The French Revolution History Channel #1

Male Narrator: At the height of the 18th century
the most glorious kingdom in Europe would

face a mighty foe – the power of its own
people.

One man would rise to inspire the nation to
cast aside a reluctant King and a hated Queen.

And a new Republic would be born in blood.

The blood of the French Revolution.

1794, Francis Conciergerie prison.

An impenetrable fortress on the banks of the
Seine River.

Dank, rat-infested.

It is known as deaths antechamber.

Inside the voice of a young nation is about
to be silenced.

As his hair is shorn and his neck laid bare
for the blade of the guillotine, Maximilien

Robespierre prepares to pay for the cataclysm
left in his wake.

[explosion] The explosion of events that became
the French Revolution.

Man: French Revolution is this extraordinary
moment when people began to believe that you

could actually recreate almost everything
in a society that you could not only change

the politics, the institutions, but you could
change human nature itself through political

action.

Man: The French Revolution really does constitute
the crossroads of the modern world where everything

begins to turn in a different direction.

Narrator: The Revolution saw a feudal land
turn its back on aristocratic tradition and

chart a violent new course for the future.

It would shake the very foundation of Europe
and its impact would be felt across the seas.

Man: The French Revolution is the most important
event in Western history.

There are developments that can rival it like
the Industrial Revolution, like capitalism,

but if you mean an event, I can't think of
anything more important.

Man: It was the Revolution that upset things
the most.

I mean, again, when you consider that it got
rid of the Catholic Church.

It got rid of Christianity.

It got rid of the nobility.

It got rid of the King.

It got rid of all these things.

Narrator: The French Revolution would bring
bread to the poor, democracy to France, and

would establish a whole new order of society.

But progress would come at a price.

Man: It was really a moment of extraordinary
hope, extraordinary ambition, and then it

turned into this most horrific tragedy.

Narrator: Now broken and defeated, Robespierre,
not two days before, stood atop his world

presiding over the greatest and bloodiest
revolution Europe had ever known.

So true to its ideals, he was called the incorruptible.

So powerful, his slightest utterance could
cloak an entire city in fear.

A master orator, Robespierre's words were
his weapon.

Now silenced by a bullet to the jaw he awaits
the same swift and brutal end he has brought

down upon so many others.

The Revolution is about to eat its own.

♪ ♪ No one could have foreseen the turbulent
times ahead.

On one spring day in 1770, the Chateau of
Versailles fills to its gilded rafters with

the glittering crowds of the Royal Court.

Completed in 1682, Versailles was the crowning
masterpiece of King Louis the 14th.

To put some distance between himself and his
subjects, Louis the 14th transplanted the

capital of France to this small town twelve
miles west of Paris where he had built the

most magnificent palace in all of Europe.

For nearly 100 years, it has been the seat
of the nation's unwavering monarchy.

And today it is host to a very important wedding.

King Louis the 15th's grandson, Prince Louis
Capet, next in line for the throne, is about

to take a bride.

Just 15-years-old on the eve of his wedding,
Louis Capat is bashful and hesitant with few

of the characteristics expected of a future
king, much less a husband.

Man: Louie was this pudgy, shy, painfully
inadequate 15-year-old with absolutely no

social graces at all.

Louie the 15th's mistress Madame du Barry
called him a fat, ill-bred boy.

Basically he was just a schlub.

Man: It was very hard for Louie to come to
decisions.

He dithered incessantly.

He was always ready to be persuaded by the
last person he had talked to.

Again, those are usually not considered good
leadership qualities.

Narrator: Louie's marriage is a political
union between Austria's royal family, the

Habsburgs, and his own, the Bourbons.

The wedding symbolizes the end of an ancient
rivalry and the beginning of new regional

ties.

The young bride-to-be arrives in France a
wide-eyed and pretty fourteen-year-old girl…

….Marie Antoinette.

Man: Marie Antoinette is an archduchess of
Austria.

She's the youngest daughter of the empress
Maria Theresa and she comes to France as part

of a marriage deal which represents a great
reversal of alliances whereby for the first

time in living memory France and Austria become
allies rather than enemies.

Narrator: Marie comes to France as a political
gesture, but as a teenager, she has little

interest in political affairs.

Man: Well, when Marie Antoinette came to Versailles
she was very young.

She didn't know a great deal about the country
she was coming to.

She didn't know about the customs.

She didn't know about the court.

She was certainly a headstrong girl; a very
lively girl, but she was still a girl.

[female interpreter] When Marie Antoinette
comes to Versailles, she is just a teenager.

She is blonde with blue eyes.

She is pretty and she likes being attractive
to people.

And she comes with the intention of winning
over her husband and her new family.

[thunder crashes] Narrator: On the night of
the wedding, there is an ominous storm.

But inside, the grandeur of the ceremony lights
up the palace as the newlyweds make their

way to the Royal bedroom.

♪ ♪ In an age-old ceremony, to encourage
the conception of an heir, the King's couriers

are present as the awkward young couple is
revealed in the marriage bed for the first

time.

[crowd clapping] The crowd is delighted and
expectations are high, but once the curtains

are drawn it's clear that an heir will not
be so easily produced.

Man: Louis was not only not interested in
ruling, Louis wasn't particularly interested

in loving either.

And he paid her no attention on the first
nights or even further into their marriage.

Narrator: Many years will pass before the
marriage is finally consummated.

The lack of an heir will soon spark gossip
all across the kingdom that will continue

to plague the couple for years to come.

The grand wedding gala continues for days,
but outside the gates of Versailles, there

is hardly cause for celebration.

Years of mismanagement by the monarchy have
left the French people deprived and hungry.

Nearly a decade earlier, King Louis the 15th
lost the Seven Years War battling Great Britain

over territory in North America.

The ill-fated conflict all but bankrupted
France of money and prestige leaving the country's

coffers drain even as its population is growing
bigger everyday.

With diseases like the plague a distant memory,
fewer people are dying, but more and more

of them are hungry.

Man: France grew from 20 million to 26 million
in the 18th century after having rung only

1 million in the preceding two centuries.

That put tremendous strain on what was there
and so there was a lot of anxiety.

Narrator: Four years after the royal wedding,
Prince Louis's grandfather loses his final

battle with smallpox.

Louis the 15th dies a defeated and unpopular
king and leaves behind a country on the brink

of chaos.

In a lavish ceremony, young Prince Louis inherits
the throne and is crowned King Louis the 16th.

Despite his insistence on a grandiose coronation,
Louis is all too aware that he is woefully

unprepared for the job.

Man: Louis the 16th, the moment his grandfather
dies and it suddenly is clear that he's king,

he doesn't know what to do.

He feels as if the world is falling in upon
him.

So, although he's been educated in the full
expectation of becoming king, he doesn't feel

ready for it.

♪ ♪ Narrator: For a kingdom in crisis,
Louis the 16th is the worst man to have on

the watch.

The twenty-year-old king prays, 'protect us
Lord for we reign too young.'

♪ ♪ Ensconced in their royal apartments
in Versailles, Louis and Marie begin their

promising new lives as young monarchs while
only 12 miles away, in the city of Paris,

another new era is dawning.

One that is on a collision course with the
monarchy itself.

It is a dangerous new age of ideas: The Age
of Enlightenment.

[majestic music] As the royal carriage approaches
the esteemed Louis-le-Grand College, crowds

gather for a glimpse of grandeur.

It is a day to welcome the newly crowned king,
Louis the 16th, and his lovely Austrian wife

to the city of Paris.

And at the head of the welcome party, is a
promising young law student, Maximilien Robespierre.

Man: When Robespierre was a school boy, the
king visited the college and Robespierre gave

a Latin address to the king.

So he actually spoke to Louis the 16th when
he was a teenager.

Narrator: As Robespierre respectfully delivers
his Latin soliloquy, the King hardly notices

the boy.

But years later, their fates will again intertwine
under very different, much darker circumstances.

Man: It was one of these rituals that take
place in every school and yet of course it

was charged with irony because here you have
the young Robespierre reading this discourse

in honor of the man he would later kill.

Narrator: For now, the welcome is warm and
the flattery sincere.

The visit from the Royals may have won the
hearts of the people, but their minds are

leaning increasingly in an entirely different
direction.

Since the Middle Ages, European society had
been broken into three distinct classes dictated

by birth.

There was a great divide between the wealth
of the nobility and the clergy and the poverty

of the peasants.

Then, at the blossoming of the 18th century,
reason and science began to challenge this

age-old tradition.

Swept up on a current of innovation and new
literature, Paris now radiates as the philosophical

center of the world.

The city pulses with a great flourishing of
knowledge.

A shining beacon of possibility.

It is the Age of Enlightenment.

Man: The Enlightenment is a movement which
says don't trust authority.

Don't trust anything that you've been told
by anybody else at all.

Think it out for yourself.

Test it for yourself.

Woman: In old regime Europe, you were told
what to think.

You were given information from above by your
rulers, by your priests.

And so the idea that you could map out all
of human knowledge and then have access to

it was revolutionary.

Narrator: In elite salons across Paris, aristocrats
gathered to discuss Enlightenment authors

in the burgeoning Age of Reason.

Voltaire.

Rousseau.

Fresh voices who championed liberty, control
of one's own destiny and above all equality.

The passion for this new literature is highest
among the upper-class, But as Enlightenment

ideas take root at all levels of society,
the drive for equality will begin to threaten

the aristocratic way of life.

Woman: What makes it dangerous is it means
you will eventually question why are aristocrats

the ones with privilege and can't we change
the world to make it a better place?

Isn't progress possible?

All of that will eventually undermine the
idea that monarchy is natural.

Aristocracy is natural and hierarchy is natural.

Narrator: To see enlightenment ideals in action,
one need only look across the Atlantic where

the Americans are fighting for freedom from
France's old nemesis Great Britain.

Young King Louis wants revenge for his grandfather's
defeats and he sees an opportunity in the

American War of Independence.

Louis commits to the cause a total of 2,000
million livre enough to feed and house 7 million

French citizens for a year.

His investment would mark the beginning of
financial collapse for France.

Man: America bankrupts France in effect, because
the debt which the French monarchy incurs

in order to fight the American War of Independence
turns out to be absolutely crucial in the

financial situation of the French monarchy
because the French monarchy cannot pay those

debts.

♪ ♪ Narrator: While Louis sends money
and troops across the Atlantic, Marie is busy

incurring debts of her own.

Life at Versailles is a never-ending routine
of archaic ritual and formality.

There are ceremonies for the waking of the
king and queen; for dressing; for dining;

for retiring to bed.

To keep herself amused amidst the ritual drudgery,
Marie Antoinette presides over a parade of

increasingly outrageous fashions.

Man: Marie was obsessed with fashion especially
these towering hairdos that were several feet

high, that took hours and hours in the construction
and fit all sorts of ornaments and fruits.

And to many people, they seemed like an obscenity.

They came to represent all that was wrong
with her and with Versailles and that culture.

Narrator: Marie occupies herself with court
gossip, gambling, and the staging of plays.

As her expenses accumulate, Marie earns the
nickname Madame Deficit.

Man: Marie is given the name Madame Deficit
as the country is in economic chaos.

And she continues to spend as if nothing's
happened, on dresses and jewels and shoes

and she was the Imelda Marcos of her day.

♪ ♪ Narrator: Of all the debts Marie incurs,
the greatest is what she owes her country,

an heir to the throne.

In the seven years since their marriage, Louis
and Marie have yet to produce a child.

Marie finds herself in an increasingly humiliating
position.

Man: The job of the queen is to produce a
male heir.

It's absolutely essential for there to be
a son.

And during that time, the people criticize,
people are dissatisfied, people say, the king

should have never married this Austrian archduchess
and now she can't even produce an heir to

the throne.

Narrator: Marie is desperate.

Louis appetite for food is unquestioned, but
sex is clearly not on the menu. [female interpreter]

Maria Theresa, the mother to Marie Antoinette
questions, if a girl as gorgeous as my daughter

cannot get him going, then what is going on?

Woman: Louis the 16th and his young wife were
not able to conceive for seven years.

This cast a pall on the beginning of his reign
and because his hobby as a locksmith was well

known, there were all sorts of salacious songs
circulating to the effect that the locksmith

was having a hard time finding the keyhole.

Narrator: Louis's disinterest in sex is seen
as a lack of bravado as a king.

Finally, after years of frustration and pressure
from the court, Louis is diagnosed with a

treatable condition called phimosis.

Man: Louis had a deformity that made arousal
extremely painful, therefore, there was no

consummation until there was a surgical procedure
that could correct this, but he was scared

to death to have it.

And it took years for him to agree to have
it.

And when he finally did….

voila! [baby crying] Narrator: After a simple
surgery, the couple is able to have their

first child – Marie Thérèse.

But there is no easy fix for the years of
damage to Marie's image.

Since the early 1780's, libelle has circulated
throughout the country.

Pornographic satire of the king and queen,
obscene pamphlets mock Louis's impotence and

portray Marie as a promiscuous harlot and
a debauched and decadent court.

The people's view of the monarchy sours as
conditions in the countryside worsen.

♪ ♪ After a succession of bad harvests,
deregulation has raised the cost of flour

leading to a shortage of the very heart of
the French diet, bread.

But the hardships naturally stop at the gates
of Versailles.

As the royals continue to live in extravagance,
complaints are committed to paper.

One charge is leveled directly at the Royal
Court.

Man: Do you know why there are so many needy
people?

It is because your luxurious existence devours
in one day the substance of a thousand men.

Narrator: The man behind this charge?

The same young man who just a few years earlier
regaled the king and queen after their coronation,

Maximilien Robespierre.

In Robespierre, the people will soon gain
a voice calling for liberty, equality, for

revolution.

Versailles in the late 1700's is an oasis
of extravagance surrounded by a land in despair.

And with an uncertain King at the helm, France
is charting a course for disaster.

After 19 years of marriage, Louis has sired
four children.

Yet, as a king, he remains impotent.

In an attempt to demonstrate leadership, Louis
dabbles in financial reforms.

But his misguided interfering burdens the
poor with heavy taxes while the nobility pay

hardly at all.

With the economy in ruins and the people restless,
it seems as if even the heavens are angry

smiting France with the most bitterly cold
winter in 90 years.

Man: If ever God intervened to make a situation
worse, the summer of 1788 and the spring of

1789 is a moment when that happens.

By the summer of 1788, you already have a
burgeoning political crisis and it's developing

against a background of very serious food
shortage.

Narrator: For the people of France in the
18th century, flour is the essence of life

itself.

Bread, the measure of existence.

Woman: Most ordinary people in France ate
at least two pounds a day of bread.

Bread was all-important.

Its price was immediately felt by everyone.

If the price doubled, you were in big trouble.

Narrator: Under Louis's financial mismanagement,
the cost of flour skyrockets.

Sparse food supplies are hoarded.

The cost of a loaf of bread soon equals a
month's earnings.

[people shouting] Hunger turns to raids.

Riots break out across France.

Homes are robbed.

[glass breaking] Bakeries are raided.

And shopkeepers suspected of stockpiling bread
are lynched on the spot.

With the economy in shambles, the bank's forced
Louis to hire a finance minister, Jacques

Necker.

An enlightened thinker, Necker is popular
with the people in a way that Louis can only

envy.

Man: Jacques Necker was undoubtedly the most
popular minister throughout the spring of

(17)89 because he's taken the line publicly
in his writings that the government's duty

is to make sure that there is enough bread
and grain for everybody.

Narrator: The nation in fiscal crisis, Necker
urges Louis to call a meeting of the traditional

representative body of the kingdom, the Estates
General.

It is the first time the representatives have
been called together in a hundred seventy-five

years.

Man: France was politically organized in something
called the Estates.

The First Estate was the clergy.

The Second Estate was the nobility.

And the Third Estate was everyone else.

And by contemporary reckoning, the first two
Estates occupied 3% of the population and

the third estate 97% of the population.

Man: A lot of people felt it was very unfair
for this Third Estate which was most of the

population to only have one-third of the deputies.

They felt it was very unfair that this should
be a three chamber Parliament where two chambers,

the nobility and the clergy, could always
out vote the commoners.

Narrator: May 4, 1789, a skilled young lawyer
and politician arrives at Versailles.

Maximilien Robespierre comes to stand before
the Estates General as a deputy to fight for

a fair voice for the people he represents,
the Third Estate.

An orphan from the provinces, Robespierre
had risen to academic prominence on a prestigious

scholarship becoming an eloquent speaker.

Prim appearance with never a hair nor a phrase
out of place.

Back home in the small town of Arras, the
Enlightenment ideas he had absorbed in the

salons of Paris found a powerful voice as
he became a hometown lawyer for the downtrodden.

Man: By the time he went back and started
to practice as a lawyer he was reading very

widely in the Enlightenment and Robespierre
was someone when he was practicing law in

Arras tried to actually bring the ideas of
the Enlightenment into the cases he was fighting.

Narrator: At the Estates General, Robespierre
and his colleagues are demanding that the

nobility and clergy pay taxes.

But Louis feels increasingly threatened by
the growing radicalism of the Third Estate.

Then, on June 20th, after a six-week deadlock,
the deputies arrived to find that they are

being silenced.

Woman: On June 20th, when the deputies come
to their meeting and find the doors locked,

they suspect a plot.

They move next door to what we call a tennis
court, which was really a handball court,

and gather together and swear they will not
stop meeting until they have a new constitution.

Narrator: The deputies declare themselves
a new National Assembly, the true representatives

of the people of France.

Man: The Tennis Court Oath is one of these
great symbolic moments in the history of the

French Revolution.

You had these people assembled in this great
open space of the tennis court, raising their

arms in this quasi Roman salute and for the
National Assembly this was a moment when they've

realized something of their power and their
dignity and saw that they really could defy

France's king.

Narrator: In one revolutionary stand of defiance,
the National Assembly is born.

It will be a communion of voices from around
the country, a Parliamentary body and acting

the people's will.

But resting power from the king would not
be so easy as signing a simple proclamation.

Man: All of these early victories that take
place at Versailles are largely paper victories

and they have no teeth to back them up.

And the fear that happens takes over the deputies
at Versailles as we approach mid-July is that

the king is gathering his forces to disperse
them.

To overthrow them.

Narrator: By early July, 30,000 of the King's
troops are taking positions around Paris.

To defend themselves, the people form a new
National Guard.

Rioters raid Paris's armors and make away
with over 28,000 muzzles.

The only thing missing is gunpowder and the
people know just where to get it.

In the center of Paris there looms a massive
stone dungeon notorious as a symbol of feudal

rule, the Bastille.

The prison houses the city's stores of gunpowder
and is legendary as a den of torture and unspeakable

deaths.

Man: The Bastille had been the great symbol
of royal despotism; the great symbol of the

kings of France running beyond the just limits
of their own power; a symbol of horror for

the people of France.

Narrator: Amidst the rioting, there is a stunning
outrage.

Louis fires his finance minister, the people's
beloved Jacques Necker, seen as too sympathetic

to the masses.

Hours after Necker is fired, word reaches
Paris that their man on the inside has been

ousted.

There is nothing left but revolt.

On July 14th crowds band together identify
themselves with a small cockade.

Red and blue for the colors of Paris, separated
by white, the color of the House of Bourbon.

The tricolore is born.

From the feverish crowd a voice cries out
to the Bastille.

Woman: Attacking the Bastille means that the
people of Paris are saying you cannot get

rid of the new National Assembly.

The people are acting, they're arming themselves
and they're basically saying we take the side

of the Revolution.

Narrator: At the sight of the approaching
mob, the governor of the Bastille, Bernard

de Launay , attempts to lock down the prison.

He mounts a hopeless defense.

And the marauders storm the fortress and tear
into the guards with knives and pikes.

Finally, de Launay surrenders, but the enraged
mob engulfs him, dragging him through the

streets.

The jeering horde kicks and stabs at him until
he shouts, "Let me die!"

The crowd eagerly obliges.

He is stabbed and shot.

And a Revolutionary tradition is born.

His severed head is paraded on a pike.

Woman: The deputies in the National Assembly
do not immediately condemn this act of violence.

In fact, they accept it.

And it was this acceptance of popular violence
that in some people's view created a pattern

that was to have catastrophic consequences
for the unfolding of the revolution.

Narrator: With the smoke still clearing over
the Bastille, Louis the 16th returns from

a hunting trip.

In his diary under the date July, 14, 1789,
he writes… ….nothing.

A reference to his unsuccessful hunt.

An aide interrupts and breaks the news of
the riots and the fall of the Bastille.

Louis the 16th asks, "Is it a revolt?"

"No, sire," he replies, "it is a Revolution."

[men shouting] Victory at the Bastille unleashes
the irrepressible torrent of Revolution.

The people had defied their king and won.

There would be no turning back.

As a symbol of the defeat of tyranny, the
people, men, women and children dig in with

bare hands and tear the Bastille apart brick
by feudal brick.

They are beginning to dismantle the past itself.

Man: The French went about the process of
tearing down the Bastille as quickly as they

could.

In the absence of powerful explosives, this
was done very painstakingly but with a tremendous

amount of vigor.

And the bricks were given away, sold, as emblems
of the demolition, of despotism.

Narrator: The energy of the streets invigorates
the National Assembly.

A charter is panned within days called the
Declaration of the Rights of Man.

Under this daring new document, archaic class
distinctions are to be abolished and all men

considered truly equal.

Man: The Declaration of the Rights of Man
was a declaration promulgated by the National

Assembly which said, in its text, that the
sovereignty belongs to the people, belongs

to the nation.

The King is nowhere mentioned in this document,
therefore, by issuing this document, the Assembly

was effectively seizing power for itself.

Narrator: With the new National Assembly as
their voice, the citizens of France set out

to change the very fabric of their world.

They demand a constitutional monarchy.

Equal rights for all men and justice under
reasonable laws.

To provide a greater voice for the call of
Revolution, Robespierre demands increased

freedom for the press long muzzled under the
old regime.

♪ ♪ The resulting Free Press is spearheaded
by L'Ami du peuple, The People's Friend.

A fiery newspaper full of vitriolic rants
and provocation, it is the braindchild of

a former doctor, Jean-Paul Marat.

After a string of unsuccessful careers, Marat
found himself living in poverty, for a time,

finding shelter in the sewers of Paris.

It was there he contracted a painful skin
disease that now leaves him confined for long

periods to a medicinal bath.

A bitter and failed Marat finds in the Revolution
the perfect outlet for his venom.

Woman: Jean-Paul Marat was just one of these
professional malcontents.

And unfortunately Revolutions do offer opportunity
to professional malcontents.

Marat took all of that bile, all of that resentment
and funneled it in to a newspaper that became

extraordinarily successful.

L'Ami du peuple.

Man: Marat was a man possessed of extraordinary
anger.

You just have to read the pages of his newspaper,
The Friend of the People, to see this.

In every issue he displays a complete paranoid
mentality.

He sees plots everywhere.

Everybody is plotting against the Revolution
and the answer is very simple for them.

The answer is blood.

The answer is heads.

Narrator: Marat loathes the monarchies relentless
extravagance. even as poverty grips France.

And needs only the slightest rumor to lambaste
the king and queen in his newspaper.

On October 2, 1789, his anger boils over.

Word reaches Paris that the king has thrown
a party at Versailles.

That the decadent Royals threw the new tricolour
flag, symbol of the Revolution, to the ground

and trampled it under foot.

Marat is enraged.

He reports the insult in his paper.

Just as a new threat breaks, the king has
again ordered troops to move into positions

around Paris.

[horse whinnies] With the coup at the Bastille's
still smoldering in the minds of the people,

Marat frantically urges them to take action.

[voice-over] People of Paris, it's time to
open your eyes.

Shake yourselves out of your torpor.

Wake up.

Once more, wake up!

Narrator: October 5th, dawn breaks to the
furious ringing of bells.

[bells tolling] Women gather new City Hall
to protest the shortage of bread and now fear

of the approaching royal troops mixes with
anger as news of the king's offensive party

circulates through the crowd.

Soon thousands are marching to Versailles
pikes and guns in hand.

The women are taking their complaints to the
king.

Woman: The core of the crowd was made up of
the famous poissarde, the fearsome fish ladies

of the central markets who were known for
their brawny build and their fearlessness.

They were equipped with large knives for scaling
fish.

They were hugely muscular because they carted
boxes.

You didn't want to tangle with these ladies.

Man: These are women of the poor quarters.

These are poor women which are affected by
the increased price of bread, by the scarcity

of products, who suddenly begin to realize
that they must act.

It is quite extraordinary how these ordinary
women, probably most of them couldn't even

write their name, suddenly act as the protagonists
of this historical process.

Narrator: Inside the palace, word of the approaching
crowd and angry women reaches the queen's

chambers.

Legend has it that it is at this moment that
Marie Antoinette utters the most famous line

she never said.

Woman: Marie Antoinette did not say "let them
eat cake."

That is a myth.

Marie Antoinette, unfortunately, probably
never even noticed the poor people of her

country long enough to make such a statement.

Narrator: As the mob of women gathers outside
the gates, Louis understands that the revolution

can no longer be ignored.

It is being brought to his front door.

He agrees to sign the Declaration of the Rights
of Man yet the crowd continues to grow throughout

the night.

By morning, 20,000 people are camped outside
the Royal palace.

To close the centuries of distance between
the king and his subjects, the angry mass

demands that the king and queen move to Paris.

Indecisive as ever, Louis is weak to respond.

His hesitation would provoke a fury in the
crowd and put the lives of the royal family

in grave danger Man: When they don't get instant
compliance with what they want, it really

looks as if they're going to massacre the
queen.

Narrator: A wave of women break into the Royal
palace screaming for the blood of the queen.

They massacre the guards, decapitate and impale
their heads on pikes.

Man: They were like banshees screaming throughout
the palace, "Give me her entrails.

Give me her head.

I want a leg.

I want an arm."

I think that if they had grown so frenzied
that if they had encountered her, they probably

would have torn her to pieces.

Narrator: Terrified for her life, Marie escapes
to Louis's apartments only moments before

the women break into her chambers and tear
her bed to shreds.

The
king and queen are now at the mercy of the

mob.

What the mob wants is a little attention from
their king.

Man: The only way the women can be pacified
is for the Royal family to agree to go to

Paris because once they're there in Paris,
then they can ultimately be made to do what

the people of Paris wanted.

Narrator: They march 60,000 strong leaving
Versailles with carts and wagons, overflowing

with flour from the king's storehouses, flanking
the Royal carriage all the way to Paris.

[female interpreter] The king and queen were
forced to go back to Paris with the heads

of their guards who had been massacred in
the Chateau.

Their heads had been cut off.

This is really a completely, unbridled violence.

The heads were then made up with makeup and
paraded at the head of the cortege with the

king and queen following.

Narrator: The king and queen must make their
new home in the Tuileries Palace.

They will never see Versailles again.

Man: Once the Royal family moves to Paris,
they are the prisoners of Paris.

They know it.

Everybody else knows it.

There are great limits to what they can do
or even dream of doing.

They are the prisoners of the capital city.

There's no doubt.

Narrator: Versailles is abandoned and the
Assembly moves to Paris.

Power is now with the people.

France will have democracy, new laws and a
remarkable and unforgiving form of justice

will make its debut on the revolutionary stage…
…the guillotine.

♪ ♪ May 1791, nearly two years have passed
since the Royal family and the National Assembly

have moved to Paris.

Robespierre appears frequently at the Assembly
and at the Jacobin Club, a debating society

named for the former Jacobin monastery where
they gather.

Now, words are the very core of the Revolution
and Robespierre speaks with an unfailing moral

compass.

His true north is always the people.

He soon earns the nickname 'The Incorruptible.'

France is now a constitutional monarchy.

The king forced to share power with the revolutionaries
in the assembly, but it seems Louis's share

is growing smaller by the day as he is forced
to sign law after law diminishing his own

authority and that of the other great feudal
regime the Catholic Church.

Louis decides the time has come to escape
the confines of the New Republic and mount

a campaign to reclaim his kingdom.

Woman: Louis had decided by 1791 that he needed
to regain control of his country.

And he knew he could only do that with the
help of a foreign army.

So the idea was to make a break from the Tuileries
Palace and to head for the nearest border.

Narrator: June 21, 1791, the king and queen
disguise themselves as servants and by cover

of darkness, slip out from under the watchful
eye of Paris.

They make an ill-planned run for freedom.

It is long past midnight when the royal family
arrives in the small town of Varenne, some

100 miles east of Paris.

They are close to the border of Austria.

Safety just a few miles away.

But their dash to freedom will go no further.

[bell dings] [footsteps] Rumors of the Royal's
journey have preceded them to Varenne.

A town official stops the carriage demanding
their passports.

The official suspicions are confirmed.

It is the signature of the king himself.

The townsmen is overcome at the sight of his
king.

But revolutionary guards nearby show no reverence
for the fleeing Royal's.

Woman: He keeps hoping that people will recognize
him and there will be a kind of rebellion

in his favor.

And much to his horror and surprise they are
not ecstatic to recognize him.

They see him as escaping and basically he's
arrested and taken back to Paris.

Woman: The idea that the monarch had tried
to abandon his people was psychologically

catastrophic.

That event really broke the bond between Louis
and his subjects.

Now they had not only a king who was superfluous,
they had a king who was obviously a traitor

as well.

Narrator: With the Royal family official turncoats
to the Revolution, power shifts from Louis,

now a prisoner king, to the revolutionaries
at the Assembly.

At the very heart of the young revolutionary
government is Robespierre.

He shines at the podium calling for liberty,
equality and fraternity.

He demands universal suffrage and an end to
slavery in the French West Indies.

And most passionately he rails against the
death penalty because in the New Age of Enlightenment,

Robespierre wants to discard all remnants
of the medieval past.

Europe had inherited a maqam repertoire of
execution techniques from the Dark Ages.

Unremittingly cruel deaths by drawing and
quartering, hanging, drowning and burning

at the stake.

Man: Well, under the old regime, there was
a whole panoply of very gruesome punishments

and decapitation was punishment reserved for
the nobility and one of the things that the

revolution wanted from the start was to have
everybody equal in death.

They wanted symbolically to have the same
punishment available for anyone.

Narrator: Despite Robespierre's opposition,
a new killing machine takes center stage in

Paris.

Physician inventor, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin,
devises a ruthless beheading machine.

Turning old-fashioned decapitation into a
humanitarian experience.

Dr. Guillotin describes his new device to
the Assembly.

Man: The mechanism falls like thunder.

The head flies off.

Blood spurts.

The man is no more.

Narrator: Always a supporter of bloodshed,
the journalist Marat prints an enthusiastic

rant in his paper announcing the device's
new name… ….guillotine.

It will soon earn a nickname, The National
Razor.

Man: The French revolutionaries believe in
humane values.

They believe that unnecessary suffering should
not be caused.

And what they like about the guillotine is
that it is quick, it's efficient and as far

as we can tell, although no one has returned
to tell the tale, it's painless.

Narrator: The guillotine will silence the
Revolution's internal enemies, anyone suspected

of plotting to return Louis to the throne.

But it's the enemies surrounding France that
most preoccupy the Assembly.

There is a fear that members of the extended
Royal family, who fled to Austria, will launch

an armed counter-revolution.

The Assembly calls for a preemptive attack.

A Declaration of War on Austria.

But Robespierre argues against it.

Man: Robespierre is one of the lonely voices
who is opposing war because he thinks the

enemy will win.

Robespierre is afraid that the country isn't
ready, hasn't got an army that would be able

to defeat the enemy.

The enemy might therefore come in and destroy
the Revolution.

Narrator: Robespierre loses the debate.

In April 1792, the Assembly declares war on
Austria against a country ruled by Marie Antoinette's

own family.

A nationalist fervor grows.

If Austria defeats the Revolutionary army,
Louis will undoubtedly reclaim his throne.

And Marie is suspected of aiding the enemy
by corresponding with her relatives in Austria

giving away French troop movements with a
stroke of her pen.

All the while, the king and queen feign adherence
to the Revolution.

Man: Louis and Marie Antoinette are playing
a double game.

They are seeming to go along with the Revolution
many times at the same time as they are conspiring

against it.

They are trying to survive.

If you want to be generous, they're survivors,
but if you want to be looking at it from the

revolutionary point of view is they're liars.

[explosion] Narrator: With the French army
already suffering huge losses on the border,

word reaches Paris that Austria's ally, Prussia,
has joined the invasion.

The enemy troops are mobilized under the command
of the Duke of Brunswick, a Prussian general.

Tension pervades the streets of Paris.

And then the newspapers print a letter from
the Duke of Brunswick, a manifesto threatening

the destruction of Paris if any harm comes
to their Royal majesties, the king and queen.

The misguided threat wildly backfires.

August 10, 1792 27,000 armed citizens fueled
by indignant rage head to the Tuileries Palace

and fall upon the king's guards in a savage
attack.

By the end of the day, over 800 from both
sides are dead.

The king flees to safety in the Assembly,
but the monarchy is no more.

Louis is officially stripped of his title.

The French Republic is born.

[people cheering] The blade of the guillotine
is christened with the blood of Louie's remaining

guards and Robespierre, once a staunch opponent
of the death penalty, has had a change of

heart.

The birth of the New Republic can only begin
with the death of a king.

Dr. Guillotine's chilling new device hangs
over Paris like a warning, the penalty for

defying Revolutionary law and order.

Freshly christened with the blood of the king's
guards, it will soon put an end to the king

himself.

By August 1792, with the king deposed and
the Royal family secluded in the temple prison,

Robespierre and his Jacobin's are locked in
a battle with the moderates of the Assembly,

the Girondin, for control of the national
government.

And on the streets of Paris, a new political
movement takes hold.

As a symbol of their rejection of aristocratic
tradition, ordinary citizens refuse to wear

the knee breeches or culotte of the aristocrats.

They call themselves the Sansculotte, those
without knee pants.

Man: The Sansculotte considered themselves
the true people of France.

They were not the poorest of the poor.

They tended to be fairly well-off, artisans,
shopkeepers, people like that.

But they were people who at least claim to
work with their hands.

Not wearing the breeches, not wearing the
culotte for the Sansculotte was simply symbolism

of being not an aristocrat.

Being an ordinary man of people.

Narrator: The Sansculotte seize control of
Paris's city government.

While the Jacobin's and Girondin's steer the
rest of the country from the National Assembly

now called The Convention.

The Convention struggles with the command
of the beleaguered French Army which is swiftly

losing ground to Austria and Prussia.

[multiple gunshots] While fighting back incursions
at the border, the Revolutionary Government

cracks down on enemies withing.

Royalists traitors who might deliver Paris
into the hands of the invaders.

More than a thousand people are arrested and
herded into prison.

Priests, journalists, ordinary men and women.

Robespierre concentrates on the internal crisis,
but his friend, the Minister of Justice , George

Danton, motivates men young and old to join
the war on the frontier.

He is gregarious and loud.

Everything that Robespierre is not.

Soon, Danton's name is heard throughout Paris.

Man: Danton is a bigger than life character.

A man full of life; full of bombast; tremendous
drinker; and the barter who though he's from

the educated classes himself, is a guy who,
unlike Robespierre can physically identify

with the working people in a way that Robespierre
simply cannot.

Narrator: As the enemy closes in, Danton's
fiery rhetoric mobilizes the people, inspiring

many to take to the battlefront.

Man: At one of the moments of greatest peril
for the Revolution, the Austrian and Prussian

armies are invading, he gets up in front of
the people of Paris and shouts, "il nous l'audace,

encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace
et la Patrie sera sauvée!"

"Boldness, more boldness, forever boldness
and the father land is saved."

He's really one of the people who manages
to rally the country against the invader.

It's an extraordinary moment.

Narrator: With so many able-bodied men leaving
for the front, Paris is left defenseless.

Its jails bursting with political prisoners.

An unsettling fear floods the city.

The growing mass of prisoners may be impossible
to contain.

Marat puts out a bloodthirsty call for revolutionary
citizens to descend upon the prisons and slaughter

all inside.

Man: The foreign armies were advancing on
Paris.

Had they linked up in Paris, with these bitter
enemies of the Revolutions in the prisoners,

of course, then the results would have been
fairly horrific from the standpoint of the

people.

Narrator: In the first week of September,
disastrous news arrives from the front.

Prussia has taken Verdun, a town on the road
to Paris.

The enemy is now just miles away.

The feared, gripping Paris explodes.

[glass shattering] The Sansculotte break into
the prisons and unleash a furious assault

on the city's inmates.

They will leave no traitor alive.

Man: And the Sansculotte went to the prisons,
particularly the prisons where refractory

priests were being held; where nobles were
being held; where political prisoners were

being held; and they started carrying out
their own impromptu trials that were very

short and that very often simply ended with
slaughter.

Narrator: Women are raped and brutalized.

Priests disemboweled.

Aristocrats hacked to pieces.

In a primeval slaughter, more than 1600 are
left dead in a matter of days.

When word of the September massacre spreads
throughout Europe, enemies of the Revolution

are sickened.

Across the English Channel, the London Times
gives voice to the revulsion.

[voice-over] Are these "the Rights of Man?"

Is this the liberty of human nature?

The most savage four footed tyrants that range
unexplored Africa rise superior to these two-legged

Parisian animals.

Narrator: The Revolution has taken an inalterable
turn.

Even Robespierre understands that things have
gone to far.

That the people cannot manage the Revolution
on their own.

They need guidance, an iron hand.

And with the power of his words, the incorruptible
rises to the forefront as the man who will

guide the Revolution.

Robespierre had once pushed for a Constitutional
Monarchy.

Now he believes there is no longer room for
the king.

A momentous decision is made.

France will put its own king on trial.

With the verdict a forgone conclusion, the
only debate left is punishment.

The Moderates, the Girondin, call for sparing
Louis's life which isolates them in the convention.

Man: The Girondin really crystallized as a
faction in the Convention over the debate

over the king because while they certainly
wanted a republic, they were less sure that

the king should actually have to die.

Narrator: But the Girondin are outnumbered
by the Jacobin call for blood.

Man: Why did the Jacobin's want to kill the
king?

I think they wanted to kill the king because
as Robespierre brilliantly said, you have

to kill the king so the Revolution can live.

If the king is right, then the Revolution
is wrong.

Man: In any system there had ever been, there's
only on penalty for treason and that is death.

So, in this sense, if the king is guilty of
betraying the country in a time of war then

the argument is that he must suffer the death
of a traitor.

[gavel bangs] Narrator: On January 20, 1793,
Louis the 16th is declared guilty.

The sentence is read.

The king must die.

That evening Louis is briefly reunited with
his family.

Calm in the face of their tears, he promises
to return the next morning to say a final

goodbye.

He will not.

He cannot bear his family's anguish and must
not weaken on the way to the guillotine.

[crowd shouting] The next morning a closed
carriage brings Louis to the scaffold.

And he stoically makes his way to the blade.

♪ ♪ He attempts to give a speech.

[voice-over] I trust that my death will be
for the happiness of my people, but I grieve

for France and I fear that she may suffer
the anger of the Lord.

Narrator: But the guards drown him out with
the drum roll.

At 10:22am, the man who once was king is no
more.

[crowd cheering] In the temple prison Marie
hears the cannons fire heralding the death

of her husband.

She collapses in despair.

[people laughing] The king's blood is spilt.

The revolutionaries victorious.

But the enemies of the Revolution will soon
claim a victory of their own.

Their target?

The man who was calling for so many heads
to roll, Jean-Paul Marat.

♪ ♪ The execution of Louis the 16th marks
ultimate victory for the revolutionaries.

A pivotal moment when a young nation, French
Republic, is literally born in blood.

By the end of 1792, the radical Jacobin's,
believing the young Revolution is in danger

of being sabotaged by traitors, are steering
the Revolution with more and more violent

means.

But the Girodin, representing the people of
the French countryside, want to slow the ascending

violence for fear it will lead to Civil War.

Their most vocal opponent, Jean-Paul Marat,
strikes back at the Girodin with furious tirades

in his newspaper naming those he believes
are plotting against the Revolution.

Marat who once called for the execution of
200 now demands 200,000 heads fall.

Man: When you look at Marat's journalism it's
got one basic principle which has been more

extreme than anybody else and called for people
to be killed.

If you look at Marat's journalism all the
time, he'd say, if only we chopped off a few

heads then things will be all right.

And when things aren't all right if only chop
up a few more heads things will be all right.

Suddenly people in Paris being to massacre
people and Marat is the first to claim credit

for that.

Narrator: But the radical movement hasn't
taken hold everywhere.

People outside of Paris are furious at the
spiraling brutality of the Jacobin's and call

for an end to the bloodline.

And the message reaches the lovely Charlotte
Corday, an unassuming yet determined young

woman from the provinces.

Man: Charlotte Corday is an average person
in the city of Caen.

She's appalled by the killing that's going
on there and she perhaps rightly considers

Marat one of the chief authors of that.

He's been instrumental on the radical side
of the Revolution.

His [speaking French] is still calling for
heads.

Narrator: July 13, 1793, Charlotte Corday
arrives in Paris.

She knows that the friend of the people has
an open-door policy at his home where he can

be found at nearly any hour soaking in his
medicinal bath.

Corday comes on the pretense that she carries
a list of traitors, those collaborating with

foreign armies to put an end to the Revolution.

Marat asks for the list promising Corday that
the traitors will be guillotined the next

day.

Man: Having given him that, she then produces
a poignard, a little stiletto and stabs him

in the chest.

[suspensful music] Narrator: The so called
'friend of the people' dies instantly.

The angry voice of his newspaper silenced.

Man: When the Revolution turns bloodthirsty,
it's very easy to say it was his fault.

And that, of course, is what those who hated
him or feared him did say.

And that's one of the reasons why Charlotte
Corday actually murders him in 1793 because

she regards him as responsible for many of
the bloody atrocities that have actually occurred.

Narrator: Corday makes no attempt to escape.

At her trial, she is unrepentant.

[male voice-over] What did you expect to achieve
in assassinating Marat?

[Charlotte voice-over] Peace.

Now that he's dead, peace will return to my
country.

Narrator: Charlotte Corday is swiftly executed
and her dream of peace dies along with her.

She has killed Marat, the man, but she has
created Marat the legend.

His death most famously depicted by the Revolutionary
painter Jacques-Louis David.

Man: He became a martyr.

He became a kind of almost religious figure.

You had people offering a prayer that went
heart of Jesus; heart of Marat.

You had these scenes at his funeral where
the bathtub in which he was murdered was sort

of put up on the altar almost as if it was
a kind of crucifix.

Woman: If you look at David's painting of
Marat's death, Marat's body is draped in precisely

the same way as the body of Christ is depicted
in classic representations of the Pietá,

the descent from the cross.

So clearly there's an identification of Marat
with Christ, with Marat representing the new

kind of god of the Radical Republic.

Narrator: Robespierre is envious of the adoration
lavished upon Marat, but ever the pragmatist

he turns his attention to pressing matters
at hand.

Because though Marat is dead, there are still
others calling for blood….

royal blood.

The Conciergerie, deaths dark antechamber,
eight months after the execution of her husband

and just days after the killing of Charlotte
Corday, Marie Antoinette is jailed here in

a hideous cell utterly alone.

Man: One of the worst things that happens
to Marie after the execution of Louis is her

children are ripped away from her.

Her children were the most important thing
to her and she knew that her son was going

to be subjected to terrible abuse to make
him forget that he was ever royal by these

revolutionaries.

And it turns out she was right.

It only took a couple years after that her
son died of terrible neglect and abuse.

Narrator: The once vain Marie Antoinette is
38-years-old, but the Revolution has aged

her beyond her years.

[speaking French] [interpreter] Marie Antoinette
had been a very pretty woman, elegant until

the Revolution.

From 1788-89 she got thinner.

Her hair went white.

She abandoned all her coquetry and her pretty
things.

She became emaciated.

When she arrived for her trial, she was unrecognizable.

Narrator: On October 15, Marie is put on trial.

accused of high treason and depleting the
national treasure.

[overlapping voices] The little evidence offered
is salacious and vengeful rumor.

A final charge is added to the list.

She is accused of incest with her son.

At this, Marie stands to defend herself.

[Marie voice-over] I appeal to the conscience
and feelings of every mother present to declare

if there be one amongst you who does not shudder
at the idea of such horrors.

[speaking French] [interpreter] And at that
moment there was a change in the mood because

all the women felt they were implicated and
they realized they had gone too far with these

accusations.

Narrator: In a moment of public sympathy,
Marie hopes she will be deported to Austria.

But her hopes are dashed when the sentence
is handed down.

She is to meet the same fate as her husband.

Man: Marie Antoinette was, in a sense, doomed
from the start.

She was the symbol of this Austrian alliance
that had proved disastrous for France.

She was, along with her husband, a laughing
stock because of the apparent sexual failure

of their marriage and she was a symbol of
court culture at a time when people were coming

to see the Court culture itself as something
completely corrupt and terrible for the country.

So for all these reasons she was hated like
no queen of France had ever been hated before.

She was loathed.

She was reviled.

Narrator: From her cell, Marie writes a final
letter bidding farewell to her children and

family, promising to be brave.

Her long gray hair is cut in preparation for
the blade.

Her hands are tightly bound.

As she is escorted from the prison gates,
she expects a carriage.

Instead, there awaits a common criminals cart.

Man: She hopes when she's taken off to execution
that she's going to get the same treatment

that the king got.

Meaning she would be in an enclosed carriage
so that the crowd couldn't get her.

But they just put her in an open wagon where
people would shout all sorts of things, horrible

things.

Horrible threats at her.

[vocalizing] Narrator: The shadow of the sovereign
she once was, Marie Antoinette maintains a

queenly dignity as she is paraded through
the streets of Paris.

[bell tolling] [vocalizing] [bell tolling
continues] [vocalizing continues] Her name

and the charges against her are read out.

[bell tolling continues] [vocalizing continues]
The last Queen of France is dead.

Several days later, following countless more
executions, a member of the National Convention

notes the pointless waste of life as one after
another of his colleagues are lost to the

guillotine.

The Revolution is like Saturn devouring its
own children who says, [Danton sniffs] "Revolutions,

my friend, cannot be made with rosewater."

The bloodshed has only just begun.

♪ ♪ September 1793, four years into the
Revolution and France is being torn apart.

There is violent insurrection in the provinces
and huge losses in the faltering war against

Europe.

In one blistering defeat, the British Navy
takes the port city of Toulon.

Europe is eating away at France's borders.

Man: France, the single largest country in
Western Europe.

It's the most populous country in Western
Europe.

It has been the great military power.

And, of course, when it entered into the Revolution
a lot of its traditional enemies and also

a lot of its traditional allies, like a-ha,
this is our chance to not to carve a piece

off of the actual territory of France, but
certainly to enrich ourselves at its expense

and to weaken it permanently.

Man: France is isolated in the whole of Europe.

It's being blockaded by Britain.

It's being attacked and invaded by Austria
and by Prussia.

The people of Paris are seized by a fear that
the victory, the counter-revolution, will

lead to a bloodbath.

Narrator: Danton and Robespierre, the star
orators of the Convention, realize that they

must boldly strike out to save the Revolution.

They convinced their colleagues to institute
a menacing new form of martial law.

[voice-over] It is time for all Frenchman
to enjoy sacred equality.

It is time to impose this equality by signal
acts of justice upon traitors and conspirators.

Make terror the order of the day.

Narrator: Thus beings a new chapter in the
Revolution.

A period of violent repression called the
terror.

In a remarkable reversal, the Revolutionaries
suspend the new constitution. and all the

rights it was to guarantee.

Police spies scatter throughout the country.

Anyone suspected of counter revolutionary
activity is rounded up, quickly tried and

sent to the national razor.

Woman: The reign of terror was conceived as
an emergency government.

What they understood by terror was striking
terror into the hearts of the enemies of the

Republic so that they would be either scared
straight as it were or arrested and disposed

of.

Narrator: The slightest suspicion can send
anyone to the scaffold.

Politicians who say a kind word of the defunct
monarchy.

Anyone who uses the formal monsieur or madam.

instead of the new form of address: citizen.

The air is fraught with paranoia.

Neighbors denounce neighbors.

The incessant rolling of the death carts rattles
through the streets of Paris.

Woman: Execution is absolutely hanging over
people's heads in the sense that we know in

Paris there are police spies And there are
quite a few police spies everywhere standing

in bread lines, listening to what the women
are saying, and turning them in if they don't

like what they hear.

You could be turned in not just for complaining
about the high price of bread, but you could

be turned in supposedly even for not being
enthusiastic enough about where things were

going and the successes of the Revolution.

So, just about anything that would stand out
for commentary could get you into trouble.

Narrator: The Convention sets up a Revolutionary
tribunal expediting trials and executions

with ruthless efficiency.

To consolidate power, they form a twelve man
council and call it the Committee of Public

Safety.

Man: Ultimately power had to be delegated
to a smaller group and that group became the

Committee of Public Safety.

Ultimately it became twelve people who really
ruled France as a kind of collective dictatorship.

Narrator: With his masterful words and revolutionary
vision, Robespierre soon emerges as the committee's

fiercest guiding voice.

And that voice is calling for more blood.

Man: One of the paradoxes in Robespierre's
political life is that he very early on is

a passionate proponent of the death penalty.

And, of course, this is thrown back in his
face later when he becomes an equally passionate

proponent of terror and the guillotine.

He never particularly responds to that except
to say, 'Well, times have changed.'

Narrator: The Revolution has hardened Robespierre.

Once an impassioned supporter of a free press,
he now reinstates censorship, a vestige of

the old regime.

And with the church already under attack,
Robespierre stands idly by as one of the most

radical revolutionaries, Jacques-René Hébert
proposes a new agenda, dechristianization.

Man: When the crisis of the war, an internal
rebellion is at its height, people begin to

say the root of all the problem is priests,
is religion.

And what we've got to do if we're ever going
to be safe against the enemies of Revolution

is destroy the power of the Catholic Church.

Superstition, fanaticism, that's what religion
is all about and therefore what we have to

do is stamp out this whole thing entirely.

Narrator: Streets carrying the word 'Saint'
are renamed.

Religious icons are destroyed and replaced
with tributes to the new Saint, Marat.

Man: If the church came to seem simply the
enemy to the radical revolutionaries, churches

and cathedrals are simply stripped of their
altars.

The stained glass is smashed.

Statues are smashed.

The wealth of the church is to simply cart
it off.

Of course, for European opinion, this was
something even more shocking than the death

of the King.

Narrator: Not even then Christian calendar
is spared.

Years are numbered no longer from the birth
of Christ, but from September 1792, the overthrow

of the monarchy.

It is now year one.

Months are renamed according to the seasons.

July becomes Thermidor.

April: Floréal.

Months are broken into three weeks of ten
days each.

Man: The Revolutionary calendar was certainly
designed as a kind of weapon against Christianity,

against Christian belief.

Of course by having a 10-day week, you'd no
longer have Sundays so people wouldn't even

know what day Sunday was anymore.

That's what they hoped.

Narrator: The Terror spreads across France.

Insurrections are put down with a vicious,
unrelenting cruelty.

In the city of Lyon, where counter-revolutionaries
are gaining ground, the Committee of Public

Safety sets a brutal example.

[overlapping voices] Hundreds of rebels are
tied up, marched into fields and mowed down

all mass.

[cannon fires] [bodies fall] A region called
the Vendée, in the west of France, has also

become a counter revolutionary stronghold.

Rebels and priests are tied together and packed
onto boats that are then mercilessly sunk.

Up to a hundred thousand people are killed
in the Vendée alone.

In Paris, the blade falls at an ever more
frantic pace.

But the French armies are finally seeing victories
on the frontier.

Under a brilliant young commander named Napoleon
Bonaparte, the French Army sends the British

Navy into a demoralizing retreat at Toulon.

The Revolution is on the rise.

Robespierre is at the height of his power.

He has taken on the enemies of the Revolution,
ensured its success through Terror.

Man: For time, the Terror was very effective
as a means of getting the country together,

getting the government together and fighting
what was after all a war on several fronts.

On the Eastern front.

On the Northern front.

Against external enemies.

Also, a Civil War in the Vendée which is
the bloodiest of all.

Also, a Civil War against the supporters of
the Girondins and other Revolutionaries who

had turned against the government in Paris.

Narrator: The Terror has achieved its goals,
but it does not stop.

And it will not stop until it devours the
very man who unleashed it: Maximilien Robespierre.

With the blood of the Terror, Maximilien Robespierre
has rescued the Revolution.

An invigorated army is repelling attacks at
the border and internal dissent has been all

but crushed.

At the height of his success, Robespierre
dreams up a loftier goal yet, to use more

Terror to mold a new kind of society, a Republic
of Virtue.

Man: By virtue he means civic virtue.

It's an active principle for Robespierre.

For example, you cannot be a virtuous citizen
by simply obeying the laws and keeping your

head down.

You must actively be involved in the work
of the state and that includes, for Robespierre,

destroying the enemies of the state.

Narrator: On February 5, 1794, Robespierre
gives a speech outlining his philosophy.

[voice-over] Terror without virtue is disastrous.

But virtue without terror is powerless.

Man: He associates terror with virtue.

Terror at that moment becomes, in his thinking,
an instrument by which you create.

Virtue.

Narrator: But others disagree.

For Danton the Revolution is heading down
the wrong path.

He and his followers, the Dantonists, believe
it is time to bring the Terror to a halt.

It has served its purpose and is in danger
of feeding the revolutionaries into their

own fire.

Woman: By the spring of 1794, things are beginning
to go better.

The food situation is no longer so bad and
the war effort is going better and Danton

is basically saying we need to get a new footing
for the government.

We need to move to a kind of normalization.

Robespierre believes it's too soon.

Danton will start organizing a group to argue
that we should end the Terror.

Robespierre will see this as a direct threat
to the government.

He will not see it as just a difference of
opinion about the direction of policy.

He will see it as potential treason.

Narrator: And in Robespierre's Republic of
Virtue there is only one response to treason.

The Datonists are rounded up and quickly sentenced
to death.

Robespierre has sent thousands to the scaffold,
but is uneasy with the blood of execution.

He will not attend the beheadings of his former
friends and allies.

As he steps up to the blade, Danton shouts,
[voice-over] 'My only regret is that I'm going

before that rat, Robespierre!'

Narrator: With the Dantonists out of the way,
Robespierre launches France into an even bloodier

more horrifying period, The Great Terror.

Man: The Great Terror is the name given to
the last phase of the Terror in the spring

of 1794 into the summer of 1794.

It's the period at which the tempo of executions
really starts to increase in which the atmosphere

of paranoia particularly in Paris, but really
across the country starts to increase exponentially.

You can track the number of executions until
it's up to almost 800 per month in Paris.

Towards the end even more.

Paris's executioner is busier than ever.

But on June 6, 1794, the role of the carts
comes to a halt.

The guillotine hangs silent.

Robespierre has declared a new religious holiday,
The Festival of the Supreme Being.

He wants to replace the old Catholic God with
a new one, The Goddess of Reason.

Man: One thing about Robespierre is that he
never supported these atheist policies.

He believed that people needed a divinity
to believe in and he helped sponsor this cult

that was called the Cult of the Supreme Being
with this extraordinary tableau in Paris.

And I believe it was June of 1794, which had
choirs of people dressed in white singing.

You had this kind of paper mache mountain
that was built in the center of Paris and

then at the critical moment of the ceremony
you had Robespierre himself sort of emerging

on the top of this mountain, clad in a toga
and marching down.

And I think at this moment, a lot of people
felt, 'All right.

Who does he really think he is?

Does he think he's God here?

Does he think he's the King?'

Narrator: As the Great Terror spirals on,
Robespierre's colleagues see the Festival

of the Supreme Being as his departure from
the realm of reality.

Man: There are those who think that Robespierre
really has reached so extreme and so unreasonable

a position that they can't turn back.

That his fanaticism has somehow overtaken
him and there are those who think he's just

gone nuts.

Narrator: Once again Robespierre's suspicions
turned to those closest at hand.

On June 27, now the ninth of Thermidor, he
appears before the Convention and delivers

a speech of threats.

It is the last speech he will ever give.

Woman: Robespierre makes a tactical error.

He comes in and announces that he has a new
list of enemies of the Republic, but he won't

give the list.

Therefore, everyone is afraid they might be
on the list and when he comes back the next

day to give the list, he is arrested before
he can speak.

Narrator: An unexpected chorus of voices shouts
Robespierre down.

He is stunned into silence.

The deputies declare him an outlaw and immediately
remove him from the convention.

Robespierre and several of his associates
are taken to City Hall where they remain under

watch for the night.

Shots ring out in the early morning.

Guard's race to the second floor.

They fling the doors open to a grisly scene.

One of Robespierre's allies has thrown himself
from the window.

Another has taken a pistol to his head.

And Robespierre is found semi-conscious with
a bullet wound to the face.

His jaw shattered on an apparent suicide attempt.

Robespierre spends his last hours on the table
of the Committee of Public Safety in the very

room where he had piloted the Terror to its
hideously, bloody peak.

As he is ridiculed and insulted by his former
colleagues, Robespierre is unable to respond.

The Grand Master of Oratory has been silenced.

In the Conciergerie, where the last Queen
of France had preceded him, Robespierre is

prepared for the national razor.

His cellmate, the Revolutionary Saint-Just
points to a painting of the Rights of Man

and declares, ' At least we did that.'

Robespierre had spearheaded a Revolution and
changed the face of France.

He had reordered society and engineered a
bloody and tyrannical system to ensure its

success.

But he was destined to be one of its final
victims.

Man: It turns out that there is a great deal
of enthusiasm for ending the Terror.

Nobody can figure out how to do it.

And what turns out to be the case is that
the only thing that will end the Terror and

apparently the only thing they can all agree
upon is the fall of Robespierre.

[people cheering] Narrator: On July 27, 1794,
the guillotine comes down on the incorruptible

and the last blood of the Terror is shed.

The Terror dies with Robespierre, but the
Revolution does not.

The Rights of Man, democracy, the New Republic,
the accomplishments of the Revolution would

far outlive any of the revolutionaries themselves.

France would enter a period of uncertainty
frozen between fear of another Terror, or

worse yet, a return to the oppressive monarchy
that preceded it.

Five stagnant years would pass before power
once again consolidated in the hands of a

single man, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Historians disagree over the end of the Revolution.

Some believe it died with the rise of Napoleon.

Others maintain that the Revolution lived
on into the 19th century and beyond.

Woman: The Revolution was the first and enduring
model of a people taking its destiny in its

own hands.

The idea that the subjects of the oldest,
the most established, the most glorious monarchy

in Europe could decide to completely rewrite
their history was something that had extraordinary

resonance.

Narrator: The Revolution tore apart the old
feudal fabric of Europe and forever changed

the course of Western civilization.

Woman: The question raised by the French Revolution
is how much violence is justified in achieving

a better society?

Do people have the right to overthrow what
they see as an unjust system to replace it

with what they are convinced in their hearts
is a more just system?

How much violence is justified in doing that?

We still face this question today.

Narrator: As Robespierre and his colleagues
were driving their county into the future,

many of them must have wondered what the final
outcome would be.

More than 200 years after the birth of the
French Republic, the ghost of Robespierre

hangs over Revolutions from Russia to Vietnam;
China to Latin America.

The French experiments with democracy have
inspired models all over the world wherever

tyranny takes root the cry for justice is
eternal.

For liberty, equality, fraternity.

For Revoltuion. ♪ ♪.