When the king took flight [antikvár]

In the summer of 1789 a revolution began in France that is widely considered one of the turning points in the history of Western civilization. Although the origins of that revolution are complex, once it had begun, it was rapidly linked to the lofty humanitarian ideals of the Enlightenment, including religious tolerance, equal justice before the law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and control of the government by the governed. Most revolutionaries were also committed to political change through nonviolent means, "through no other force than the force of reason, justice, and public opinion," as one early leader put it.1 These ideals, similar in many respects to those promulgated by the founding fathers of the United States, were soon embodied in a "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen," which became a model for liberal reform throughout the world. Yet despite its idealistic beginnings, the Revolution of 1789 was transformed in a period of only a few years into a veritable "Reign of Terror." By the summer of 1793 a totalitarian and eminently intolerant regime had emerged that regularly employed fear and violence as instruments of power. Searches without warrant, arrests without indictment, the repression of free speech: all were pursued more systematically and more efficiently than in any previous period of French history. Justice before the law and "due process"