishment followed not long after.^[5]

5 Reign of Terror

The most notorious aspects of the revolution were not seen in its initial stages but after the king and queen had been deposed, and a new republic declared. Already imprisoned and completely powerless, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were subsequently executed by the republican authorities in 1793. After that, the new French Republic and the governing Committee of Public Safety turned its attentions to other perceived enemies, both foreign and domestic.

Indeed, the revolutionary fervor had only begun. Within 18 months of the king’s execution, over 20,000 people had been sentenced to death or died imprisoned without trial. The powers of Europe united against France, sparking conscription, which itself led to internal rebellion. Priests and the Christian religion were massacred and denigrated. Finally, in a macabre and ironic twist, one of the Terror’s most famous figures, Robespierre, was himself guillotined and made a scapegoat for the Committee’s excesses.^[6]

4 A King for an Emperor

King Louis XVI was deposed in 1792 and summarily executed. His wife, Marie Antoinette, followed shortly after that, as well as other members of the royal family, other members of the nobility, and anyone else the revolutionary courts deemed a threat to the new order. By 1795, the king’s only surviving son, Louis Charles, by most accounts, had died of neglect at the hands of the revolutionaries. However, the exact circumstances of his death have never been uncovered.

For everything it took to rid themselves of the ancient monarchical system, you’d think the French would have been outright opposed to any return to similar customs. But in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte, who’d started life as the son of a minor nobleman, crowned himself emperor after a few years’ rule as a dictator. The last of his reigning descendants was Napoleon III, who fittingly was also the country’s final monarch.^[7]

3 Ten-Hour Days and a New Calendar

In 1792, perhaps the most peculiar and unnecessarily confusing exercise of the revolution, the first republican government instituted a new calendar stripped of the perceived Christian and royalist characteristics of the Gregorian calendar. Year I of the new republic was established to have started in September, and the calendar eventually came to be used not just in France but in other territories that fell under French control during the revolutionary wars.

There were still 12 months, but fewer weeks since they were now 10 days long (the leftover days were treated as bonuses, with no parent months). For some reason, the revolutionaries were particularly enthusiastic about decimalization, so each day was made 10 hours long. If this weren’t baffling enough, imagine trying to wrap your head around it in an environment of riots, political chaos, and war. Thankfully for Europe’s sanity, this bizarre experiment was eventually abandoned, with Napoleon abolishing the calendar shortly after becoming emperor.^[8]

2 Bourbon Restoration

Considering the point of the revolution was to get rid of the Ancien Régime, it’s safe to say its least intended outcome was the restoration of the old dynasty, but that’s precisely what happened. Just over two decades after the fall of the Bourbon monarchy and the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Louis’s brother assumed the throne as Louis XVIII in 1814, albeit with certain concessions.

Louis XVIII’s reign was short but more effective than that of his reactionary brother, Charles, who became almost immediately unpopular upon ascending. A traditionalist, Charles attempted to revive some of the characteristics of the Old Regime, which led to disaster. In 1830, revolution again visited France, but mercifully in a more peaceful fashion, with Charles agreeing to abdicate in favor of his cousin, Louis Philippe. Louis Philippe’s own reign would meet its end with a further revolution in 1848.^[9]

1 Long-Lasting Partisanship and Deadlock

It’s human nature to look for resolution in the world around us. For those living through it, the revolution probably seemed climactic, the final chapter in the Ancien Régime story that, once lived through, would condemn its difficulties to history. But the months and years that followed brought their own sets of problems, not least of which were extreme partisanship and disenchantment with the democratic process.

Politically speaking, the terms “left” and “right” are inheritances from the revolution that we still use today, originally referring to the position of the liberal and conservative factions in the National Assembly. We already know the results of the breakdown in cooperation between the various deputies, some of which are named in this list. Today, partisanship and governmental gridlock continue to be serious problems for nations around the world.^[10]