![]() It was what made the Revolution revolutionary. It was the Revolution’s source of collective energy. Shaw, Time and the French Revolution: The Republican Calendar, 1789-Year XIV. Scholars like to make a distinction between the Revolution and the Terror that followed, but “the Terror was merely 1789 with a higher body count.” From the Storming of the Bastille onward, “it was apparent that violence was not just an unfortunate side effect. . . It became a medium of endless potential for change that could be. They could have done what England was doing-a long nonviolent revolution, a gradual diminution of the power of king and court, an establishment of the rights of the people and their legislators so that the regent ended up a lovely person on a stamp. For 10 years they simply enjoyed killing each other. It was more a nationwide psychotic break than a revolt-a great nation at its own throat, swept by a spirit not only of regicide but suicide. Today, its abolishment is one of the emperor’s lesser known conquests. By January 1, 1806, which otherwise would’ve been known as the 11th day of Nivse, Napolean had reinstated the Gregorian calendar. We start with the moral and political catastrophe that was the French Revolution. The Revolutionary Calendar lasted until shortly after the French Revolution ended, at Napolean’s coronation on December 2, 1804. History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme, as clever people say. ![]()
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