The price of the Great French Revolution was catastrophic for that time, but in France, no one, no one called upon anyone to repent, neither then nor now.
What was the price for the French of this so-called Great Revolution?
For a quarter of a century (before the beginning of the Restoration in 1814), the French Revolution devoured, according to various estimates, from 3.5 to 4.5 million human lives. This may not seem such a huge figure, if we forget that the population of France was then 6-7 times less than the population of Russia during the era of its Revolution (and, therefore, the death of 4 million Frenchmen corresponded to the death of 25-30 million inhabitants of Russia).
The Great French Revolution of 1789-1794, which eliminated absolutism, then established a republic, was accompanied by unheard-of acts of senseless inhuman cruelty.
During the revolution, the liberal bourgeois rushing to power showed what they were capable of, without being ashamed of anyone or anything.
The English thinker Thomas Carlyle in his youth directly observed the last period of the French Revolution. In 1837 he published a fundamental essay on the French Revolution of 1789. Carlyle sought to comprehend the innumerable atrocities of the French revolutionaries. The barges were flooded, whose holds were filled with priests who had not accepted the new order; “But why sacrifice a barge? - Carlyle continued, - Isn't it easier to push into the water with tied hands and shower with lead hail the entire expanse of the river until the last of the flounders goes to the bottom?.. And small children were thrown there, despite the pleas of their mothers. "They are wolves," Marat's company replied, "wolves will grow out of them."
Then women and men are tied together by the arms and legs and thrown. This is called the "republican wedding" … Armed executioners "shot small children, and women with nursing babies … shot 500 people at a time …"
And Marat, as everyone remembers, was a “Friend of the people”. And he remained so in the memory of the French only because he was stabbed to death in the bathroom on time.
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Otherwise, he would not have demolished his violent head, as already an enemy of the people, on the guillotine.
The French national razor, the guillotine, a decapitation machine, was not invented by Dr. Guillotin, but by famous others. He only suggested using the guillotine as a more humane instrument of execution, and therefore this machine is named after him.
It should be noted that Joseph Ignace Guillotin (Fr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin) (28 May 1738, Saint - 26 March 1814, Paris) was a highly respected person. professor of anatomy, politician, member of the Constituent Assembly, friend of Robespierre and Marat.
During its almost two hundred-year history, the guillotine, as a symbol of terror, has deprived tens of thousands of people, ranging from criminals and revolutionaries to aristocrats, kings and even queens.
And here is another example of boundless monstrosity: “In Meudon … there was a leather workshop for the manufacture of human skins; from the skin of those guillotined ones who were found worthy of stripping, amazingly good leather like suede was made … History, looking back … hardly finds in the whole world a more disgusting cannibalism … - so Carlyle concludes.
One of the leaders of the French Revolution, Saint-Just, addressing his comrades-in-arms, gave a formula that has become a kind of law: “You must punish not only traitors, but also the indifferent; you must punish anyone who is passive in the republic,”wrote V. V. Kozhinov.
What was the price for the French of this so-called Great Revolution?
For a quarter of a century (before the beginning of the Restoration in 1814), the French Revolution devoured, according to various estimates, from 3.5 to 4.5 million human lives.
This may not seem such a huge figure, if we forget that the population of France was then 6-7 times less than the population of Russia during the era of its Revolution (and, therefore, the death of 4 million Frenchmen corresponded to the death of 25-30 million inhabitants of Russia).
At the same time, at the end of the 18th century, there were no means of destroying people that "progress" had created by the 20th century.
As for the Russian revolutions, they turned the entire 20th century into the most unfortunate one for Russia. It was worse only after the Tatar-Mongol invasion of Russia in the XIII century.
What if the Russians managed to live at least a hundred years in relative peace?
According to Mendeleev's calculations, for example, by 2000 the Russian Empire should have been home to 600 million people.
And yet Russia is an amazingly resilient country. Our women were able to recover their casualties after the First World War by the mid-1920s.
And after the Great Patriotic War, the population reached the pre-war level in 1955.
After 1991, under the liberal pro-Western Yeltsin regime, Russia was dying out at an accelerated pace and lost another 20 million in 20 years.
And only recently, under Putin, the process of the country's extinction stopped.