“The French Revolution, like life itself, was a mixture. It was both inspiring and hard to swallow. In the revolution, hope was mixed with terror, violence with fraternity.” —Francois Mitterrand(Former French president)
My own view is that the outbreak of the Revolution shattered an old sense of history. The old system before the Revolution was still very much a continuation of what Le Gough called the “long Middle Ages.” Under the old system people lived in the cycle of tradition, The Revolution completely broke the cycle, shattering the tradition and the old system on which people depended. Personally, I think Louis XVI was a good man, but he was not a good king. His mistakes in office led to the revolution, and his mistakes in advance and retreat led to the revolution.
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