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

Will Durant on empire

... it is the fatality of empire to breed repeated war.  For the conquered must be periodically reconquered, and the conquerors must keep the arts and habits of camp and battlefield; and at any moment the kaleidoscope of change may throw up a new empire to challenge the old.  In such a situation wars must be invented if they do not arise of their own accord; each generation must be inured to the rigors of campaigns, and taught by practice the sweet decorum of dying for one's country.

~ Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, Page 355

Will Durant on bureaucracy

The king dies, but the bureaucracy is immortal.

~ Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, Page 363

Will Durant on the importance of trade

The crossroads of trade are the meeting place of ideas, the attrition ground of rival customs and beliefs; diversities beget conflict, comparison, thought; superstitions cancel one another, and reason begins.

~ Will Durant, The Life of Greece, Volume II of The Story of Civilization (1939)

Will Durant on history serving as a determinant of the present economic and social structure

In the end nothing is lost, for good or evil every event has effects forever.

~Will Durant, historian, "Our Oriental Heritage," 1935, pg. 264

Will Durant on the permanence of bad ideas

There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present.

~ Will Durant, historian, "Our Oriental Heritage," 1935, pg. 244

Will Durant on the fragility of civilization

Civilization is an occasional and temporary interruption of the jungle.

~Will Durant, historian, "Our Oriental Heritage," 1935, pg. 226

Will Durant on civilization

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks.  Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.

~ Will Durant, The Story of Civilization (1935)