The French Revolution: Senseless Violence?

Teaching the French Revolution?  Was it just ten years of senseless killing?

That's what columnist Peggy Noonan suggested in an essay for the Wall Street Journal.

Two historians, Mike Duncan, a revolutionary history podcaster, and David A. Bell, a history professor at Princeton, took Noonan to task on Twitter for not knowing her history.

Both historians suggest that the revolution, while horrifically violent,  made significant contributions to the world.

Here are PDFs of Duncan's and Bell's Twitter threads about Noonan's essay.

Bell reminds us of the development of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the abolition of slavery throughout the empire, the abolishment of the noble class, and the right to vote for adult men. And Professor Duncan analyzes every sentence in Noonan's essay.