Bias does no one any good. He was punished only because of his social standing and profession. He did no ill towards his fellow frenchmen yet was butchered to satiate their hatred towards the "elite".
And yes, you're right the effect wasn't a direct one but it definitely became part of the DNA of France. For instance the role of the church before and after the revolution are tremendously different and aristocracy never managed to get the same strong grip on France as it did before.
> And yes, you're right the effect wasn't a direct one but it definitely became part of the DNA of France. For instance the role of the church before and after the revolution are tremendously different and aristocracy never managed to get the same strong grip on France as it did before.
If you mean it was the end of the absolute monarchy, then yes, absolutely. Charles X (second French king of the XIXth century) hadn't got the memo, and his attempt to go back to the good old days cost him his life. However, Napoleon's empire wasn't particularly different from pre-revolutionary France in terms of political liberties.
Political mass-murder of innocent women and children, mass conscription (slave armies), total war, 5 million dead, entire regions devastated for generations...totally worth it though.
What about the innocent men?
> totally worth it though.
That's up for debate.
Pre revolution, France was also one of the most backward political system in Western Europe, especially compared to England or the Netherlands. It also marked the end of the Church power in Western Europe
Do you hear, in the countryside, the roar of those ferocious soldiers? They're coming right into your arms to cut the throats of your sons, your women! To arms, citizens, form your battalions, Let's march, let's march! Let an impure blood soak our fields!
> Lavoisier was a powerful member of a number of aristocratic councils, and an administrator of the Ferme Générale. The Ferme générale was one of the most hated components of the Ancien Régime because of the profits it took at the expense of the state, the secrecy of the terms of its contracts, and the violence of its armed agents. All of these political and economic activities enabled him to fund his scientific research.
He had a direct hand in oppressing an enslaved population, extracting their wealth, and using it for his own means.
Edmund Burke was a famous critic of the French Revolution.
It was as bad as its 20th century replicas, the red revolutions around the globe which were all based on the same ill notions of fairness, justice and equality.
Like most Whigs, Burke was a supporter of the American Revolution, but he was horrified by the excesses of its French sequel. He famously wrote his major work on the subject, Reflections on the Revolution in France, as a letter to French aristocrat Charles-Jean-François Depont, and later expanded it into a short book. In the Reflections, Burke predicted—over three years before the Reign of Terror—that the French Revolution would lead to disaster. Moreover, he specifically cited among the causes its abstract foundations disconnected from the reality of human nature.
La Terreur proved Burke right, of course, and yet the French Revolutionary principles—among them liberté, égalité, and fraternité—are for the most part as fresh as a daisy. Perhaps in the 21st century we could add diversité and inclusivité to the mix, but the basic lesson is clear: the Revolution hasn't ended. Burke's Reflections is thus more than a historical curiosity—it's also an urgent warning for the present.
The elite are the people at the top. Being as this head was chopped off in Dr. Guillotin's invention at the behest of the people running his country, I'd say he was no longer part of a noble, elite class when he took his last breath.
He may have been smart, but he was not smart enough to avoid being on the violent, rapacious Ferme générale, which expropriated wealth for the king from working people creating wealth. French society had enough of this parasitism after too many long years, so off to the guillotine with Lavoisier and the king, and good riddance. Chemistry somehow managed to progress after his death.
Nowadays we have the heir LP's sending money to VC's, "activist shareholders" trying to steal more from the workers at corporations creating wealth, judges and bondholders in the US trying to use their dirty deals with Argentina's old junta to steal more from Argentina. The USA is rife with parasites, and many feel the same way about our modern parasites as those that lead Lavoisier to the guillotine.