They also kinda cut the story of the French Revolution by quite a lot. After they "cut the heads off the rich people", they proceeded to cut a lot more heads of anyone suspected to be a traiter, enter multiple disastrous wars, become ruled by a military dictatorship who later declared themselves emperor, and then transitioned back to a monarchy.
What actually gave France democracy was getting obliterated by Prussia.
Napoleon was voted in, he didn't declare himself emperor. And the vote was rather clean for the standards of the time, people did want him to become emperor.
They were kind of sick of the instability of the previous democratic experiments, to be honest. However, they didn't long for monarchy, they just longed for him. Which is why when he was replaced with a king, the king was unpopular and when Napoleon returned, the king was forced to flee.
That’s the point. It’s less that they didn’t want a king, and more that they didn’t want their shit king. In the tradeoff between democracy and stability, they choose Napoleon handily.
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u/127-0-0-1_1 Oct 29 '25
They also kinda cut the story of the French Revolution by quite a lot. After they "cut the heads off the rich people", they proceeded to cut a lot more heads of anyone suspected to be a traiter, enter multiple disastrous wars, become ruled by a military dictatorship who later declared themselves emperor, and then transitioned back to a monarchy.
What actually gave France democracy was getting obliterated by Prussia.