Comment by xwolfi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xwolfi | Hacker News Reader

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Well I feel the clearest thing we can say about 18th century France is that they completely derailed the pattern that had lasted for millenia: yes it is possible to try to behead your way into taking over the country and place no king for a while. This didnt work for long, but it started a chain reaction within and outside of France that showed at least an alternative to the anglo compromise (dont behead the king but clip its wings) and at most blew the mind of all who thought that having a divine omnipotent ruler was a fatality.

Keep our borders and centralized power, is all you can remember of the 18th century? I know France is smaller today, but at the time, it was probably on every mouths of Europe.

Granted it was towards the end, but when we think of the 18th century in France, we tend to explain every event and every situation as to leading to the big finale, the final frontier, the first and last regicide. It's the only century that truly matters to us, because that's when we finally woke up.

> At least an alternative to the anglo compromise (dont behead the king but clip its wings) and at most blew the mind of all who thought that having a divine omnipotent ruler was a fatality

I see your point, and I actually agree - massive blow to an entrenched idea about divine monarchy. But I don't think it's quite that extreme, mostly because such republicanism was not unique to France.

The current American government was created the year before the French Revolution. The American colonies had, practically speaking, been self-governing republics for a couple decades, by the time Louis was beheaded. Constitutional republics were going to be a thing in the 19th century in both Europe and America, even if Louis had managed to keep his throne and avert the revolution entirely.

> an alternative to the anglo compromise (dont behead the king but clip its wings) and at most blew the mind of all who thought that having a divine omnipotent ruler was a fatality.

Do you mean, all who were fatalistic about the divine right of royalty being an inevitability?

The English regicide had already been done in 1649, and some form of large representative republics with or without a monarch were already governing in Venice, Poland-Lithuania, the Netherlands, America, and possibly other populous societies that I don't know about.

I thought the chain reaction in Europe was mostly a consequence of Napoleon's conquest. Per Wikipedia,

> Napoleon had succeeded in bringing most of Western Europe under one rule. In most European countries, subjugation in the French Empire brought with it many liberal features of the French Revolution including democracy, due process in courts, abolition of serfdom, reduction of the power of the Catholic Church, and demand for constitutional limits on monarchs.

After Napoleon was defeated, the monarchs and aristocrats were never able to fully restore the status quo ante as everybody was used to modern administrative government. That sounds more like the Anglo evolution than the French revolution.

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