the French Revolution was the one we got, even though yes, it wasn't as neat and admirable as the American one.

It doesn't make them right per definition, but it does strongly suggest that your apocalyptic views are, as I mentioned, pretty remote from what the people actually living on the continent in question think about it. You are of course entirely free to figure that this must be because they are gullible idiots.

Okay, good to know. As for track records, while I've never been a particular fan of the French Republic (certainly not the Fifth Republic), for the majority of the people I dare say it was quite an improvement over the monarchy, despite the violence.

I'm not saying they invented all those things - but they did introduce them in France and much of Western Europe.

The American colonies kind of missed the 'universal' and the 'ALL men' part, in case you hadn't noticed. Of course the French were influenced by the Americans and the British. But, in addition to introducing these concepts in their own country and the neighbouring ones, they took them a step further. As for the murdering, again, I'm not comparing the revolutions as such. There were atrocities in Europe and entirely different atrocities in the United States, neither of which has much to do with the other, but if that's what you want to hear, I have no problem admitting that on the whole, worse things happened in Europe in the last 250 years than in the US.

At this point you're just setting up strawmen. When did I ever say that the French Revolution was perfect or the only possible way of achieving the goals it achieved? I've clearly said the opposite several times. What I AM saying, is that for all the bad things that happened during it, it still achieved a great deal, looking at it from a long term perspective.

Who outlawed slavery before the French revolutionaries did? Some American states, yes, but not the US as a whole, nor the UK. Of course, Napoleon then reintroduced it and then it took until the next republic before it was abolished again. But still.

Nebulous anecdotal gains? I'm sorry? That Britain and its colonies achieved those things in a quieter way (if you ignore the British and American Civil Wars), yes. But to call those things I listed 'nebulous anecdotal gains' is pretty, well, alternate universe stuff.

He had better justifications than the French and other monarchs who preceded him, and unlike those he actually improved the lives of most of the people he conquered, in a way that gained him considerable popularity among the conquered. I'm not going to pretend he did it all for great and noble purposes, but once again, I'm more interested in the long term consequences, and from that perspective the law-writing thing becomes pretty important.

If you're suggesting that it would've been possible for the French (or German, or Italian, or whatever) public to have the same kind of revolution as the American one, I think we both know that's nonsense. It was either wait, which you say you don't advocate, or use considerably more violence than the Americans had done. That's just how it is. That doesn't morally justify the murder and the slaughter, but it does distinguish the period from actual catastrophes that brought almost nothing but misery upon the world, like World War One or the Holocaust.

It's an interesting point that I hadn't much considered before, I'll grant you that. But given the track record of near-constant war of pre-French Revolution Europe, I'm not convinced that the tactics and scale of warfare wouldn't have evolved anyway.

It's not about credit, it's about long-term consequences.

Whatever their faults, they didn't 'ruin' democracy. Post-Revolution Europe both inside and outside France was a more democratic place than it was before. Including the UK, one might add, even though they had started long before.

I'm trying to put things in perspective, is all. Doesn't mean that horrible things didn't happen, as I've said all along, primarily but indeed not exclusively during the Reign of Terror and the war in the Vendee (which I mentioned before you brought it up, you'll note). And a lot happened during that period - some of the merits of the original revolutionaries like the abolition of slavery were indeed undone by Napoleon as you mentioned, while on the other hand Napoleon did some good things the original revolutionaries hadn't done. It's all quite complicated, which is why I want to read more about it, and why I reject your simplistic, one-sided apocalyptic characterizations.