The French Revolution: A Tumultuous Time In French History

History straddles the fine line in the sand between fact and interpretation. It encompasses all events that happened throughout existence, but it is not always possible to glean a clear understanding as to why those events happened. While we may be able to explain the seismological reasons for a natural disaster, analyzing history will result in a myriad of equally valid theories based on what perspective was used. This problem is compounded the further back in time we travel, notably in times where civilizations were in a great level of distress or censure, and written accounts of events become more and more scarce. A notable example of this singularity in history is the French Revolution, a tumultuous time in French History that we can all agree happened. However, when delving deeper into the events of the time, there are several contradictory theories on what motivated its inception and the reasoning at the time for the events that took place during it. Due to the time period, there is an abundance of written accounts from both France and her neighboring

Many see the terror as the means to an end for France to live on and defeat its foreign enemy. The level of control and the swift reaction against agents within France were tools that allowed them to turn the tide of the war. A notable aspect of the Terror was that the members of the Committee of Public Safety, with the exception of Robespierre, travelled to different parts of France and enforced both the positive and negative aspects of the Terror. It was through these visits that many of the Jacobin’s social welfare ideals were initiated. Many defenders of the Terror within the context of the revolution point to these accounts as evidence of the good intentions behind the