You should read French history more closely, they went through hell and changed governments at least 5 or 6 times in the 1800s.

Most of the people who died in The Terror were commoners who had merely not been sympathetic enough to the revolution. And then that sloppiness lead to reactionary violence and there was a lot of back and forth until Napoleon took power and was pretty much a king in all but heritage.

Hopefully we can be a bit more precise this time around.

The French revolution was instigated by a group of shady people, far more dangerous and vile than the aristocracy they were fighting.

> How did it not go well for the avg person?

You might want to look at the etymology of the word “terrorism” (despite the most popular current use, it wasn't coined for non-state violence) and what class suffered the most in terms of both judicial and non-judicial violent deaths during the revolutionary period.