Military Uprisings During The French Revolution

The ability of a government to suppress and control internal agitation while at the same time appearing gentile and appeasing is a hallmark of a strong government. The middle ground between not budging to demands, and giving too much and collapsing, is a very difficult line to walk. Far too often the national government steps in, and because they need to appear strong and in control, they squash the uprising and the results are often much more violent and destructive than they would have been if negotiations could have taken place prior to the events spiraling out of control. This difficult balancing act that a government must maintain often falls apart and blows up in their face or results in a very harsh response from the oppressed peoples …show more content…
Although both of these cases have demonstrated that this is a very effective way to handle guerrilla terrorist organizations, it marginalizes great segments of the population and also draws a very clear line in the sand between what is right and wrong. By using uniformed military to suppress political uprisings, the federal government is painting a very dark picture of its self in that there is no room to speak up for change without having it result in armed conflict. In a lot of ways, once the military is called in to suppress an uprising, and it results in deaths, the only answer for the federal government is the complete destruction of the political opposition. The problematic nature of using the military for domestic issues was compounded in French Algeria even further by the fact that the Algerian people did not even believe that the French were justified to be in control of their country. After being conquered in the early 19th century, Algeria became a part of metropolitan France and was considered a part of the state herself. When French paratroopers were deployed to destroy the FLN and uprisings across the city of Algiers in the ‘60s, the reasoning was that because they posed a threat to the …show more content…
But in order to remain power they needed to be. This makes it difficult to decide whether or not they are justifiable in their actions and if they made the best decisions to suppress the threat to their power. It is known that the French response to the FLN in Algeria stands today as a hallmark of counterterrorism, but it is questionable whether or not they should have responded the way they did or if they should have understood the climate of the nation and pulled out all together. Judging by the ferocity of the FLN and the French in response to them, French Algeria was unequivocally divided. Knowing this, and understanding their recent history, the French seemed too prideful to relinquish power in their quasi-colony of Algeria, and because of this, they reacted with cruelty in order to punish the Algerians. Interpreted in this way, the French response to terrorist activity was completely unjustifiable and should be remembered as not just how to react to urban guerrillas, but also on how not to react to political instability. On the other hand, the Uruguayan response to the Tupamaros was equally as destructive to their numbers as the French response to the FLN was. Acting out of fear that the revolutions in other parts of Latin America would spread communism to Uruguay, the government was acting to save Uruguay and keep it