This Place is dead and I blame the moderator.

[Louis VI the Fat]

As an advice to other posters with dreams of forum greatness through provocation of the authorities: did you notice the OP hasn't posted for four days? That's because his peachy little buttocks ached so bad from my spanking, he couldn't walk to his computer to log on for days.

Take note and learn.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Why did France of all the oppersed European peoples going all the hardships Europe likes to put itself through revolt? Why did no one else?

Surley in much of contentital Europe it was the same story?

What makes France special?

Why France?

Reason one, you got correct already: sheer Gallic coolness. Southern temperament and northern rationality - the French synthesis. Which, speaking of Darwin, surely makes the French the pinnacle of human evolution.


Reason two (let's be obscure): beauty.

Beauty - that forgotten mover of the human temperament. The French enlightenment was forged, amongst other places, in the great Jardin des Plantes of Paris (pic below). You go there for a stroll, are overwhelmed by beauty, and thus you are naturally in the mood to ponder the existence of man, of nature, of natural law, and of what is right and good and worthy in this world. And all in a peaceful, uplifted state of mind.

Note that in French gardening, as in French philosophy and political ideas, man perfects nature. Human rationality must be imposed on the world to perfect it - this imposition of order is beauty as understood in French aesthetics.
Duality, rationality, and beauty through order. France:


The result are lofty human rights. If you stroll through stern Berlin, the result is dreams about a pointy-helmeted orc army. Take a stroll in wintery Moscow, and one's thoughts produce a Gulag archipelago. Not so in Paris!

The revolution did not originate in a slum, not in a place of poverty and ugliness, but in the heavenly gardens of the Palais Royal (pic below). It is beauty that makes a man understand the nobleness of his being, that inspires him to look to the stars and dream.







It is the forgotten, at least overlooked, contribution of French culture to Western civilization: aesthetics. The pursuit of beauty. A society that strives for beauty, strives for beauty of ideals.

Also, revolutions are a summery affair. Paris excells in summer. The best part of Paris are the large public spaces. Not the cold, grey, dismal Paris of winter, but the heavenly Parisian public spaces of summer forged the revolution.

[al Roumi]

Qu-est-ce-qu'il est coquin ce modérateur!

[Meneldil]

This charlatan triple-postes in his own forum. Quelle honte !

[al Roumi]

This charlatan triple-postes in his own forum. Quelle honte !

And indeed quelle ironie when we are discussing absolute monarchy and the abuse of power...

[Strike For The South]

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[Strike For The South]

Why France?

Reason one, you got correct already: sheer Gallic coolness. Southern temperament and northern rationality - the French synthesis. Which, speaking of Darwin, surely makes the French the pinnacle of human evolution.


Reason two (let's be obscure): beauty.

Beauty - that forgotten mover of the human temperament. The French enlightenment was forged, amongst other places, in the great Jardin des Plantes of Paris (pic below). You go there for a stroll, are overwhelmed by beauty, and thus you are naturally in the mood to ponder the existence of man, of nature, of natural law, and of what is right and good and worthy in this world. And all in a peaceful, uplifted state of mind.

Note that in French gardening, as in French philosophy and political ideas, man perfects nature. Human rationality must be imposed on the world to perfect it - this imposition of order is beauty as understood in French aesthetics.
Duality, rationality, and beauty through order. France:


The result are lofty human rights. If you stroll through stern Berlin, the result is dreams about a pointy-helmeted orc army. Take a stroll in wintery Moscow, and one's thoughts produce a Gulag archipelago. Not so in Paris!

The revolution did not originate in a slum, not in a place of poverty and ugliness, but in the heavenly gardens of the Palais Royal (pic below). It is beauty that makes a man understand the nobleness of his being, that inspires him to look to the stars and dream.







It is the forgotten, at least overlooked, contribution of French culture to Western civilization: aesthetics. The pursuit of beauty. A society that strives for beauty, strives for beauty of ideals.

Also, revolutions are a summery affair. Paris excells in summer. The best part of Paris are the large public spaces. Not the cold, grey, dismal Paris of winter, but the heavenly Parisian public spaces of summer forged the revolution.

[Vladimir]

*look up*

Agreed. Wonderful.

[Rhyfelwyr]

France wasn't that unique, you can draw a lot of parallels with its Revolution and the one throughout Britain the previous century.

Both were essentially reactionary movements against increasingly absolutist kings. Of course, absolutism preceeded both Louis XVI and Charles I of the British Civil War, but these two figures lacked the tact to get away with it.

And what were both rebellions at first termed in conservative language (to limit the king to his proper powers) turned into much more radical republican movements that resulted in what were arguably tyrannies.

As to why all this happened later in France, probably the fact that it was less economically developed than England had something to do with it, so it took longer for the middle-classes to develop and push for their place in the political system. Plus kicking the Huguenots out probably helped delay things, Richard Baxter gives a good contemporary account of how the French merchants and such like adopted the Reformed religion and its associated political theories regarding the limited rights of King's etc (eg Hotman's 'Francogallia' for the French)... so when they were massacred or expelled to the Netherlands/England then France lost a potential revoutionary 'class' as Marx would say.