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• July 4th - 3:51pmVictoria said...

  The Terror did not 'come to an end' with Robespierre's death: the 'red' (i.e., left-wing) Terror was followed by a 'white' (right-wing) Terror, led by sadists like Freron - whose recall to Paris to account for his severity in the regions was one of the triggers for the plot to overthrow Robespierre. He then switched sides and established groups like the aristocratic Jeunesse Doree, who went around beating up and killing supporters and suspected supporters of the overthrown revolutionary regime. The White Terror carried on into 1795.

• July 4th - 4:34pmVictoria said...

  I'm somewhat mystified by this programme's thesis that the regime of 1793-4 'gave birth to key features of the modern age'. The regime modelled itself on Rome and, increasingly, Sparta (as Norman Hampson wryly observed, not unlike an English Public School, minus the class aspect!); other features listed above are familiar from the religious uphevals, including those in Britain in the 16th and 17thc (Sir Thomas More, who killed to defend his beliefs, is now regarded as a hero, a saint, and has statues!). Many people forget that the French Revolution was religious as well as political. Those who regard the French Revolution as a peculiarly 'continental' bloody affair - so unlike the sort of thing we do in Britain - forget that around 800,000 died in Britain and Ireland during the 17thc English Civil War/Revolution period - the period that gave birth to our Parliamentary system - and we even had a "Committee of Safety"! Noveltywise, the period did give us trousers, though - and Superfly lapels!

• July 12th - 11:00amPeter42 said...

  This programme generated much more heat than it did light. The two main protagonists - Simon Scharma and Slavoj Zizek - were the main problem. Simon Scharma confined most of his comments to saying how nasty and undemocratic were Robespierre and his pals: not helpful, informative or balanced. Not informative because it added nothing to what was being revealed anyway by the re-enactments. Not helpful because it failed to answer (or even ask) the question about what forms popular power could possibly take when there is mass illiteracy and no tradition of representative or direct democracy, so we are simply left with a naive reductionist account based on the psychology of one man (that's the kind of contribution we ought to expect from a historian after all, isn't it?) Not balanced because in spite of all the horrors that the 1793-94 terror undoubtedly brought and which one wouldn't want to condone, it ignored the fact that the total number killed (55,000) was not high in comparison with comparable events (and somewhat sparing in comparison with what came after) and also that the method of execution (the guillotine) was the most humane form of capital punishment to date. Slavoj Zizek was no better, confining himself to spluttered repetitions along the theme of 'you can't have an omelette without breaking eggs'

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