this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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Which french revolution? ;) There's lots of people who saw and still see the whole french revolution thing as a net positive. The UK has never had a good proper revolution and it shows.
Napoleon did a lot of things, but those bad things were in line with the absolutist rulers from before the revolution, he just happened to be more successful at it. But he also did many good things during his rule. Fe, the Napoleonic code was hugely influential worldwide and a major change for the good. 2 centuries later it doesn't hold up as well in the countries that still use the same justice system, but for it's time, it was really good. Overall, I'd say Napoleon still has a stellar reputation, unlike India.
How was Norway worse after they last gained independence from Sweden?
The UK had to murder his king to get a parliament though :D and tbh the french revolution was a great moment, but also a hugely violent one, and the people did not prevail. The liberals did.
Still a net positive. Yes, liberals suck, but so does the aristocracy.
It wasn't murder though, murder implies criminal wrong doing.
Isn't regicide against the law? :D
Are you forgetting or discounting the English Revolution and Glorious Revolution?
I'm discounting that one yes. The powerful politicians that came out on top (all who were already upper class and power brokers beforehand), called it a revolution, but there was no class/societal upheaval, redistribution of wealth/land or anything else like happened in the many popular revolutions in Paris. It was just a change of government with some help from a foreign power at the end. A forced change of government or coup d'etat can alo be called a revolution, but it's pretty obvious that it's not the same thing as fe the 1789 revolution in Paris.
I'll refine my previous statement: what the UK needs is a good proper popular revolution.
A lot of good came out of it in the end, but I doubt the French felt great after the battle at Waterloo and the resulting peace treaty
For France that was a great peace treaty, way better than what many French people would have expected, Talleyrand had worked wonders. After Waterloo there were many who would have wanted a complete dismemberment of France, but instead the pre Waterloo negotiations were followed and a relatively strong state was created, with all the territorial gains of Louis 14 left intact.
That peace was also far better for French people than Napoleon's endless large scale wars of the prior 15 years. It's that massive death toll that we should blame Napoleon for, not the treaty of Vienna. And after a bit of a respite, the french did kick out the Bourbons again, so that peace did work out ok for France. It was easily a far better peace than the "peace" of Versailles after WW1.
Yeah I guess you're right that it came out about as well as it possibly could for France. I still feel there was a significant bit of humiliation at play for the great power that France was at the time, but then again it took a coalition to get there and this was an army of a country torn between monarchists and republicans.