History Podcast / Revolutions

** Discussed as the major factor behind "the entropy of victory" in Season 11. In order for a revolution to come about and achieve success, a massive cross-class alliance who all agree their problems are the result of the incompetent sovereign's mismanagement has to come together to overthrow them. But after they succeed, it quickly becomes apparent that, far from an harmoniously united front, this alliance was composed of completely different kinds of people who wanted completely different things, often opposing and contradictory. While the sovereign was there to provide a unifying mutual enemy, they could cooperate, but once they're gone they realize they're not friends and may be natural enemies. For example, urban workers want cheap food and better working conditions who resent the government kowtowing to their bosses, rural workers who want land and don't want their produce confiscated to ensure said cheap food, and landlords and bosses who want their rights respected and ''really'' don't want a bunch of new regulations or having their property redistributed.

* PaperTiger: French liberals were convinced that Polignac and Charles X were plotting a devious royalist coup to overthrow the country's constitution (or at least, the constitution-adjacent charter of government) and establish an absolutist monarchy. The two men's well-known absolutism and hatred for the French Revolution and its reforms left those liberals absolutely sure that a hammer blow was coming. But, as it turned out, there was no devious royalist coup. Polignac and his team were mostly content to wait for God to help them out. And when the government did push out a series of decrees that essentially served as the long-awaited coup attempt, the whole enterprise proved to be rather lazy and half-assed, with the government having done none of the preparatory work necessary to actually succeed. As such, the revolutionaries in Paris were able to push out Charles after three days and a (relatively) small amount of bloodshed.

* PaperTiger: French liberals were convinced that Polignac and Charles X were plotting a devious royalist coup to overthrow the country's constitution and establish an absolutist monarchy. The two men's well-known absolutism and hatred for the French Revolution and its reforms left those liberals absolutely sure that a hammer blow was coming. But, as it turned out, there was no devious royalist coup. Polignac and his team were mostly content to wait for God to help them out. And when the government did push out a series of decrees that essentially served as the long-awaited coup attempt, the whole enterprise proved to be rather lazy and half-assed, with the government having done none of the preparatory work necessary to actually succeed. As such, the revolutionaries in Paris were able to push out Charles after three days and a (relatively) small amount of bloodshed.

* FullCircleRevolution: Well, obviously, but perhaps the most tragic and emphasized example is Haiti. Through multiple revolutions that killed huge chunks of the population, and even literal genocide, the lot of the black former slaves who had fought so bravely to attain their freedom just didn't change much. From the whips and drivers of the big whites to the clubs and foremen of the Loverturian Republic and Dessaline's empire, the cultivators were still forced to work on plantations for meager rewards under draconian labor laws.

* Season 9 (August 2018-March 2019, 27 episodes): The [[UsefulNotes/TheMexicanRevolution Mexican Revolution]].

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Duncan generally tries to maintain a neutral, genteel tone when recounting the events and actions of the series, even when talking about people he clearly has low opinions of. However, when Tsar Nicholas makes a final attempt to resist abdication in the wake of heavy resistance and rioting at St. Petersburg by claiming he doesn't have faith the Duma will be able to appoint competent ministers to run the country - which, keep in mind, the entire ''reason'' St. Petersburg was in revolt was ''because'' Nicholas had spent the past ten years appointing nothing but incompetent ministers who were only good as yes-men able to soothe Nicholas and Alexandra's egos, and thus unable to attend to the needs of the populace - Duncan is so flabbergasted with disbelief he spends several minutes passionately ranting about how this was a situation Nicholas had bungled his way into and that he was, put bluntly, 'So ready to be done with this guy'.

** Averted in the Russian Revolution season, which seems to be heading this way with Duncan's initially sympathetic portrait of Nicholas II as a smart, kind, loving husband and father. But then Duncan spends many episodes laying out at great length the obstinate incompetence of Nicholas's regime, to the point where he drains away all of the initial sympathy the season might have had for Nicholas. Duncan even says "I shed few tears" for the execution of the entire Romanov family in 1918, while still acknowledging that it was a dumb decision with no benefit for the Soviet government.

** After Charles I's execution, Mike points out that he was a pretty clever guy who loved art and had a good grasp of history, but that his rigid absolutism and utter inability to compromise or convince anyone that he wasn't going to go back on his word the second he had the chance to do so ultimately spelt his doom.

* DoomedMoralVictor: Obviously, it happens more than once in a series full of revolutions that don't always succeed. But an Italian commander during the Revolutions of 1848 gets special credit for invoking it; fully aware that there was no possible way he could keep his city under republican control long-term, he instead set out to ensure that his government was just, honest, capable, and fair, so as to embed that as the legacy of republican rule in the Italian psyche and wash away the dark shadow of the French revolution in the minds of the people so that, one day, Italy might be free. It worked, in part because the heavy-handed reactionary cardinals that replaced him [[NotHelpingYourCase were the ones who set up a guillotine in the city square and began beheading political radicals they didn't like while ignoring the problems that beset the people]].

* EnemyMine: France really, really, really did not like Austria, but when the "stately Quadrille" turned round and allying with Austria was the thing to do to give it to the English, ally with Austria they did. Duncan points out that this alliance (and the UsefulNotes/SevenYearsWar that resulted from it) were ''very'' unpopular in France and sad unpopularity rubbed off on UsefulNotes/MarieAntoinette and at least in part explains the Girondin war fever (Austria was to be the main target) and the eagerness with which conspiracy theories about a royalist/Austrian conspiracy behind all evils befalling France were believed.

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Duncan does on occasion weigh in on the common portrayal and appraisal of the historical figures he talks about. He's particularly fascinated by the different judgment Lafayette receives in the US (where he is widely regarded as a hero and a military genius) and France (where he is widely regarded as an inept moderate who badly misjudged his own ability and popularity at best and a traitor who sold out the heroic July revolutionaries to conservative elements at worst). Duncan tends towards the American view of Lafayette and is happy to see some French opinions on him shift (he's even written a book about Lafayette and his role in the various revolutions).

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: Duncan generally tries to maintain a neutral, genteel tone when recounting the events and actions of the series, even when talking about people he clearly has low opinions of. However, when Tsar Nicholas makes a final attempt to resist abdication in the wake of heavy resistance and rioting at St. Petersburg by claiming he doesn't have faith the Duma will be able to appoint competent ministers to run the country - which, keep in mind, the entire ''reason'' St. Petersburg was in revolt was ''because'' Nicholas had spent the past ten years appointing nothing but incompetent ministers who were only good as YesMen and thus unable to attend to the needs of the populace - Duncan is so flabbergasted with disbelief he spends several minutes passionately ranting about how this was a situation Nicholas had bungled his way into and that he was, put bluntly, 'So ready to be done with this guy'.

* BookSmart: This is how Duncan portrays the future czar Nicholas II when describing his childhood education. Nicholas was a good student with a great memory and spoke four languages fluently. Unfortunately, while Nicholas was good at learning and retaining things, he didn't have the abstract reasoning ability or critical thinking skills to go from knowing specific things to coming up with his own ideas based off those things. And it's not like the tutors or family members surrounding young Nicholas were interested in helping him hone those skills.

* VillainousBreakdown: General Leclerc of the ill-fated namesake expedition to retake Saint-Domingue goes, over the course of his military occupation of Haiti from an idealistic young army officer horrified by Toussaint Louverture's harsh labor laws and repulsed by the idea of going back on the revolution's ideals of liberty and equality and putting the blacks in chains, to a bungler incapable of securing the loyalties of the native population or retaining the affiliation of the American and British forces supplying him, to an embittered man fighting a mass insurrection tacitly admitting that his replacement is going to reinstate slavery and that it was his job to prepare the colony for that, to a paranoiac shut up in his home base in primitive quarantine alternately begging Napoleon for reinforcements and to relieve him of command before the yellow fever ravaging his troops kills him too, to a dying man, wasting away from yellow fever himself, drafting plans to suppress the insurrection so genocidal that even his successor the vicomte de Rochambeau, himself a racist and twisted sadist, balked at implementing them after his death.

** Duncan from time to time dwells on the consequences of a particular decision or stroke of luck and what would have happened, had things gone the other way. For instance, he wonders what UsefulNotes/{{Napoleon|Bonaparte}} could have done allying with the army of Toussaint [=L'Ouverture=] instead of fighting him.

* MiscarriageOfJustice: This is how Duncan portrays Parliament's persecution of Thomas Wentworth in the run up to the English Civil War. They tried impeaching Wentworth for treason, charges that Wentworth was able to utterly demolish due to their fundamental weakness. So Parliament went ahead and passed a Bill of Attainder, which simply required a majority vote instead of a trial. Wentworth was executed as a result.

* PetTheDog: While Charles X was, in most respects, an EvilReactionary trying to restore absolutist rule in France and sweep away the few rights and reforms of the Revolution that had survived the Bourbon Restoration, he was close to his family. In contrast to his brother, Louis XIX's unshakable conviction that the whole French Revolution had been masterminded by Philippe the Duke of Orleans to seize the throne, Charles embraced his son Louis Philippe and felt the Bourbon family should stick together.
** As to Louis Phillipe himself: during the 1848 season, Duncan does paint the portrait of a lazy, torpid, apathetic and disconnected king presiding over a mediocre and corrupt regime. But when Louis, during the uprising against his regime, was faced with the reality that his only way to stay on the throne was to massacre his people, he flatly refused, and instead peacefully abdicated. Duncan acknowledges this as a legitimately admirable decision. He points out that the republican government that replaced him had no such qualms about using force to assert their own authority.

* EvenEvilHasStandards: Talleyrand may be a sleazy, greedy crook whose loyalty to any given master went exactly as far as his own benefit and no further, but he was still a diplomat and believed his job was to ensure peace rather than a favorable position for the next war. When it became obvious that Emperor Napoleon was planning to conquer the world, or at least Europe, and would probably ultimately destroy France in the process of fulfilling his ambitions, Talleyrand started undermining the Emperor behind his back, advising Tsar Alexander II to reject the alliance he was meeting with the tsar to cement and ultimately getting France a seat at the table and surprisingly favorable terms at the Council of Vienna, ''because'' of how many times he'd stabbed Napoleon in the back.

** As to Louis Phillipe himself: during the 1848 season, Duncan does paint the portrait of a lazy, torpid, apathetic and disconnected king presiding over a mediocre and corrupt regime. But when Louis, during the uprising against his regime, was faced with the reality that his only way to stay on the throne was to massacre his people, he flatly refused, and instead peacefully abdicated. Duncan acknowledges this as a legitimately admirable decision.

* IGaveMyWord: Whether out of aristocratic honor or something deeper, Duncan describes Simon Bolivar as considering his oaths SeriousBusiness. When his beloved first wife died young, he swore never to marry again, and though he had many love affairs afterwards and even entered at least one serious relationship with a mistress, who also died young, he never did. When he almost ruined himself at the gambling table in France, and had to borrow money to get it back and repay his creditors, he swore never to gamble again, and while he did some risky things later, he kept to it. When the leader of the Republic of Haiti gave him no-strings-attached supplies and ships to reignite his revolution on the mainland, asking in return only that Bolivar swear he would abolish slavery when he won, Bolivar (whose record on race before was hardly spotless; the Second Republic failed ''because'' he prioritized the white slave-owning class's interests over the common people's) burned political capital for the rest of his career ensuring that liberty and equality would be genuine concerns for every country he liberated, building nationalism without (at least ideologically, if not practically) racial supremacy. And, most famously, during a visit to Rome he and his friends stood on the hill the Plebians had once retreated to to force concessions from the Patricians and swore they would fight to liberate America from Spanish rule or die, and no matter how many times he failed and had to run for his life, Bolivar never stopped coming back to fight again, never considered fleeing and abandoning his dream. Duncan also presents the possibility that Bolivar swore a similar oath never to repeat his mistake after a bunch of royalist prisoners were freed in a plot that helped doom the Republican army, suggesting a later prisoner massacre was the result of attempting to keep it.

** While Louis Phillipe himself was certainly nothing close to evil, Duncan during the 1848 season does paint the portrait of a lazy, torpid, apathetic and disconnected king presiding over a mediocre and corrupt regime. But when Louis, during the uprising against his regime, was faced with the reality that his only way to stay on the throne was to massacre his people, he flatly refused, and instead peacefully abdicated. Duncan acknowledges this as a legitimately impressive and unusual decision.

* BourgeoisBohemian: One reason Duncan is skeptical of revolutions is that he notes that most revolutionaries whether English, American or French, exaggerate their "oppression" and invoke fears of "slavery" to justify their revolution. In most cases, he notes that they start out as functionaries in the old order, some of them even being nobles, who basically bite the hand that fed them. They also were mostly well-off and slept in comfortable beds unlike the vast majority of the population. The one exception noted by Duncan, is the Haitian Revolution, where actual slaves and oppressed people revolt, against real and actual tyranny and are honest and free of exaggerations. (Significantly, Duncan starts expressing this opinion after Season 4; as revealed in the last episode of Season 11, this is not a coincidence.)

* BourgeoisBohemian: One reason Duncan is skeptical of revolutions is that he notes that most revolutionaries whether English, American or French, exaggerate their "oppression" and invoke fears of "slavery" to justify their revolution. In most cases, he notes that they start out as functionaries in the old order, some of them even being nobles, who basically bite the hand that fed them. They also were mostly well-off and slept in comfortable beds unlike the vast majority of the population. The one exception noted by Duncan, is the Haitian Revolution, where actual slaves and oppressed people revolt, against real and actual tyranny and are honest and free of exaggerations.

* Season 3 (July 2014-August 2015; 55 episodes plus 5 supplementals): The UsefulNotes/FrenchRevolution
* Season 4 (September 2015-April 2016; 19 episodes plus 1 supplemental): The UsefulNotes/{{Haiti}}an Revolution

* PaperTiger: French liberals were convinced that Polignac and Charles X were plotting a devious royalist coup to overthrow the country's constitution and establish an absolutist monarchy. The two men's well-known absolutism and hatred for the French Revolution and its reforms left those liberals absolutely sure that a hammer blow was coming. But, as it turned out, there was no devious royalist coup. Polignac and his team were mostly content to wait for God to help them out. And when the government did push out a series of decrees that essentially served as the long-awaited coup attempt, the whole enterprise proved to be rather lazy and half-assed, with the government having done of the preparatory work necessary to actually succeed. As such, the revolutionaries in Paris were able to push out Charles after three days and a (relatively) small amount of bloodshed.

''Revolutions'' (2013-present) is the second history podcast by Creator/MikeDuncan. Unlike [[Podcast/TheHistoryOfRome his previous podcast]], ''Revolutions'' is not the history of one society or polity but rather a thematic series focusing on particular revolutions in the history of the modern world.

* Season 11 (September 2022-present): An epilogue season comparing and contrasting all the Revolutions from the 10 seasons while trying to give Duncan's own answer to the historical question of "what makes a Revolution?".

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Duncan does on occasion weigh in on the common portrayal and appraisal of the historical figures he talks about. He's particularly fascinated by the different judgment Lafayette receives in the US (where he is widely regarded as a hero and a military genius) and France (where he is widely regarded as an inept moderate who badly misjudged his own ability and popularity). Duncan tends towards the American view of Lafayette and is happy to see some French opinions on him shift (he's even written a book about Lafayette and his role in the various revolutions).

* RapePillageAndBurn: While many revolutionary and establishment armies engage in it throughout the series, Boves the Legion of Hell from the wars of the Venezuelan Second Republic take the cake. Drawn from the llaneros, mostly mixed-race cowboys native to the Llanos region, Boves Legion of Hell were nominally royalist, but in practice were mostly interested in plundering all the wealth they could get their mitts on and doing unspeakable things to every civilian that fell into their hands.