France and America United in Revolutionary Democracy

Today, the 14th of July, is the French Feast of the Republic, usually called simply 14th of July by the French. In the English-speaking world, we call it Bastille Day.
The 14th of July 1789 ushered in a decade of unrest and successive government formats. It was a troubled and dangerous time to be French.
But, one thing never changed during the Revolution -- The French wanted to be in control of their lives and their country and they wanted to be free of the absolute monarchy.
Between 1789 and 1799, the French eliminated the monarchy, feudal forms of land ownership and tenure, aristocratic and religious privileges, and replaced them with the sense of the Rights of Man -- liberty, equality and fraternity. That is, the notion that there are unalienable rights inherent in every person and that citizenship should be based on birth, ideas which were called the Enlightenment in France, a name that became the label for the entire period in European history.
Surprisingly, the Revolution leaders, which had formed an Estates General in 1789 to serve as a national assembly, tried to keep the monarchy intact as a constitutional monarchy, but the right-wing efforts around Louis XVI made this idea collapse, and the King was guillotines in 1793, and his wife, Marie-Antoinette, later. This led to the beginning of what is today the National Assembly, the French Congress.
There were mass marches, barricades in the streets of Paris (think of Les Miserables), and the rise of predominantly left-wing political groups (think of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror of 1792-94 in which tens of thousands of French were guillotined simply because they were aristocratic by birth or disagreed with the extremism of what had become a virtual dictatorship under the Committees of Public Safety, even if they had supported and worked for the Revolution). Robespierre was himself finally guillotined, opening the way for the Directory, which put civil order into the period.
What we call the French Revolution actually began to be called that by the French in 1792, with the military expansion of the Republic into northern Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium and some territory west of the Rhine that touched what is now Germany. These territorial conquests had been attempted by the monarchy but had never succeeded.
These conquests led to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who took control of the French government in 1799, forming the Consulate that was the beginning of the modern period of French history.
The French political and social upheaval of the 1790s is the foundation of the modern era in Europe, with the rise of democratic assemblies, constitutional monarchies without real power, ideals around the concepts of liberal democracy, and the spread of modern secularism in which political states were freed of religious constraints.
So, as you think about France today, dear readers, think also about its key place in modern democratic history. It has been alive almost as long as the United States, although it was formed with much more internal unrest and bloodshed.
Not surprisingly, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson spent time in France during the period leading up to the French Revolution, bringing with them the ideas of John Locke as developed in the American colonies in their fight against the British monarchy.
And, the Count de Lafayette, who was the first French military supporter of the American Revolution, was spared the guillotine because if his work in America. His statue in Washington in Lafayette Place facing the White House is evidence of his importance to the American cause.
Vive la France! Vive la Republique!
And may America and France remain united forever in the cause of human dignity and civil rights.