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JulianLapostat
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To me the Vendee is closer to the American Civil War, in that the Vendeeans are fighting for an obsolete way of life. I certainly don\'t think its a genocide (comparing them to Native Americans are a huge stretch) since there were atrocities by the Vendeeans (they boiled republican soldiers alive in oil) and the Army had the support of Republican Vendeeans. During the American Civil War, the Northern army committed atrocities against the South too, burned whole villages and the resentment felt by the South about the North taking property away from them is a thorny issue there. I mean the French Revolution is a bit like fighting the American Revolution and the American Civil War at the same time. The Founding Fathers deliberately set aside \
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To me the Vendee is closer to the American Civil War, in that the Vendeeans are fighting for an obsolete way of life. I certainly don\\\'t think its a genocide (comparing them to Native Americans are a huge stretch) since there were atrocities by the Vendeeans (they boiled republican soldiers alive in oil) and the Army had the support of Republican Vendeeans. During the American Civil War, the Northern army committed atrocities against the South too, burned whole villages and the resentment felt by the South about the North taking property away from them is a thorny issue there. I mean the French Revolution is a bit like fighting the American Revolution and the American Civil War at the same time. The Founding Fathers deliberately set aside \\\"the social question\\\" and focused on liberal aims because they felt that slavery couldn\\\'t be finished without going to war for it and they weren\\\'t ready for it at the time (or so they told themselves). What the Committee of Public Safety did is not different from Lincoln during the Civil War, he abolished the writ of habeas corpus, centralized authority from the top, unleashed a massive surveillance campaign using press and was often described as a dictator (in the pre-Julius Roman Sense) by his opponents. And of course he abolished slavery initially as a war time aim and generally justified the war as a \\\"defence of the Union\\\", same as the French calling for \\\"Republic, One and Indivisible\\\".
To be honest, I haven\\\'t read too much about the Vendee because it\\\'s a really political issue and the French Right wing keep wailing about the martyrs of Vendee and inflate numbers of people killed. It should definitely be covered though. The fact that a third of Vendee\\\'s pre-Revolution population died is pretty disturbing.
As for Marie Antoinette, I generally find it hard to relate to anyone, for whatever sympathetic reasons, subscribes to total preservation of absolute monarchy at the expense of her subjects\\\' desire (however much she may have been personally kind). Yeah, I get the romantic appeal of her, I even sympathize with her upto a certain point at her trial and the way they treated her children but I don\\\'t see why people have to demonize the Revolution just because one person got a raw deal. She actively derailed any real truce or compromise by Mirabeau and Lafayette who really believed in the Constitutional Monarchy and was the King (and his family\\\'s) best hope to survive. She even got Barnave killed since she used him as a pawn for one of her petty schemes for which he was later tried and executed. You know, one thing that can be addressed is the fact that she finally was betrayed by her own Austrian relations. The fact is Danton and Robespierre tried to ransom her to the Austrian government as a peace offering but they turned them down especially since it came after the King\\\'s death and she and her daughter were not useful as hostages. Robespierre kept delaying her trial but in the end washed his hands off the whole affair.
To be honest, I haven\\\'t read too much about the Vendee because it\\\'s a really political issue and the French Right wing keep wailing about the martyrs of Vendee and inflate numbers of people killed. It should definitely be covered though. The fact that a third of Vendee\\\'s pre-Revolution population died is pretty disturbing.
As for Marie Antoinette, I generally find it hard to relate to anyone, for whatever sympathetic reasons, subscribes to total preservation of absolute monarchy at the expense of her subjects\\\' desire (however much she may have been personally kind). Yeah, I get the romantic appeal of her, I even sympathize with her upto a certain point at her trial and the way they treated her children but I don\\\'t see why people have to demonize the Revolution just because one person got a raw deal. She actively derailed any real truce or compromise by Mirabeau and Lafayette who really believed in the Constitutional Monarchy and was the King (and his family\\\'s) best hope to survive. She even got Barnave killed since she used him as a pawn for one of her petty schemes for which he was later tried and executed. You know, one thing that can be addressed is the fact that she finally was betrayed by her own Austrian relations. The fact is Danton and Robespierre tried to ransom her to the Austrian government as a peace offering but they turned them down especially since it came after the King\\\'s death and she and her daughter were not useful as hostages. Robespierre kept delaying her trial but in the end washed his hands off the whole affair.
