The cost of change
The cost of changeWhat is change? Defined in the Webster Dictionary as a “Shift from one to another”, change seems for the better. But is it? What is the cost of change? What must go wrong, for something to go right? How many people must die for a certain cause or change in history? It seems that the cost of change is always greater than the change itself. People learn off of other people’s torment and anguish.In the midst of the 1790’s in France, a change was taking place.
It was the height of the French Revolution, as the people of France refused to be ruled by a monarch. The 3rd Estate created a “Committee of Public Safety”, led by Maximilien Robespierre. France had dominated it’s surrounding countries, and forced them to back away, however, some people of France was still rejecting the idea of a Republic. The CPS was forced to take action, creating a new system called the Reign of Terror. Under this system, all disloyal people would by put to death by a way of the Guillotine.
In the course of only nine months, over 16,000 people were brutally killed. Victims soon added up to 30,000. People of all sorts who had any bit of disloyalty to the republic was soon found to be dead. It was a harsh system in which thousands of innocent people died by the blade. The changes in France had been a positive one, but for how long? The Reign of Terror can only change so much, until if finally collapses. And so it did, by the summer of 1794, Robespierre had been condemned and guillotined, and the Reign of Terror was over.
So, were the thousands and thousands of lives worth the change? Were the innocent slaughters of thousands of men and women worth the change? People of France did become loyal to the Republic, and politically, France finally had a powerful government system. It’s a shame that thousands of French Citizens had to die for it to become so.