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Notes -
In addition to what @FCfromSSC said...
Another obvious difference is that while the de jure rule in the 13 Colonies might have been that everything must go through Parlament and the King (or their duly appointed representatives) the De Facto reality was that it wasn't the british government that was paying the constabulary, maintaining the roads, or adjudicating disputes between neighbors. It was the local officials. To that end the American revolution was not an "overthrow" of the existing social order as much as it was a "rectification" of the de jure and de facto authorities.
Since the commoners were paying for everything before and after the french revolution, it doesn't qualify as an overthrow either.
Is this de jure/de facto thing based on hobbes, or did you just make it up to carve a providential exception? I suppose they should have just acted like they were in a revolution, without legislating for a bit, and later play the de jure/de facto gambit, and then it would only have been a 'rectification' and everyone would be happy.
No, I did not make it up. It's one of the core questions being wrestled with. Is it the vestments that make a man a priest, and the crown that makes a man a king? Or is it doing God's work, and other men being prepared to die for you?
You're retreating into mysticism now. But I'll humour you. It's military and political genius that makes Bonaparte a king. And his compatriots were certainly prepared to die for him and each other. As to gott mit uns, there are contradictory claims as to who the old man really supported in the various events under consideration.
I'm not retreating anywhere. I'm standing exactly where I have been this whole time.
Bonaparte's charisma and genius made people want to follow him, and the people following him made him an emperor. Simple as that.
The British Government can claim to rule North America, and the Aristocrats of Europe can whing about who's claim to what throne is strongest, but history is not obliged to listen to them.
I think I’ve made it clear I‘m not on the side of the aristocrats of europe. You’ve got strange views. Your god-fearing simple american persona manages to assimilate all europeans to aristocrats and also to utopist bloodthirsty revolutionaries. Where is the common frenchman, your brother? Should he have honored the ancestral pledge to leviathan you cast off so readily?
The common Frenchman, I Imagine, would "just want to grill" and that is a significant part of what I think sets the classes apart. You're starting from the assumption that there is an answer to be had, and I am starting from the assumption that there isn't.
What the common Frenchman really wanted at the time (I assume from context it is the time of Great French Unpleasantness).
We can actually tell rather well, not only from newspapers, pamphlets, letters and memoirs of the time, but also from this official "lists of complaints" composed by people of all three estates. These documents survived, were digitized and are accessible on https://gallica.bnf.fr
Cahiers de doléances
https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/301ModernEurope/Cahiers.html
And the overwhelming mass of people at the time, the peasants?
Yes, ordinary Frenchmen were just like ordinary Americans, they wanted to grill untaxed meat seasoned with untaxed salt and wash it down with untaxed booze.
...and do you think that is that supposed to be a rebuttal?
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