We celebrate the revolution while ignoring it went terribly, being in terms of rights, economy or basically anything else, and we happily put an emperor on the throne less than a decade later
I wouldn't say it went terribly in terms of rights, necessarily. The French Revolution was a massive influence on every other post-enlightenment democracy that came after it. Without the French Revolution (and yes, that includes its failures), we very well could all still be living in different versions of feudalism.
The French Revolution paved the way for just about every pro-worker reform in the modern world.
> we happily put an emperor on the throne less than a decade later
to be fair, the emperor climbed on the throne pretty much on his own; I think he had support across broad parts of the population, but it's not as if he was elected (and he didn't even start as an emperor, that came a few years after his coup)
> I did not steal the crown. I found it lying in the gutter, and I picked it up with the sword. But it was the people who placed it on my head.
The man was massively popular with the populace [1] [2] and he got elected emperor with a referendum [3] to which 7 million people were called. By modern standard that barely qualifies, but for an emperor in 1804 ...
A common misconception was that the revolution was to remove the all powerful head of state. It wasn't, the people just wanted a competent one and improved living conditions.
