Will and Ariel Durant on the French Revolution "eating its children"

The slate seemed clear; all groups that had challenged the Committee of Public Safety had been eliminated or suppressed.  The Girondins were dead or dispersed; the sansculottes had been divided and silenced; the clubs - excepting the Jacobin - had been closed; the press and the theater were under strict censorship; the Convention, cowed, left all major decisions to the committee.  Under their tutelage, and instructed by its other committees, the Convention passed laws against hoarders and speculators, proclaimed free, universal education, abolished slavery in the French colonies, and established a welfare state with social security, unemployment benefits, medical aid for the poor, and relief for the old.  These measures were in large part frustrated by war and chaos, but they remained as ideas to inspire succeeding generations.

~ Will and Ariel Durant, The Age of Napoleon, "The Revolution Eats Its Children," pp. 78-79



Interpretation by Phil Duffy:

In the first four chapters of The Age of Napoleon, the Durants describe the multi-stage French Revolution.  The first stage deposed the king and the Catholic Church in favor of rule by the Girondins, the political group representing the rising commercial class (the bourgeoisie).  Then the Revolution became radicalized with the street mob of Paris (the sansculottes) gaining control.  They were represented in the legislative body (the Convention) by members of the Jacobin club, including the infamous Maximilien Robespierre of A Tale of Two Cities fame.  By eliminating his enemies with the guillotine, Robespierre, heading the powerful Committee of Public Safety, had emerged as the dictator of France.  But emerging victorious in a revolution only forces the winner to govern effectively.  Like most politicians, Robespierre was long on promises and short on delivery.  His fellow revolutionaries realized that Robespierre was in a position to eliminate all of them, so they sent him to the guillotine in a preemptive strike designed to protect their lives, concluding the radical stage of the French Revolution.

Wars and the chaos of revolution crippled the French economy during this period.  It destroyed the wealth that would have been necessary to pursue the utopian socialist dream first expressed in the French Revolution.  But the French Revolution impressed Karl Marx a half century later as he wrote The Manifesto of the Communist Party