I don't want to downplay atrocities of that revolution. But, as a quip, if you think the murders were bad wait until you hear what the landlords were up to!
Seriously though using the english word landlord is a gross simplification that elides generation on generation of pervasive horrors. It is very difficult for us to imagine how all-consuming and oppressive this environment was, it was much closer to european manorialism than the current property ownership relationship we call landlords.
Shit like getting an usurious grain loan from your landlord to survive the winter, than having to sell your children to repay it in the spring. Having your wife seized as collateral and enslaved by your landlord. This sort of thing was routine and pervasive, and it lasted hundreds of years. We're lucky to live in an era where we can easily imagine comprehensive change to the conditions of life. These people were not. If you make any effort to understand it it is quite easy to understand why it went the way it did.
A famous quote about another revolution often considered to have overstepped:
> “There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”
Seriously though using the english word landlord is a gross simplification that elides generation on generation of pervasive horrors. It is very difficult for us to imagine how all-consuming and oppressive this environment was, it was much closer to european manorialism than the current property ownership relationship we call landlords.
Shit like getting an usurious grain loan from your landlord to survive the winter, than having to sell your children to repay it in the spring. Having your wife seized as collateral and enslaved by your landlord. This sort of thing was routine and pervasive, and it lasted hundreds of years. We're lucky to live in an era where we can easily imagine comprehensive change to the conditions of life. These people were not. If you make any effort to understand it it is quite easy to understand why it went the way it did.
A famous quote about another revolution often considered to have overstepped:
> “There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”