Page:Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov - The Bourgeois Revolution- Its Attainments and Its Limitations - tr. Henry Kuhn (1926).pdf/29

 terror practiced by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat overshadows by far the atrocities of the Jacobins which, by the way, have been greatly exaggerated by the reactionaries. Robespierre, when compared with Thiers, looks like a veritable angel, and Marat, put side by side with the bourgeois press cossacks of the bloody May week, appears like a mild, benevolent being. He who looks deeper into the French history of our century must fully agree with the Russian writer, Herzen, when, after the June days, he said that there was no more ferocious government, and there could not be a more ferocious one than that of the shopkeeper running amuck.

It was just this shopkeeper ferocity which made impossible a permanent consolidation of political freedom in France. The bourgeoisie must be held solely responsible for the reactionary lapses that typify the history of France in the 19th century. Even during the time of the restoration the victory of the reactionaries was made much easier because the bourgeoisie, mortally afraid of the workers, for a long