The French Revolution (1 Viewer)

[bosoxs45]

Any history buffs here? I'm curious to hear from you. How was France able to afford the war while people were suffering from the food shortages?

I would guess that during the French revolution France was so poor and miserable that the people revolted and started the french revolution.

What I don't truly understand is how were they able to afford to have and supply Grand Army commanded by Napoleon. Do you think the Revolution was justified? 

 

[rascal]

Do you want to eat?  If so, enlist with the army.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

This is awesome.

I think Yankee is your man

But imo or iirc there was mass seizure of royal properties and church properties before Napolean. There might have also been increased taxataion and a reformed governmental system to improve collection. At some point, until the drive on Moscow, the invasion paid for itself I belief.

As for whether the revolution was necessary? No, Louis could have run a decent state but he checked out like Nicholas Romanov.

Was it justified? Yes the royal regime had become brutal and intolerable.

The blood and mayhem was a precursor to the terrors of the 20th century, so given all that death and destruction and 20 years of continental war no it wasn't worth it, the Bourbons should have ruled properly and avoided everything.

Ultimately the revolution led to the Congress of Vienna led to the Franco Prussian War led to WW1 led to WW2 and all the horrors of communism.

 

[wikkidpissah]

T'was Louis XV who certainly paved the road to revolution. Louis XVI was simply too oblivious to prevent it. France was lucky in the era from Ancien Regime to the Restoration to have had some exceptional paperhangers - the Rothschilds for Napoleon and Necker (as talented a minister as the country ever had) for the crown- so there was always funds available.

XVI's use of the corvee (a law which allows the drafting of citizens into virtual slavery at any time for public works projects), on the heels of a famine which covered much of the southern half of the country and the Diamond Necklace Affair (Marie Antoinette's real "let em eat cake" moment) was what mobilized the provinces to join Parisians in protest of excesses and precipitated the Revolution. I tend to believe the axiom that revolutions are automatically justified by occuring, because they must be a matter of utter necessity to overcome established power. It is also become all too apparent by now that those most effective at leading revolutions tend to be least effective at running countries and the Jacobins were no exception.

Napoleon gave order to his country for the first time in a long time and his Code was actually the most, if not first, equitable (though still quite heavy) tax policy a world power had ever seen, so France eagerly supported his early ambitions.

 

[RokNRole]

I was all for it

 

[Eephus]

Any history buffs here? I'm curious to hear from you. How was France able to afford the war while people were suffering from the food shortages?

I would guess that during the French revolution France was so poor and miserable that the people revolted and started the french revolution.

What I don't truly understand is how were they able to afford to have and supply Grand Army commanded by Napoleon. Do you think the Revolution was justified? 

France's ability to wage war shortly after the revolution is partly a product of the times.  The Napoleonic Wars were like not the total wars that followed. Campaigns in the early 19th century were brief with less frequent combat than modern wars.  Cannon and small arms were much less costly than the heavily mechanized armies from a century later.   The fact that Napoleon was able to muster an army of 200,000 men three months after returning from Elba is another example of how armies could be massed with relative ease.

The Napoleonic wars were the some of the last before railroads revolutionized logistics.  Armies lived by foraging and looting.  Some of Napoleon's greatest innovations were with military logistics but they were ultimately his downfall in Russia.