"On every generation to which it gave birth, the French Revolution left its mark. A mark of hope for a new dawn, a new order of the world, but also a mark of tragedy, of a project that came to grief in anarchy, bloodletting and despotism. It proclaimed the power of man's reason to achieve progress and happiness in the world, the rights of man to liberty and equality which every government should protect, the sovereignty of the people, the virtues of self-government, and the duty of French citizens to spread liberty among oppressed peoples abroad. And yet the Revolution spawned new tyrannies, the tyranny of the masses who insulted and abused their elected representatives, a revolutionary dictatorship that terrorized its enemies and the plebiscitary dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte who appealed to the disgruntled masses over the heads of the politicians. Liberty was sacrificed to equality, and difference was eliminated in the name of the public interest. The fanaticism attributed to religion was replaced by a revolutionary fanaticism that persecuted its enemies and then consumed its own in a fratricidal struggle. Revolutionaries spawned new armies that set fire to Europe for a generation in the first manifestation of total war."