Liberty's Price

The French Revolution destroyed the idea that monarchy was divinely ordained — but it took eighty years to build a stable alternative. France lurched from one regime to the next: republic, terror, empire, restored monarchy, a second republic, and a second empire before finally settling into the Third Republic in 1870.

The revolution's ideas traveled faster than its chaos. "Liberty, equality, fraternity" became the vocabulary of liberation movements from Haiti to Vietnam. The civil code and public education spread far beyond France. The violence was local; the principles were universal.