Tired of the inefficiency of absolute monarchy and the tax burden for supporting useless and effete aristocrats, ignorant priests, and a bungling civil service, the French middle classes declared their representatives a parliament. They went on, supported by the urban mob to overthrow the monarchy, declare a republic and to promulgate a document of human rights.
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity were a heady mixture of ideas. These escaped, as from a Pandora's box that, once opened, could not be closed again. The French had let loose, on an astonished Europe, a host of thoughts which gave rise to revolutions, to counter-revolutions and to wars on a grand scale. The idea of Freedom gave rise to some of the worst tyrannies of the modern era. The idea of equality has tended to force everyone down to the cultural level of garden gnomes and the idea of brotherly kindness has led to a century of war and cruelty, of repression and fear and of betrayal of all human feelings on a grand scale.
Intoxicated with the idea of freedom and the, illusion of the unity of the nation, they decided that all must be free, and set about putting the idea into effect. People who did not want to be "free" were judged, before revolutionary tribunals, as "aristocrats" and were strung up to the lampposts or carted off to public execution by means of the curious machine invented by the ingenious Dr. Guillotine.
Of course to be "free" actually meant to support the republic, enthusiastically singing the Marseillaise and cheering as the blade of the guillotine fell on another aristocratic neck. To show less than wild support for these "patriotic" activities as to be labeled a traitor and an aristocrat, with painful and, usually terminal, results. Meanwhile revolutionary armies carried their brand of freedom, mostly death, rape and pillage across the rest of the continent.
After a few years of disorder, a succession of increasingly radical and extremist governments, Napoleon, with a "whiff of grapeshot, made himself Emperor and led France on the road of war against every other major state in Europe and beyond. There followed wars, nationalistic movements and revolutions and other disorders on a smaller scale all over Europe, also involving its overseas possessions.
Just over a hundred years after the allied forces of Europe disposed of the French emperor, another violent upsurge of unrest led to similar but worse changes in Russia. The ineffectual and decadent monarchy there, bogged down by its corrupt and inefficient civil service, collapsed under the additional strains imposed upon it by the First World War. There was massive disillusionment and discontent among the ranks of its peasant soldiers and the vast numbers who had flocked to the cities for work in the factories. People voted with their feet. Soldiers simply walked off home, some kept their guns, some, depending on their temperament, threw them away. Officers, who tried to stop the mass walk out from the war, were simply killed or, if they were sensible, joined their troops.
The popular movement of February, or March 1917, depending which calendar you use,led to the overthrow of the monarchy and a government put in place, by the more liberal of the political classes. This government showed itself just as inept as the one of the Tsar. It, in its turn, was overthrown by a much more sinister and organised political grouping which again used a slogan to energize the workers and peasants in its support. Karl Marx"s 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party concluded with the stirring wprds, “Workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a world to gain.” Once more liberty, the losing of chains, and unity, this time of class rather than of nation, persuaded the people to put a party of monsters in power. The elections scheduled for early 1918 were canceled. The Tsarist secret police was replaced by a much more ruthless and efficient organ of "public safety" controlled by Felix Dzershinsky who died, not too long after, of stress from overwork.
Lenin too succumbed to his success and his last years were to see the increasing power of his "monster in waiting", the "Man of Steel" Joseph Djgashvili. There followed a reign of terror in Russia far surpassing that brought about by the French revolutionaries. It rivalled in bloody cruelty the worst excesses of Attilla the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane put together. It made Ivan the Terrible look like a benefactor, or a disciple of Mother Theresa, by contrast.
This was not the end. Things could not get much worse in Europe though revolutionary ideas spread. Thus caused a certain amount of consternation in other places among people dedicated to the status quo. In another European nation, renowned for its high civilization and culture, another monster was waiting in the wings. An ex-corporal was to take over the German state and to make himself the super hero eulogized by Nietzsche. In prison, after a failed coup attempt, which left some of his followers dead, besotted supporters persuaded him that he was the coming hero. With great glee the German generals were told that the German army was “stabbed in the back,” in 1918. shortly after Hitler's accession to power the nation put on uniform and began goose-stepping while the bands played Deutschland Uber Alles and the Horst Wessell Lied.
