Explanation: "We should bring back the guillotine" or similar is a common internet quip in response to billionaires doing billionaire things, when in reality the guillotine was invented to provide equal and humane deaths to people of all classes, and from there it was always a tool of the state rather than the people. Not the best euphemism for "we should depose the bourgeoisie." In fact plenty of Revolutionary justice folks were themselves offed by the guillotine during the Terror.
Yeah, those guys. Even if they were royalists themselves, the central principle of the French Revolution until that point was democracy and opposition to tyranny. Purging democratically elected representatives was a complete break with everything that had come before it during the Revolution; the fact that the party getting purged was right-leaning doesn't change that. Being opposed to something done by a left-leaning faction doesn't automatically make one a reactionary.
"Authoritarian" is the keyword here. Authoritarianism was literally the one thing all revolutionaries could agree was bad.
That's because the stated goals of the revolts (restoring the freedom of the Convention) weren't reactionary, and people of various political views supported—or even fought for) those goals.
By "Paris" I don't mean "Paris from its position as the capital;" I literally just mean Paris the city. The purge was Paris sans culottes enforcing their will over the Convention—and by extension, over the whole country. It was like if DC residents were extralegally deciding who gets to sit in Congress. Would opposing that be reactionary if the people doing the deciding were Marxists? Up until that point the Revolution had put power in the hands of a group of people elected (not 100% democratically) by all of France; the shift from that to a Convention controlled by Paris radicals was very real and not more of the same.
It was the triggering event that defined the revolts' stated aims; they can't be seriously evaluated without taking it into account.
No? The Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the treatment of refractory priests (overwhelmingly poor parish priests, not rich bishops) were grade A religious oppression. This was the thing that pushed the Vandee towards revolt, and it's no coincidence that revolt only really ended when this oppression was ended. You could replace Catholicism with any religion and this stuff would still be messed up.
- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/French_Revolution,_The
This link also dispels the idea that the "anciens reigmes" (which, BTW, these guys were not united at all) wanted war with France in the next section. The Girondins wanted war (and yes, it was the Girondins that wanted war; Robespierre for example was not impressed with the idea) not to protect France, but to further the Revolution and their own power. It's ironic that war would prove to be the undoing of both. Also the arguments they made for war did include nebulous Austrian support for monarchism (which, again, was nonexistent; there was no "Austrian Committee"), but also that war would expand French power, export the Revolution, root out counterrevolutionaries, unite the country and cure cancer or something Idfk. This stuff was pure, unadulterated warmongering.
See the link above.