Robespierre and The Reign of Terror

When advocates of the revolution felt threatened by the enemies of the revolution, who were in actuality just common people living their lives, terror and gory violence were used to silence these people who didn't comply with the new stipulations of the revolution. Led by Maximilien Robespierre, the Jacobins subjected these people to execution and imprisonment for even the slightest infraction. Civil liberties of the day were taken away. These were the days of the guillotine and this was the way many people were executed at the time. A new republic had just come about in France and the revolutionaries didn't want people to speak out against this new government and the revolution. It was also greatly focused on acting against the Nobility and people of the Roman Catholic Church, since these were pre-revolutionary ways of life. Anyone who's views were different from that of the Jacobins and Robespierre was executed or imprisoned. It is said that anywhere from 14,000 to 50,000 people lost their lives to the Reign of Terror.
I think that the ways of Robespierre and the Jacobins are very similar to the ways of the French Religious wars, except that this time it was the "enlightened" people attacking the people who were stuck in their roots and wanted to be a part of the Church and maintain the class system from before the revolution. I think it is very ignorant of the revolutionaries to attack people because of their opposing viewpoints. I think that in the beginning they had good intentions of breaking people away from the Church in order to op people's minds to a new way of living. But I think things got out of hand rapidly when they decided that the way of the Jacobins was the only way. When they started killing people because of their beliefs, they regressed to the same state of mind people were in before the Enlightenment.
Things escalated quickly and many innocent people lost their lives for simply expressing themselves. Right before this happened, the Enlightenment opened people's eyes and let them know that they could think for themselves and didn't have to conform to the ways of the time, but when Robespierre decided it was his way or the highway(or in this case the guillotine) he just showed people it wasn't acceptable to have a mind of your own. I think Robespierre postponed advancement in the country for the ten or so months that the Reign of Terror occurred. Eventually he would be overthrown and subjected to the guillotine himself for his harsh actions, but while he was alive he drastically damaged the French Republic.

I decided to write about the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572 because I feel that it is a very influential part of history. I really support the Huguenot's plight to open peoples' minds to other sects of Christianity. I feel like the Huguenot's move away from the Church was an important precursor to the Enlightenment. It was the first time that people had a choice to think for themselves in France. The French could decide whether they wanted to stay with the strict and structured Catholic way of Christianity, or they could open their minds and see Christianity in a different freer light. When I say they had a choice to think for themselves, it's not as easy as it would seem. I can only imagine how hard it would be to break away from the norm, especially in a time when there was nothing but the Church and that's all that people knew. And once a person decided to leave the Church there were certainly repercussions that would follow. The Huguenot's, as a whole, would end up being punished for trying to expose people to a new way of seeing Christianity.
Queen Catherine de Medici, a devout Catholic, didn't like the idea of people moving away from the Church. I think she was worried that if people moved away from the Church that the Protestants would encourage people to think for themselves and realize how corrupt the Church, and present day France, actually was. In the long run people did end up realizing these things, but as we now know, it would take some time for people to start thinking for themselves. Catherine felt so threatened by the Huguenot's that she decided to take down their leader, Admiral de Coligny. She thought that this alone would be enough to shake the Protestant kingdom enough to discourage them from going to war with Spain. When her plan to assassinate Coligny didn't go as planned the first time around, she and the king took greater action. The plane was to murder all of the leaders of the Huguenot's but it turned into a full blown massacre.
As much as I hate to admit it, I thought that Queen Catherine was very innovative and smart about her plans to kill the Huguenot population. She helped plan the wedding of a very important Huguenot couple, so she knew that all of the important and powerful Huguenot leaders would be in France at the time that the murder was to take place. I don't think she ever intended for the murder to turn into a massacre of that calamity, but I also don't think she was upset about how it turned out. I actually think she was very satisfied.
To sum it up, I think that the Huguenot's veering away from the traditional beliefs of the Church was a good beginning to the Enlightenment. I think that the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre put a pause on people thinking for themselves and outside of the norm because most of their population was wiped out and those who remained were scared back into the destructive path of the Church. I do think that the Protestants of that time had a huge impact on the Enlightenment.

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