Robespierre

In 1789, the French people were hurting; crops were failing, unemployment was high, people were starving, and King Louis XVI was torturing and murdering his political opponents in the Bastille. So, when the queen, Marie Antionette was told that the people were starving because they had no bread, she dismissively replied, “let them eat cake.” The people became so outraged, they revolted against the monarchy. A lawyer named Maximilien Robespierre who coined the phrase, “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”, led the revolt against the King. Robespierre advocated for the King’s execution, even though he had been an outspoken opponent of capital punishment. After the King was beheaded, Robespierre was put in charge of the Committee of Public Safety, and he proceeded to orchestrate “The Reign of Terror”, which killed over 17,000 citizens in one year, mostly his political opponents.

Like the pigs in Animal Farm, revolutionaries tend to become the very thing that they revolted against. In 1917 Russia, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czars in the name of the workers and the peasants who were being abused and exploited by the Czars. But once they got their hands on power, the communists murdered millions of peasants and workers, acting more like the Czars, then the Czars ever did.