Benjamin WashechekHistory 102Professor Rashmi ChilkaMarch 3, 2014Did the French Revolution follow its initial principles?The ideals of the French Revolution were liberty, fraternity and equality. These lofty ideals inspired people to put aside their own personal security and join in forming a wave that would sweep away the established French government. There were, however, great differences between the ideals behind the French Revolution and the results of the Revolution. Looking at the first principle of liberty, we see that in the beginning, the French Revolution was motivated by the people's desire for individual freedoms. These freedoms included: owning their own land, earning enough money to buy bread, and not having to bear the burden of taxes while nobles and others in power paid almost nothing. In this regard, the revolution gave hope of freedom to the third estate. The ideal of equality was a considerable driving force of the revolution. The people wanted equal treatment before the law for all French citizens. This meant that they wanted senior church officials to have a lower standard of living. They also demanded that nobles pay taxes from which they had been virtually exempt in the past. To this end, they attacked both the nobility and the Church in their quest for equality. Although this attitude generated iconoclastic actions and popular violence against the nobility, the people still managed to reverse the course of events towards lasting equality for all French citizens. The third and final call of the revolution was fraternity. For them, this meant fraternity between all French citizens. The people wanted everyone to be able to look at each other on an equal footing and for everyone to work equally...... middle of paper ...... shed more blood to ensure their power. The French people wanted freedom and took steps to secure it. They trusted the Assembly to work in their best interests. The assembly could have acted in good faith with the French people and implemented individual freedoms. Instead, many factions, blinded by greed and ambition, fought for power. True greatness comes from selfless decisions like George Washington's when he chose to give up his power in Congress. I believe that if the members of the Assembly had all put aside their own desires, the founding ideologies of the French Revolution would have become a reality and the world would be very different today. But in the end, all the noble ideals of the French Revolution were first trampled in the rush for power, then swept away in a flood of pointless bloodshed..