The French Revolution: Difference between revisions

[[File:bast.jpg|frame|<small>Their battle cry will never be forgotten:"You went the wrong way, Old King Louis..."</small> ]]

 

 

Era in French History when [[Marie Antoinette]] [[Beam Me Up, Scotty|tried giving her subjects a little dietary advice]], who responded by storming Versailles and putting her and her brave husband Louis XVI to death by the guillotine. Their son, the Dauphin, makes it out of France alive, though, thanks to the tireless efforts of that "demmed elusive [[The Scarlet Pimpernel (novel)|Pimpernel]]". Everyone in this time period wore pastel-colored satin, big fancy wigs, fake beauty marks, and snorted snuff like it was cocaine. Unless they were poor, in which case they wore trousers with tricolor badges and sung "String the aristocrats from the lamp posts!" whilst [[Torches and Pitchforks|waving their pitchforks]] and gnashing their rotting teeth. Don't forget about taking down ''l'ancien régime''.

* [[Eat the Rich]]: The [[Ur Example]] for this [[Stock Phrase]] came about during this time when Jean-Jacques Rousseau reportedly said, "When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich," which would make an interesting corollary with Marie Antoinette's alleged "Let them eat cake" comments.

* [[Everyone Went to School Together]]: Robespierre and Desmoulins were friends in law school; they wound up as political enemies, resulting in Desmoulins's execution. Louis XVI was there to hear Robespierre's valedictorian speech. Also, Napoleon went to school and was friends with Augustin Robespierre, Maximilien's younger brother.

* [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]: The instigators of the Reign of Terror actually ''called it that''.

* [[For Want of a Nail]]: Some experts believe that the famine that was one of the primary catalysts of the Revolution might not have been so bad, or even been averted completely had the French public had not been so resistant to earlier government efforts to introduce a crop from the New World know as a ''pomme de terre'' or in English, a potato.

* ''[[Le Chevalier d'Eon]]''

 

* ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' [[Dark Fic]] involving France tend to use this as the backdrop.

 

== [[Theatre]] ==

* ''Danton's Death'' (play by Georg Büchner)

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[Hark! A Vagrant]]'': [http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=273 "Yoo hoo], [[Black Comedy|does this pike make me look fat?"]]