As for the first of the "historical aspects": that's no excuse to foment a bloody civil war, and certainly no excuse for their descendants to call that civil war a "genocide."
For the second: "supreme being worship," as you call it, is no more "weird" than Catholicism. Not to mention the fact that "Religion of the Supreme Being vs. Catholicism" is a false dichotomy, since proponents of the former were also proponents of freedom of religious conscience--Robespierre for one said that those who wanted to stop the mass from being said were worse fanatics than the priests--and it was the dyed-in-the-wool atheists who thought it was a crime to be Catholic. However, it is true that the priests of the regions in civil war such as Bretagne but also, of course, the Vendée, were brainwashing ignorant peasants into giving their lives for a cause that didn't benefit them at all.
Obviously, the average Breton foot-soldier wasn't aware that he was fighting for feudalism against democracy, but you can bet the authority figures he was listening to did.
Not to mention the fact that the religious issue was not the only one at stake. There's some pretty good evidence that economic factors also played a large part. There were other parts of France, for example, where the vast majority of the priests were non-juring. So why did civil war break out only in western France, and only in some parts at that? Many of the areas where the peasants were able to buy most of the national lands were republican, while those where the bourgeoisie claimed the vast majority of these lands and peasants felt for this reason that the revolution did not benefit them, were much more likely to take up arms against the revolution.
And I wouldn't assume that all changes came from Paris--the Midi in particular was known for being even more avant garde than Paris on many issues in the Revolution, in particular in calling for a republic in the immediate aftermath of the flight to Varennes, before and independently from the Cordeliers and their allies in Paris. Most departments, in fact, did not become counterrevolutionary until informed of the "betrayal" of Paris by the fleeing Girondin leaders. In other words, the Revolution was far from a Parisian phenomenon, as many revolutionary leaders in Paris learned--in some cases to their surprise--with the arrival of the fédérés in the days before 10 August.
no subject
As for the first of the "historical aspects": that's no excuse to foment a bloody civil war, and certainly no excuse for their descendants to call that civil war a "genocide."
For the second: "supreme being worship," as you call it, is no more "weird" than Catholicism. Not to mention the fact that "Religion of the Supreme Being vs. Catholicism" is a false dichotomy, since proponents of the former were also proponents of freedom of religious conscience--Robespierre for one said that those who wanted to stop the mass from being said were worse fanatics than the priests--and it was the dyed-in-the-wool atheists who thought it was a crime to be Catholic. However, it is true that the priests of the regions in civil war such as Bretagne but also, of course, the Vendée, were brainwashing ignorant peasants into giving their lives for a cause that didn't benefit them at all.
Obviously, the average Breton foot-soldier wasn't aware that he was fighting for feudalism against democracy, but you can bet the authority figures he was listening to did.
Not to mention the fact that the religious issue was not the only one at stake. There's some pretty good evidence that economic factors also played a large part. There were other parts of France, for example, where the vast majority of the priests were non-juring. So why did civil war break out only in western France, and only in some parts at that? Many of the areas where the peasants were able to buy most of the national lands were republican, while those where the bourgeoisie claimed the vast majority of these lands and peasants felt for this reason that the revolution did not benefit them, were much more likely to take up arms against the revolution.
And I wouldn't assume that all changes came from Paris--the Midi in particular was known for being even more avant garde than Paris on many issues in the Revolution, in particular in calling for a republic in the immediate aftermath of the flight to Varennes, before and independently from the Cordeliers and their allies in Paris. Most departments, in fact, did not become counterrevolutionary until informed of the "betrayal" of Paris by the fleeing Girondin leaders. In other words, the Revolution was far from a Parisian phenomenon, as many revolutionary leaders in Paris learned--in some cases to their surprise--with the arrival of the fédérés in the days before 10 August.