I mean, the French Revolution was very-shortly-followed by the Terror, so we can hardly present this as a simple slow decline from a golden age.

The terror was fully part of the revolution, and was notably when the vote for France to proclame itself a Republic happened. Support for and against the king came and went throughout the revolution. The vote for abolition of monarchy in 92 (so, 3 years after it began!) and then for death penalty of the king in 93 was heavily influenced by the fear of retribution for whom may vote against. France would likely still be a monarchy if not for the terror.

FWIW, France became an empire, then was restored as a monarchy, then back an empire and monarchy before it became a republic durably.

Revolution was not a series of peasants and commoner ridding themselves of their despots, it was much more dirtier, political and complex than that, which doesn't prevent to still be behind the ideals that drove the events and find it beautiful.

> FWIW, France became an empire, then was restored as a monarchy, then back an empire and monarchy before it became a republic durably.

You left out “republic again” between “restored as a monarchy” and ”back an empire” (and actually, even that leaves out the July Revolution which was a change between two different monarchies, and not just different monarchs, in 1830.)

This entirely. The truth is messy and doesn’t make for an easy story.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible how many people look at these kind of events as point in times, e.g lots of French people answer "Bastille day" if you ask when the revolution happened, or some Americans answer "D-day" for when Europe was liberated.

And very shortly thereafter, an emperor :-)

the emperor did an empire on behalf of the republic, and to fight off the british to save the republic over monarchy

these times were ironic and still up to your own understanding, because nobody got what really happened then

what you call red terror was merely a preludium to the much more servere and large scale 'white terror' the royalists and their supporters comitted much more horrifying and large scale terror on a massive scale. The right-wing terror that followed the revolution is somehow never mentioned. I guess people still buy into the scarlet pimpernel bs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_White_Terror

> How far the mighty have fallen.

Not just France, continental Western Europe is gradually becoming more authoritarian and corrupt.

Looking at European history, I don't think that we can claim that the continent is today more authoritatian than it has been in the past.

Long term that is correct, but compared to a few years back it is. Snooping on people's phone conversations is a thing of the STASI, Securitate and NKVD era. Having everything you do monitored by the government through casual on street surveillance, and then introducing that to phones is not particularly flattering.

But that's not unique to EU, look at US post 9/11. Let's say there was a period of more freedom in the west, and its declining steadily. I've heard some US reporter predicting live in TV exactly this happening as towers were falling, I wish I remembered his name.