thebhoy: Savonarola Vs. Robespierre

thebhoy 12.11.09	for the record, I believe Savonarola would win.
Electric City 12.11.09	I'm of the opinion Robespierre was quite misunderstood. In fact I've written three papers on the matter this semester.
Mikesn 12.11.09	How so?
Electric City 12.11.09	He's been horribly misrepresented by romantic francophobic british historians like Thomas Carlyle, who greatly influenced Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, the novel that shaped everyone's opinion on the terror. Scholarly researches of him in the 20th century show that he was a more moderate member of the committee of public safety and that his "reign of terror" stemmed from general anarchy in France and pretty much all of europe uniting against France. Additionally the image of him cutting off the heads of any and everyone is wrong; during the reign of terror, there was a 98% acquittal rate of possible dissenters
Poet 12.11.09	scholastic Adam Downer is now present lol. You are right about the fact that he wasn't as "evil" as everyone thought he was, but I had no clue about that insanely high acquittal rate though.
robin 12.11.09	B+ be specific
Mikesn 12.11.09	Interesting, where did you get this? I'd like to look into it more.
Electric City 12.11.09	The 20th Century histories I'm referring to are George Rude's Robespierre: History of a Revolutionary Democrat and RR Palmer's Twelve Who Ruled. Also, my first year seminar looked into several different ways in which the French Revolution has been represented and misrepresented throughout history.
thebhoy 12.11.09	indeed, Carlyle was a tool anyways, but I'm looking from the modern historical context, in our post-modern ways of being "moderate". He was still dictatorial, there's no real way of getting around it, his ideals were always in the best interest of the people, from his perspective. No one argues that the terror was anarchy, it reigned in anarchy, but in essence went too far... like 99% of all revolutions, and thus France was reverted back to the monarchy. Robespierre was in fact on the moderate end of the committee, but he was also one of it's key contributors of ideas, ie. "the common good". But then Savonarola was just a religious nut job who was the best orator prior to Napoleon. He fucking took over Florence, the center of the commercial world, based solely on his enigmatic character.
thebhoy 12.11.09	also, it's a terribly dull read, but DeTocqueville's "The Old Regime and the Revolution" gives a compelling argument to suggest that the Revolution was essentially a superficial overhaul to an already changed society... which in conclusion means The Terror were indeed tyrannical.
intothepit83 12.11.09	is it terrible that i am 26 and have no fuckin clue what y'all are talking about?
thebhoy 12.11.09	Thirdly, just consider historiography for a moment. Carlyle has his own biases yes, but so do Downer's sources and lectures. It doesn't make any of the sources any less valid, it's just something to remember when forming an opinion.
thebhoy 12.11.09	"is it terrible that i am 26 and have no fuckin clue what y'all are talking about?" If you've never taken history before, then it's not that shocking. But seriously, you should probably know who Robespierre is and what the French Revolution was. Savonarola is more obscure though.
Electric City 12.11.09	Well yes of course, but the climate Carlyle was writing in versus my professor's lectures and the historical books I pointed to have some air of objective truth. Carlyle was a conservative writing amidst the birth of Marxism in Europe and his whole history on the French Revolution is essentially a giant piece of propoganda against a proletariat revolt, saying "hey look what happened in france shit went crazy." Rude and Palmer are liberal admittedly, but they didn't have a political agenda so much as they had just a sympathetic bias.
intothepit83 12.11.09	dude, ur talking to a person who dropped outta high school in sophomore year and then got his GED.... yes, i do know about robespierre and the French Revolution, however, i do not know the intricacies nor any true facts about it except the guillotine and the havoc that ensued. it's all good though. for a 26 year old high school drop-out, i believe i'm doing pretty good 4 myself
thebhoy 12.11.09	then yes intothepit, that is pretty good. I mean, I go to university and I know a lot of dumbasses who don't know shit. And I agree Downer, my point was to suggest that each analysis gives you something else behind just facts. Which obviously you get because you see the conservative vs. liberal side. And don't discredit political agendas in todays historical writers. There is ALWAYS a political agenda, it's unavoidable. Now I've never read Rude, but Palmer is excellent and very factual. And nowadays it's not so much what facts are skewed. It's what do they choose to put in and leave out? But if you also look at the facts you'll see that Carlyle isn't totally off what really happened. Did he exaggerate? Of course he did, but the fact is, the Terror failed and Robespierre was assasinated for a reason, and France went to Napoleon and eventually back to a monarchy for a reason.
Mikesn 12.11.09	Thanks, will pick up the Palmer book after the holidays. I didn't get a very favourable view of the Revolution in the course I took (mind you it was lolhigh school, but still), so it would be interesting to get an opposing viewpoint.
Electric City 12.11.09	I wouldn't argue that Robespierre was right in his pursuit of Terror, but what Carlyle does do is brush over reasons that explain the terror's necessity so that his readers view the terror as this senseless bloodshed that came from the absence of authority. So while I'm not saying Robespierre was correct, I would definitely say he's been misrepresented as a monster for centuries, greatly distorted as a villain when he was, like you say, trying to do the best for France
thebhoy 12.11.09	agreed, and I think most modern texts, ie. Palmer, give a fair balance between the two. His "common good" theories were bound to fail for the same reasons as Marxism, it didn't initially make him a monster, but as time progressed and his ideas spun out of control, it did turn him into not the nicest person.
thebhoy 12.11.09	" I didn't get a very favourable view of the Revolution in the course I took" yeah high school does that haha. But I mean, it's not like many people view the Revolution in a favourable light, Palmer doesn't really either. He's less biased and more, this is what happened and this is why, but it's hard to avoid the fact that the Revolution for all intents and purposes was a) rushing the inevitable, and b)a failure.