chapotraphouse

There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

―Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

My teachers never even bothered to teach me about the French revolution

I wish the popular schema about the French Revolution and the guillotine would start to reflect the fact that it was mostly used on peasants and primordial leftists

I'm probably getting the numbers wrong, but the rough counter to the terror accusations is that the French Revolution executed like 3,000 people in 3 years. The reactionary reprisals to the Paris Commune almost a century later, executed some 30,000 people in 3 months. Like the scale of reactionary violence is always worse.

Ha joke's on you, here we don't teach anything in schools that is still politically relevant or might spark up some interesting ideas