I was comparing the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars with the 18th century standard of warfare (basically, the standards that held from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia until the French Revolution). It is true that some previous wars in European history had been just as awful, like for example the Thirty Years' war. However, the innovations brought by the French Revolution destroyed a century and a half long tradition of reasonably limited and civilized warfare. To see this, it's enough to look at the casualty figures of 18th century European wars prior to 1789 and compare them with the death toll of those in the period 1792-1815. It's an order of magnitude difference.

Moreover, some of your claims are wildly inaccurate. In particular, the first mass conscription (levée en masse) was levied in the summer of 1793, six years before Napoleon's Brumaire coup. And it was by no means "the whole [F]rench people" that stood behind the revolutionary regime. A very large percentage was monarchist and saw the Revolution as an illegal and tyrannical usurpation -- for which they had at least some good reason, considering that it immediately abolished centuries old traditional institutions of local autonomy and submitted them straight to the dictate from Paris. You yourself said that "there were many people inside France trying to destroy the Revolution from inside" because they didn't like the change. Does this mean that, according to you, these people deserved the Terror to be unleashed against them?

In some places, like the Vendée, the monarchists had overwhelming support -- which was crushed by the revolutionary regime in a campaign of mass atrocities whose scale and brutality would truly not be repeated in Europe until the 20th century totalitarians took over. (If you think my assertion about the Nazis is incorrect, can you name some campaign of atrocities in Europe between the French Revolution and the Nazis that rose to the same level? Perhaps some things that happened in Eastern Europe in the post-WW1 chaos would qualify.)

The assertion that "[t]here is no ethnic conflict that was started [or] inspired by the French Revolution" is also absurd. If anything, the German-French rivalry and revanchism that was to produce a series of cataclysmic wars in the next 150 years was a direct consequence of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Moreover, nothing like the European nationalist ideologies that would cause all the strife and wars in the subsequent 200 years existed before the French Revolution. The novel idea of a centralized and ethnically uniform nation-state that is the very essence of nationalism was at the center of the French revolutionary project. (This is especially obvious in the revolutionary government's policy of eliminating local languages and dialects and forcible imposition of linguistic uniformity.) Once such ideas start taking hold in ethnically diverse places, the consequences are terrible almost without exception.

In Haiti, the story is much more complicated than what you say, and altogether horrible -- certainly nothing like the idealistic story of successful abolition of slavery that you suggest. When the formal abolition came in 1794, the slave rebellion that would ultimately turn into all-out race war was already well underway. The bungling politics of the republican commissioners newly arrived from France, principally Sonthonax, certainly didn't help the situation. (It is true that the conclusive and most brutal events happened after Napoleon's unsuccessful invasion in 1801-02, but the situation had turned very nasty even before that.) And in any case, the worldwide slave trade was abolished by the Royal Navy prompted by British abolitionist politics. The French Revolution had nothing to do with that.

Your constant pointing out of all the nice and sweet things that the revolutionary regime was declaring on paper is rather absurd considering what this regime was doing in practice. (And a more in-depth analysis would in fact show that some of these nice-sounding ideas did in fact predictably lead to awful consequences when attempted in practice, while many of them weren't at all nice when one looks at what they really meant behind the lofty language.)

All in all, you seem to be repeating a very naive and cartoonish version of events. I suggest that you read more on this historical period if you'd like to discuss it seriously.

Correction: The first levée en masse was in February 1793, not the summer of 1793 as I wrote originally. This however goes even further towards the point I was making.

...or just granting you a Godwin point for comparing the Revolution with Hitler.

...

Edit : oh, I find it very... surprising that on LW someone can quote Philippe De Villiers, who is a representative of our extreme right, a fundamentalist Catholic and openly racist and homophobe. Sure, even Hitler is sometimes right, but quoting an extreme-right politician who viscerally oppose the French Revolution because the French Revolution broke the power the Catholic Church had on the government, and stripped the priests from the powers they had over daily life. What a reference on a community dedicated to refining the art of human rationality.

I've edited my comment several times, yet I remain quite unsure as to what I should say.

Revolutionary France didn't declare war to conquest others...To the contrary, the Revolution aimed to end war

People excuse by citing intentions, and accuse by citing consequences.

To the contrary, the Revolution aimed to end war, stating in the Constitution of the First French Republic (at my knowledge, for the first time in history, but I may be wrong on that)

It seems like that's the implicit goal of nearly every ideology, for after it's universally adopted.

I find it very... surprising that on LW someone can quote Philippe De Villiers, who is a representative of our extreme right, a fundamentalist Catholic and openly racist and homophobe.

In this context, his value system isn't the issue. There's nothing that Vladimir is using that's a questionable claim. He linked to an article which quotes De Villiers and doesn't say something like "oh, and mainstream scholars think this is bullcrap"- because the events unquestionably occurred. In fact the article quotes mainstream historians as agreeing with De Villiers on the factual history. The only reason De Villiers is bringing it up is for his own political goals. But that doesn't impact the factual accuracy of the points.

In general, it is a hallmark of rationality to take facts where they come from even when they come from very distasteful sources. Thus, we've had in our rationality quotes threads quotes from people as diverse as Jack Chick, Ted Kaczynski, C. S. Lewis, and G.K. Chesterton.

Sure, in the case of De Villiers if he made a specific factual claim and was the primary source for that claim I'd be less inclined to trust it than if say Richard Dawkins made the same statement but that's completely distinct from someone happening to be willing to cite an article that De Villiers appears in.

Politics is the mind-killer.