![]() Robespierre, according to taste, was a bloodthirsty despot, an incorruptible republican, or the leader of the middle class, intent on keeping the proletariat in its place. The nature of the real dispute between these factions was ignored. ![]() Radicals came to be known as Jacobins, or if they were somewhat less radical, as Girondins. ![]() (Actually there had been no barricades in the revolutionary Paris of 1789-99, but it was assumed that there must have been because barricades figured in the insurrections of 18). When a rising took place, people referred knowingly to tumbrils and barricades. Historians set the tone, and journalists caught the infection from them. Every upheaval, however insignificant, was interpreted in terms of recent French history, usually misunderstood. In the 19th century, revolutionaries everywhere saw analogies to what had been happening in France between 17 (or, if they were Bonapartists, between 17). Revolutions give rise to myths, and these myths then help to shape the course of later revolutions.
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