Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

MarkMurphy

Le Précepte de La Terreur

“... the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless.” - Maximilien Robespierre

‘Let’s storm the Bastille for all we are worth,’ came the cry from the sans-culottes , living as many did, among the sewerage on the outskirts of Paris, persevering on starvation rations. Hardly surprising that seventeen thousand ‘counter-revolutionaries’ including Desmoulin and Danton lost their heads

at the mercy of Madame Guillotine during Robespierre’s ‘Reign of Terror,’ 1 not forgetting Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, who had dared to say: Qu’ils mangent de le brioche.

1 During the French Revolution, upto a quarter of a million insurgents were killed in the Guerre de Vendée, a royalist rebellion and counter-revolution .

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