XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, soc.culture.france, uk.politics.misc
XPost: alt.politics

"Mr. B1ack" wrote in message news:2_DoM.8015$t9v6.3460@fx15.iad...

The French unrest has nothing to do with renewable energy.

That's just the way the Frogs are, going back to the French Revolution.

Napoleon Bonaparte knew just how to deal with it. Having seen firsthand the results of mob violence during the Reign of Terror, he was determined not to have that shit happen on HIS watch. When a mob of monarchists tried to take back the government and install a new king on the throne (Louis XVI had lost his head two years earlier), Napoleon ordered 40 cannons, each loaded with chains, musket balls, and scrap metal to be brought forward and fired into
the crowd. When the smoke cleared, 300 were dead and 200 more were picked
off as they fled by sharpshooters on rooftops. Most historians agree that
THAT was the unofficial "end" of the French Revolution and the beginning of
the "Little Corporal's" rise to power (actually he was a brigadier general
in the French army at the time).

Later historians referred to the event as his "whiff of grapeshot"...

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