the last big hurrah of the 18th century, featuring liberty, equality, and brotherhood as side dishes alongside a main course of blood, horror, devastation and death. brought to us by france; we assume it was all staged in an attempt to win at eurovision
what exactly happened (in a nutshell): after several massive wars, droughts, hailstones, and the aftermath of a massive volcanic eruption in iceland, france was facing a fairly serious famine and economic crisis. public sentiment was tipping very heavily against the monarchy (at the time, headed by king louis xvi), and this finally reached its fever pitch in 1789, when an angry mob raided the bastille (a political prison) to steal weapons; three years after that, the monarchy was abolished, and two years after that, after the king was caught sneaking off to austria to raise an army against the revolutionaries, he was messily executed with members of his family.
so democracy came to france, and many people were executed, and eventually a war broke out across all of europe. then napoleon came into power and even more war broke out across all of europe! good times
in the end: it wound up not mattering a whole lot because after napoleon fell in 1814 france went back to being a monarchy. live and learn.
learn about the major players in the french revolution by clicking here! well, not here-here, i mean where those blue words are.
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