There is a certain kind of radical who loves to fetishize the Guillotine.
They portray the Reign of Terror as a righteous purge of the Corrupt Elite, which our modern society should emulate.
Here's what actually happened.
Sure, they cut off the king and queen's heads. And then they kept chopping. Dissidents, political opponents... then the former executions would themselves be executed, once the political winds changed.
Then Napoleon overthrew the government and became dictator and emperor.
Then he was defeated after he overreached in his imperial ambitions, and the monarchy was restored.
A series of further revolutions and conflicts followed. A lasting republic was not restored until the Third Republic of 1870, which managed to last 70 years until occupied by the Nazis.
The longest period of French democracy, the Fourth and Fifth republics, established after World War II, did not begin until 1946, a full 157 years after the French Revolution began. And it is by no means an entirely equitable society, even now.
In the end, the guillotine did not eat the rich.
But you can make an argument that it ate the Revolution.
