The_Dunedan

Never said that or implied it. However, the Vendeean rebels -were- provoked by the State's attack upon their faith, especially by the requirement that all Priests be State employees, and that all Seminaries be State-run. Danton's notions about fiddling with their taxes probably helped a bit, but there's much less primary-source evidence for that angle.

Hmm...I wonder, then, how Saint-Just came by his charming nickname? They didn't call him "The Angel Of Death" because of a fondness for Ozzy Osborne, that's for sure. Most of my reading indicates it's because he was a psychotic mass-murderer who popularised such entertainment as "Republican Weddings" and the sinking of prison hulks filled with dissenters and their families. A great deal of the information from the time period immediately surrounding the Vendeean uprising was distorted and exaggerated, true, but the fact is that the Revolutionary government engaged in what possibly qualifies as attempted genocide and -certainly- qualifies as cultural imperialism on a massive scale, backed up by the massacres of thousands of people. Then of course you have Gen. Carrier's instructions to "pacify" the region, and Gen. Westermann's boast that "There is no more Vendée. It died with its wives and its children by our free sabres. I have just buried it in the woods and the swamps of Savenay. According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all. The roads are sown with corpses. At Savenay, brigands are arriving all the time claiming to surrender, and we are shooting them non-stop... Mercy is not a revolutionary sentiment" In light of such facts I find it difficult to understand how you can assess the Vendeean massacres as a myth.

I have yet to see any information suggesting that they were inaccurate: Robespierre was known for his inordinate "touchiness" with his son in the last few years of his life, and was widely rumoured even among the rest of the CPS to be recruiting catamites from the prisons wherein the CPS housed its' victims and their families. Desmoulins and Danton even accused him of bribing his prospective entertainment by promising safety for their families. All of this is, as I'm sure you're aware, very much a matter of public record. [Edited To Add: I have dug through my old notes on the subject, and while substantial portions of my undergraduate research are still lost in the depths of Henry McKenna boxes from my last move, I cannot find any notes or citations in what I -could- find to support this point. The point is, therefore, withdrawn.]

Too hysterical for my tastes.

For the official phase known as La Grand Terreur, correct. However, the Committee For Public Safety had been in operation (and killing people, though Danton eventually left over even the pre-Robespierre excesses) for much longer, and the various acts of legal and freelance mob violence which preceded it were certainly not what you'd call "polite civic discourse."

No argument here, trust me. However, without the power structure created by the Revolution and Terror, he would never have gotten as far as he did. Absent the Levee En Masse and its' various offspring, he would have probably remained a first-rate artillery officer with bad penmanship and a decent career track. He could never have become Emperor without the structures, army, and financial black hole created by the Revolution. Rather similar to the fact that Mr. Obama would never have been able to get away with his ridiculous deficits if Reagan and Bush-II hadn't cleared his way.