Evariste Gamelin was of the opinion that if you were, in any way, not supporting the revolutionaries, whether you were actually, physically against the revolutionaries or you just ran away from Paris to protect yourself, you were a traitor and deserved to die. He became a member of the Jacobin party, led by Robespierre, who used the slogan, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death." They believed that if you were not actively involved in the revolution, you didn't support Liberty or Equality or Brotherhood, and therefore would be killed.
The Jacobins truly wanted a better Paris and a better France. The Paris they lived in was terrible and people starved and had to rights, and the Jacobins, along with Gamelin, really started out fighting a revolution that would make France a better country. The were honestly were fighting for Liberty, equality and fraternity. I think the revolutionaries got too obsessed and too passionate that they forgot the reason they were fighting was to make a better France and create peace and rest in the nation and give everyone rights. The revolutionaries were got their rights, but they also took away everyone else's rights. And not only the horrible people who had oppressed the Parisians for so long, they even took away the rights of those who didn't believe in fighting or ran away to escape the violence. Gamelin became a juror on the Grand Tribunal and basically sentenced thousands of people to death, without a real trial. He started out fair, as did most of the other jurors, but as the revolution went on, they all became worse. Gamelin thought he was doing what was best for Paris still by sentencing everyone who came in...he thought that he was showing equality by sentencing the rich and the poor, but he was only spreading the hatred and murder. Even though all the revolutionaries started out with good intentions and wanted a better place for everyone to live, they became blinded by their obsession and passion and made Paris and France worse off than before.
What this book made me realize about the French Revolution that I hadn't before was that the revolutionaries were actually the Reign of Terror and were the reason that France fell so low. The revolutionaries could have stopped fighting and killing everyone because the government of France was pretty week at the time and as soon as they started giving in a little at the beginning, there was really no reason to keep up the fighting, but they were just so filled with passion, they became irrational and thought they had to keep going. The Jacobins were the ones that inflicted the reign of Terror on France, not the government, like I had always thought, because they sentenced all those people to the guillotine and didn't let anyone have a say, unless they had the same opinion as them. No one had rights unless they were a Jacobin. The revolutionaries also caused all the wars that France was in at the time, because they killed all the French armies and then didn't create an army that could fight outside of France for 10 years and didn't have a functioning government for that long as well. France was in so much debt and all these countries were trying to fight them, and there was no real organized army to fight back because the revolutionaries were killing everyone in France. A good cause is only as good as the plan to enact that cause, and the revolutionaries of Paris were not organized or rational enough to plan fight for there cause and change Paris for the better.
One other thing I really liked about this book was that, while a lot of the characters were like Gamelin, and were really crazy about the revolution and unfair, there was also someone who stood firm to their beliefs and wouldn't compromise them for anyone or anything. Maurice Brotteaux didn't believe that all the fighting and killing and what the Jacobins were doing to Paris was right and he didn't want to be a part of it. Even though Gamelin was his friend and very powerful, he wouldn't do what he didn't believe in and fight with the Jacobins. Gamelin ended up sentencing him as a traitor, but I liked that the book showed that while most everyone in Paris at the time was blinded by their passion and became irrational, they all still had a choice and could have chosen a different path, like Maurice.
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