Considering that both Tom and yourself take such a view of it, I'm going to assume that you're genuinely not aware of how very differently Europeans view the French Revolution, and not merely being flippant. Also, 'arbitrarily prejudiced against monarchy' is pretty hilarious from the mouth of an American patriot.

What good came out of it? Oh, I don't know, democracy, the notion of universal human rights, a solid corpus of laws which in many cases remain in existence to this day, the beginning of the end of global slavery, and I could go on for a while. Certainly, all those things probably could have happened in a more gradual way without the Reign of Terror, the slaughter in the Vendee and the Napoleonic wars, but if you're going to focus on the longer-term consequences, I see more good ones than bad.

And I think you'll find that aside from the British - or even there, among those who can look beyond the shallow obsession with Wellington and Waterloo that I mentioned - many West-Europeans have a fairly positive view of Napoleon. Aside from the astonishing military prowess, his rule cemented the democratization of the French Revolution and wrote law books in many places that didn't really have much of a rule of law before. On many subjects, plenty of European countries still have almost identical laws because Napoleon's laws were good enough that nobody bothered to change them since.

By 'sane world' I take it you mean the monarchs of Europe, and by 'destabilization of order in Europe' you mean that those pesky peasants got uppity and started clamouring for their rights? Of course things got out of hand, but your argument, in essence, seems to boil down to 'the French and European people should have just sit back and waited until their rulers were ready to give them their rights and constitutions gradually'. Which, once again, is pretty hilarious coming from an American patriot. Napoleon crowned himself emperor, yes, but singling him out for being a dictator seems rather silly considering that all of his foreign opponents and allies were hereditary monarchs as well, and that Napoleon did establish the rule of law and protection of citizens' rights before any of his opponents except Britain had any intention of doing the same.

Fair enough, but if you're so insistent that all the good would've happened anyway and with less bloodshed, I don't know why you're so sure that such military innovations and total war would not have happened without the Revolution.

I assume you're familiar with the Constitution of Cadiz. In Spain like elsewhere, it took the upheaval of the French Revolution and Napoleon's invasion before the citizens could take a stand against their absolute monarchs and write a constitution. Which was then promptly squashed again by the reactionaries after Napoleon was defeated. Certainly the French Revolution involved a lot of violence, but it inspired democratization all over Europe - and the rest of the world. Being itself inspired by the American revolution, of course.

'Period of national evil' is ridiculous except for the actual Reign of Terror, which, as nasty as it was, lasted for less than a year. I'm not even going to comment on the Holocaust comparison.