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In honor of Bastille Day, I have decided to dedicate this column to that proverbial fly in the world's ointment, France.

I suppose "honor" is the wrong word to use. Bastille Day signified the birth of le republique and the beginning of the end of le ancien regime, which wasn't necessarily a good thing for France or the rest of Europe.

While this commentary is going to seem harsh, I would like to say that I am quite proud of my French heritage. France was the home of my paternal ancestors, though it was a very different place when Jean-Baptiste Baham made his away across the ocean in the 18th century, when the trinity of lilies and not the tricolour of the revolutionary butchers served as the country's banner.

The vaunted French Revolution was not a victory for the people but in fact the first of the Continent's three glaring examples of human depravity on a wide scale that would leave tens of thousands dead and establish a temporary state that would be a forerunner of Hitler's Germany and Lenin's USSR in barbarity and oppression.

The revolution against Louis XVI and his despised Austrian Queen Marie Antoinette was hardly an example of the populace tossing off the yoke of slavery fastened by a heartless tyrant. History records that King Louis was the most enlightened of the Bourbons and he was sincere in his devotion to his subjects.

Furthermore, it has been disproved that Antoinette ever uttered the infamous words, "Let them eat cake" in response to the bread shortages that was a cause of the uprising.

It was Louis XVI who interceded on behalf of the fledgling American republic during the rebellion in the Atlantic colonies. And it was Louis XVI who returned military glory to France after his playboy father Louis XV frittered away most of the country's colonial possessions in North America in the disastrous French and Indian War.

So what did the Revolution bring the French people?

To begin, there was the guillotine; named for a French dentist who thought the contraption was a humane way of executing people...that is when the blade was sharp enough to sever a head on the first drop. The instrument symbolized the terror that overcame the country and was used to kill those who were guilty of possessing royal blood and to suppress critics of France's revolutionary leadership.

There was also the war declared against religion in which churches were seized, graves defiled, and religious executed for refusing to renounce their faith. There was a brief period of time where Notre Dame was "rechristened" the Temple of Reason as part of the Revolution's war against religion.

Antoinette would later be executed after having been condemned in a farcical trial and their young son, the proclaimed Louis XVII who would never actually reign, would endure terrible horrors including sexual abuse, brain washing, and eventually a death sentence via the harsh conditions in which he was kept.

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