Title: French Revolution: Ultimately a Failure - PHDessay.com
Headings: French Revolution: Ultimately a Failure
French Revolution: Ultimately a Failure
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Content: However, as the revolution progressed so did his ideas; he soon became the head of the Jacobin club, a radical group who advocated exile or death for the French nobility. By this time the once soft and kind-hearted man, was now replaced by one who had developed a great love of power along with a reputation of intolerance, self-righteousness and cruelty . Robespierre quickly came to a conclusion that the end would justify the means, and that in order to defend the revolution against those who would destroy it, the shedding of blood was justified. Merlin de Thionville who was a member of several French legislative bodies said commented that: “ In those days so rotten had France become that a bloody mountebank without talent or courage, whose name was Robespierre, made every citizen tremble under his tyranny”. The French now lived under fear and oppression of a man who no longer cared for the people of the revolution but rather the revolution itself. Using his great oratory skills he successfully demanded the execution of the king and queen without fair trial or judgement, saying that “Louis must die so that the revolution may live”. In January 1973 Louis XVI was executed, followed by his wife ten months later. By his own words he had become a monster, “A victor who kills his captive enemies is called a barbarian” .