You know, it kind of makes sense...

Sometimes the only way to truly and utterly reform one's government is to do much of what the Revolutionary Frenchmen did during the Revolution. We might look at the deeds done by the French from the American perspective and think of it as overkill, both literal and figurative. But when one stops to think for a moment, it is difficult to truly compare the two revolutions. In what would become the United States, many towns, cities, nay, even entire colonies made their laws largely according to some semblance of democracy, may it be representative or direct. Americans began using democratic practices starting with the arrival of the first colonists in the first half of the seventeenth century; in short, before the American Revolution truly broke out, the colonies, if not well-versed in, had copious amounts of practice in the execution of democracy. Not so in France.
For the French, the idea of true democracy/representative democracy was only something they had read, heard and talked about, not that they had actually used themselves. In my last post, I referred to the fact that the ideas about which the Enlightenment philosophers spoke could only come about through Revolution and complete social/cultural upheaval. That is more or less what happened in the French Revolution. By loss of percentage of population, the American Revolution was the bloodiest war in American history; the French had much farther to climb than did the Americans, therefore the revolution required to reform their system of government and their society as a whole required more time, and, unfortunately, more lives. Making a move from an absolute monarchy to a democracy is no small task. So, the French, to enforce the New Order, had to take away more rights and police the enforcement of their laws with more force, again, because they were doing a 180 degree turn in their government. While it is unfortunate, they were able to accomplish, at least for the most part, what they wanted to do with their government (until Napoleon threw a little bit of a wrench in the system by becoming Emperor).
My point and purpose is to suggest that we should not be so shocked or so critical of the French for what they did during their Revolution, that we should not allow our perception of the French Revolution be too impacted or shaped by our knowledge and understanding of our own Revolution in the British colonies. The French had much more work and change to accomplish than did the revolutionary Americans, and they did the best they could with what they had. Granted, the loss of life and rights is tragic, but for the French, they were doing the best they could with what they had.

On the Philosophes and the Nature of their Thoughts

The Enlightenment presented new and incredible ways of thinking about society and the people within it. An interesting point brought forth, and one of the most radical and novel, treated the change in view of the hierarchy, particularly in France. An interesting point, however, is that the people meeting in the salons and so forth seemed interestingly focused on themselves looking from their position up towards those above them, pondering their own particular inferiority to them, not wanting to ponder how their ideas would apply to those yet below themselves and their own tyranny over them. This thought goes hand in hand with the point about fear of the mob.
People like the Philosophes, while speaking of social reform, do not seem to have had the intention of engaging the majority of the population: the middle and lower classes. I understand that this would have proven difficult, considering the main means of spreading their ideas was the press and the majority of the population was illiterate; by the same token, though, it is interesting that they would have thought the king would entertain the thought of intentionally removing power from himself for the abstract ideas offered by men like Voltaire, of the social contract and things of that nature. Though the situation is much different from Europe, the American elites of the Revolution, according to scholars like Gary Nash, attempted to engage the people in the back-country of the United States, the poor farmers and the lower-class artisans, because they understood that the ideas of “liberty” and the “rights of man” needed to spread, that the Revolution would become possible only through a the participation of a majority of the population. It seems the contrary in Europe, that they preferred to keep these ideas confined within the middle and upper classes, rather than allowing the ideas so spread. .
Reforms such as these are radical and indeed quite revolutionary. I do not mean to suggest that the reform-minded individuals of the Enlightenment were short-sighted, but it is interesting that they, in all of their understanding of practicality and reason, did not understand that their ideas, by being so drastically revolutionary, would not inherently spark revolution as they would do in 1776 with the American Revolution and in 1789 with the French Revolution. Perhaps I am wrong in this suggestion, that they saw the potential of these thoughts, but they did not have the power themselves at the time to enact a Revolution or were not prepared for that radical of a change. But to suppose that their government would reform itself on its own, and reform itself in such a way that would reduce its own power, seems quite idealistic and, contrary to what they claimed to be, rather unreasonable. Changes like those, drastic changes in government, in society, and in an entire way of life, are things that come out of revolutions, true revolutions, not the idealistic hope of “reform.”