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By Root 1560 0

new ideas now spread with astonishing speed and clarity. Ideas spread by word of mouth can warp quickly, but once written down the idea remains the same no matter how many people read the book or pamphlet. This foretells the pace of change in the modern world. Today, 2010, the pace of change is so fast that most of it goes unreported and almost unnoticed. A publication called Science News comes out once per week filled with summaries of new discoveries which most people will never hear of directly. The flow of information has been increasing since 1455, and it is now so great (with the Internet, TV, radio, computers, newspapers, etc.) it is impossible to sort through it all. In ancient Persia, the fastest way to get information around was by pony express (not their name for it). Until the telegraph in 1837, pony express was the quickest way possible to transmit detailed information. Now, the push of a button electronically transports a hundred pages of text to Japan from America in seconds. Hence, from 1837 to 2010, the speed of information transfer has increased from a running horse to the speed of light. From before 5000 BC to 1837, it had not increased at all.

The French Revolution 1789 to 1799

The French Revolution is so significant it is difficult to exaggerate its importance. Yet, it is a very complex revolt changing France and Europe a lot, but then changing them very little. The Revolution started in 1789 when starving people in Paris, France, decided to do something about it. Riots and confrontations shook the government, escalating until the king and queen were captured and then beheaded by the unleashed forces of change. Shortly thereafter, suspicious radicals commenced beheading anyone they could lay their hands on calling them enemies of the Revolution, and those beheaded included several prominent early leaders of the rebellion. During the crisis, a strong man arose and captured the Revolution, eventually naming himself emperor of France in 1804. Now everyone is back where they started minus thousands of dead and a swarm of wars stemming from the Revolution. It did not really end until 1815, after the strong man was defeated at Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna convened to stop the wars and achieve a political balance in Europe. The strong man was Napoleon, and his ideas on war and government came to dominate the age. The French Revolution set off numerous new political, social, and cultural ideas, but in the final event the “old order” prevailed, suppressing many of the innovative ideas. Still, such ideas did not die, and a permanent structural change took place in the culture and the societies of Europe touched by this inferno.

It all started in the late seventeen hundreds when France was a prosperous state, and one of the most powerful nations in the world. Louis XIV (1661 to 1715), the Sun King, pushed the boundaries of France to the Rhine River, and the luxury of his court was unmatched in Europe. However, novel ideas were starting to challenge monarchies. The Enlightenment was taking hold of the intellectual minds in Europe, and they questioned everything. Reason was their god, and they knew no other. To these intellectuals, “reason” consisted of applying empirical methods to all matters (some said apply the “methods of Newton,” but that was the scientific method), and under this analysis the “divine right of kings” was suspect.[108]

The expansion of France under Louis XIV, plus his extravagant lifestyle, drained the state treasury. As time went on, French kings refused to reduce their lifestyles. The French court and nobility were well-known for beauty and pageantry—all very expensive. Unfortunately, the tax situation was mediocre due to several exclusions from the tax rolls, the Catholic Church being the largest, followed by exclusions for the nobility. As Louis XVI ascended to kingship, the financial situation was atrocious. Making a bad situation worse, the 1780s had seen a series of meager harvests, and the poor were doing without food. Additional tax money is hard to find amongst the starving.