-Versailles, one of the grandest royal palaces in the world.

In 1789, it was home to King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.

But everything was to change with the French Revolution, when the people rebelled against the royal family and triumphantly created a new constitution.

Vive la révolution!

The French Revolution is celebrated to this day as a defining event in world history.

It was a political earthquake that turned France into a proud republic at the heart of Europe.

France's great uprising made icons of Marie Antoinette, the Parisians storming the Bastille, and the guillotine.

It inspired revolutionary movements around the world.

It's a stirring story.

But it's full of distortions and exaggerations and some of history's biggest myths.

Was Marie Antoinette really the cause of all the trouble?

Let them eat cake!

Was she really as foolish and frivolous as she's often made out to be?

And how did the lies told about Marie Antoinette lead to her execution?

-Only my blood remains.

Take it.

Do not make me suffer.

-The French Revolution was the moment the people rose up and took down the monarchy.

It was the start of a new age of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity."

Or at least, so the story goes.

♪♪ ♪♪ -France in the late 1780s was a tinderbox of dissatisfaction.

[ Crow cawing ] Cold winters and two disastrous harvests left the peasants starving.

The country was bankrupt, taxes were high, and one member of the royal family was getting the blame.

♪♪ Marie Antoinette was an Austrian Princess.

For decades, France and Austria had been enemies.

But at the age of 14, Marie Antoinette had been married to the French crown prince to forge a political alliance.

But her foreignness would always make her unpopular in France, as would her lavish lifestyle.

-It is a terrible thing to be bored.

I fear it more than anything in the world.

♪♪ [ Gasps ] Presents!

-Marie Antoinette was notorious for her love of shoes and dresses and parties.

-Beautiful.

A dress with a bow.

♪♪ [ Giggles ] -Exaggerated, ludicrous accounts of Marie Antoinette's self-indulgence are circulating everywhere.

She's become a sort of poster girl for everything that's wrong with a discontented and starving France.

In fact, the U.S. ambassador, who's Thomas Jefferson, will come to say this about her -- "Had there been no Queen, there would have been no revolution."

♪♪ Marie Antoinette is supposed to have come up with one of the most famous phrases in history.

She addressed her hungry subjects and proclaimed, "Let them eat cake."

♪♪ The words are still taught to almost every schoolchild in the world.

♪♪ They're used to prove the Queen's indifference to her people.

But did she really say "let them eat cake"?

For a start, the phrase in French is "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," meaning brioche, a kind of an eggy bun.

But "Let them eat a kind of eggy bun" isn't quite so catchy in translation.

But there's a more fundamental cake-fib than that.

There's absolutely no evidence that Marie Antoinette ever said those words -- no documents, no eyewitness reports, no nothing!

♪♪ The phrase had been reported as coming out the mouth of a different French queen, the wife of Louis XIV a century earlier.

♪♪ It wasn't until 50 years after Marie Antoinette's death that the phrase was first written down and ascribed to her.

And even then, they said, it was a rumor that wasn't true.

♪♪ But politicians and historians around the world were still trying to explain the cause of the revolution.

Their narratives needed a royal scapegoat.

And by the 20th century, the myth had become a fixture.

This is an American history primer from 1918, and they've put it like this -- "When at last the Court, overwhelmed with debts, had so far crushed the people with taxes that they had no bread to eat, Marie-Antoinette cried out, 'If they have no bread, let them eat cake!'"

The words have been put into her mouth to show how thoughtless and out of touch she was.

But worse than that, they've been used to justify the bloody events that followed.

♪♪ Even before the revolution, the Queen knew many of her subjects hated her.

Being Austrian, she was seen as the enemy.

She wasted money on clothes and outrageous hairstyles.

-I wonder if it's possible to have one's hair fashioned in the shape of a ship, a ship with sails?

-She was too frivolous to be a proper queen.

And shortly before the revolution, Marie Antoinette fought back by cultivating a more responsible image.

♪♪ Mathieu, what's happening in this picture?

-This is a portrait of Marie Antoinette with her children.

And it's very important because it is a political representation of the new Queen of France, because at first, she was considered as a selfish woman.

So with this portrait she decided to be represented as Queen of France.

We can see here her eldest daughter who was born in 1778 and here the first Dauphin on the right, who died just before the revolution, and here in the middle the new Dauphin.

-Marie Antoinette was also looking for other creative ways to improve her PR.

-Marie Antoinette loved children, and she took some orphans at court.

She paid for their education.

-And she did that partly through sincere feeling, and partly, it must have helped her image as a selfish person?

-I think both.

Both.

She -- I think she was very sincere when she paid for these children and probably she had on her mind the image she had all around the public.

-Modern historians are re-appraising Marie Antoinette's role in the French Revolution.

Increasingly, she's seen as an active participant, rather than just a passive victim.

-She became much more political than her husband during the revolution, because she understood at that time what really happened.

And she took some decision, probably not the good one.

Her husband didn't take any decision, so he didn't know what to do.

But she became at that time the real Queen of France.

♪♪ -The Queen's critics called her "Madame Deficit" and said she'd bankrupted France.

But this was another myth.

The French had built up huge debts during the American War of Independence when France supported the rebels against the British crown.

The war had ended just four years earlier, and France still couldn't balance the books.

-France supports the Independence War of America, and it cost about $1.5 billion.

And the budget of France was about $600 million a year, so that is to say about 2 and 1/2 more than annual budget of France.

-Oh, wow.

-So it's very important.

And the Americans after 1783, they decided not to reimburse the France people.

-So we have the revenue of France.

We have the clothes of Marie Antoinette, but then we have the cost of the war to help America up here somewhere.

-Yes, France did not recover from this deficit, so maybe it explain the revolution.

-So it wasn't so much Marie Antoinette's extravagance that bankrupted France.

It was France's support for the American War of Independence.

Thomas Jefferson neglected to mention that a key cause of the French Revolution was the birth of the United States.

♪♪ The French revolution is also widely believed to have been sparked by a peasants' revolt.

In this version of the story, the starving poor rose up to overthrow the King.

But this image of class war is also a myth.

♪♪ In May 1789, the King called a meeting at Versailles to try to resolve the financial crisis.

1,000 delegates represented three groups or "estates."

The first was the priests and bishops, the second, the titled aristocracy, and finally the third estate, "the commoners."

♪♪ But the three estates were at loggerheads.

Finally, the commoners split off to set up their own meeting.

The one place that was big enough for them all to get inside was the indoor royal tennis court just round the corner from the palace over there.

So this is where they came.

And the King had no idea what was going on.

[ Tennis ball bouncing ] 15 love to the commoners.

[ Applause ] This assembly of commoners was the spark which ignited the revolution.

[ Tennis ball bouncing ] On the 20th of June 1789, they all agreed that France should have a fairer form of government that represented the people.

The King's powers should be limited, although the monarchy wouldn't be abolished.

[ Tennis ball bounces ] Deuce.

And this agreement became known as "the Tennis Court Oath."

[ Applause ] So here we have them, nearly 500 excitable revolutionaries.

Bang in the middle Monsieur Bailly, the astronomer who was in charge at the occasion.

And over to the left, we have a doctor.

His name was Dr. Joseph Guillotin.

Over to the right, we have a small-town lawyer who'd come to the site full of idealism.

At this stage, he was very quiet.

No one paid him much attention.

But he would turn out to be the most controversial revolutionary of them all -- Maximilien Robespierre.

Robespierre would become a radical republican.

As the arch-enemy of royalty, he'd go down in history with the blood of Marie Antoinette on his hands.

What jumps out at me is just how nattily dressed they all are, in their smart suits.

They're not peasants.

They're not workers.

They're definitely members of the bourgeoisie, which is a reminder that this revolution was led by the upper-middle-classes.

[ Tennis ball bounces ] Advantage bourgeoisie.

[ Applause ] They swore "never to separate, until the constitution is established."

It's a wonderful idealistic moment that happened here in the tennis court.

-Yes, it is.

It's quite exhilarating, that the deputies who assembled here on the 20th of June, had all these ideas for how we can make our country better?

How can we reform France?

How can we give France a constitution, which is what the Tennis Court Oath was all about.

But it's certainly true that the actual unity was, I would say, skin deep.

-Tell me about some of the different factions that began to form.

-You have the monarchists, who tried to create almost like a British style constitution, but then you have radicals like Robespierre who want something more democratic.

-One of the surprising things about all these people in the Tennis Court to me is that they're all pretty bourgeois, aren't they?

-Yes, the third estate was a collection of mostly middle-class people -- lawyers, government office holders, financiers, and people with property.

-These revolutionaries were much wealthier than we usually imagine.

Soon even aristocrats would join them.

The Marquis de Lafayette knew the King and Marie Antoinette well.

He'd bravely fought against the British in the American revolution.

Now with the help of his American friend Thomas Jefferson, this liberal-minded aristocrat began drafting a "declaration of the rights of man."

-The draft that Lafayette presented to the National Assembly on the 11th of July 1789 was the fruit of this collaborative work.

So in many ways, Jefferson helped to shape what became the founding principles of the revolution of 1789.

-So the French had helped the Americans have their revolution against the British, and then it's nice to think of Jefferson and Lafayette with their American experience returning the favor and helping the French have their own revolution.

-Absolutely.

-During these turbulent times, Marie Antoinette became increasingly involved in politics.

She often took a harder line against the revolution than her husband and pleaded with Louis to fight back.

But the Tennis Court Oath had unleashed a political earthquake.

Just a month later, bread riots started on the streets of Paris.

[ Indistinct conversations ] This is a part of the city known as Bastille.

Many protests in Paris still start here in memory of the events of the 14th of July 1789, when the people attacked the Bastille fortress.

The Storming of the Bastille is usually seen as the revolution made real.

[ People shouting indistinctly ] The huge crowd of workers waving banners marched upon the city's most famous prison.

100 of them got killed in the attack, becoming martyrs of the revolution.

In Britain, a magazine, reported that, "All the poor and unhappy state prisoners, many of whom had languished for years in execrable abode, were released."

Nobody would ever forget the 14th of July.

[ "La Marseillaise" playing ] Every year, the French commemorate it as Bastille Day, the national day of republican France.

The Bastille Prison is long gone.

An opera house now stands there.

Yet the storming of the Bastille is remembered as the defining moment when all the political prisoners were released and the monarchy swept away.

But how much of this is true?

Now, a lot of people have got the idea it was packed full of revolutionaries who all got freed at this moment.

But that's not the case at all, is it?

-It's not the case at all.

At the time it was stormed, there were only seven there.

And they were hardly what you might call political prisoners of any sort.

There were four forgers who were quickly re-arrested after their release.

There were two people who would now be called psychiatric patients.

One of them was an Irishman called Major White who was very old, and he'd been put there because he believed that he was Julius Caesar.

And there was one libertine, a sex offender.

-A libertine.

-A libertine.

-How did the revolutionaries present their work in storming the Bastille?

-Well, basically, the fall of the Bastille, it was a propaganda coup for the revolutionaries because they could present the storming of the Bastille also as the storming of an oppressive symbol of royal tyranny.

And on the day, they paraded these seven prisoners through the streets of Paris as victims of oppression, which in fact they weren't.

-The idea that the fall of the Bastille went hand in hand with the end of the monarchy is another myth.

In fact, for the next three years, the King retained a key constitutional role.

But Bastille Day later turned into a republican celebration, so this initial support of the monarchy was soon forgotten.

Even so, the French national flag contains a clue about the King's role during this early period.

The revolutionaries replaced the royal fleur de lis with the red, white, and blue tricolor, the flag of the people!

Or was it?

So what about these colors of the French flag?

The red and the blue were the colors of Paris.

And you might be thinking, well, the white, that must be the color of liberty.

Far from it.

White was the ancient color of the Bourbon royal family.

So the flag represented a compromise between the King and the revolutionaries.

And that's how, after the fall of the Bastille, they persuaded him to wear in his hat the tricolored cockade as a sign that he was "alright" with the changes so far.

But Marie Antoinette was not "alright" with the changes and was increasingly worried.

In private, she made clear she hated the new national flag.

♪♪ We tend to think the revolutionaries rallied to the cry of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" right from the start.

But how egalitarian were they?

Only wealthier people over the age of 25 would be allowed to vote for the deputies in the national assembly.

That was just 15% of the population.

And of course we're talking about men.

That's what fraternity's all about.

Oh, here's a lady at last.

I've been looking for her.

What has the French woman been up to all this time?

♪♪ Three months after the storming of the Bastille 10,000 market women, many armed, marched on Versailles from Paris.

Angered by the cost of bread, they wanted the King to distribute flour.

They even threatened to behead Marie Antoinette.

In the end, they made do with attacking her royal bed.

And the royal family were forced to abandon Versailles and move to Paris.

Women weren't taking a back seat in this revolution.

In France at this time, there was a fantastic feminist called Olympe de Gouges.

Here she is.

And she responded to the writings of Jefferson and Lafayette on the rights of man with a little something of her own called the "Declaration of the Rights of Women."

"Oh, women, women!"

she wrote, "When will you cease to be blind?

What advantage have you realized from the Revolution?"

As time went on, the revolution's claims to equality rang increasingly hollow.

[ Woman speaking indistinctly ] ♪♪ Over the next three years, the National Assembly engaged in a diplomatic two-step with the King.

♪♪ Royal power shifted backwards and forwards.

The radicals, the Jacobins, wanted rid of the monarchy.

But most of the assembly was moderate and hoped to continue working with Louis.

The King remained relatively popular for two more years.

♪♪ He was the guest of honor at a party held in 1790 to commemorate the fall of the Bastille.

♪♪ This lingering affection for the King got written out of history.

♪♪ Meanwhile, the Queen was growing ever more unpopular.

♪♪ And that's thanks to some very nasty propaganda.

♪♪ Charles-Eloi Vial of the National Library of France has investigated how dangerous lies about the Queen were building up.

Charles-Eloi, what are you looking at?

And do you have other, worse images of her?

And do you have another image of her private life?

He comes in.

So we have the wife, the lover, and the husband.

Do you think here we have some negative feelings towards the King, but we can't criticize the King.

We will turn to his wife.

What was the motivation for the people producing and selling these images?

The uneasy dance with the National Assembly was grinding to a halt.

The fake news against Marie Antoinette was savage and relentless.

And the King's power was being constantly eroded.

Marie Antoinette had more foresight than her husband and saw that their lives were in jeopardy.

She finally persuaded the King to take drastic action.

Around midnight on June the 20th, 1791, the royal family sneaked out of their palace.

They were in disguise as an ordinary bourgeoisie family.

A pre-arranged carriage was waiting for them.

They got in.

They traveled out of Paris.

It looked like they'd escaped from the revolutionaries.

They must have breathed the biggest sigh of relief.

♪♪ The carriage trundled east from Paris along the back roads.

Some claimed they were deserting France altogether... others, that they intended to rule from a royal palace near the border.

Either way, within 24 hours, they were approaching the safety of the Netherlands, at that time occupied by Austria.

But when they reached the town of Varennes... everything went wrong.

-Arretez-vous!

♪♪ -Local officials wanted to know who was traveling.

And the postmaster thought, "Hang on.

I've seen that face before!"

He recognized the King because he'd seen pictures of him on money.

♪♪ -Sacré bleu!

-The whole gamble had failed.

The King, Marie Antoinette, and the children were all taken back to Paris in disgrace.

Marie Antoinette's hair had turned white almost overnight.

Confidence in the King was shattered, and he was removed from power.

But then that astronomer, Jean Bailly, a monarchist supporter among the revolutionaries, told a whopping lie.

He claimed that the King and Marie Antoinette had been kidnapped -- forced to leave Paris against their will.

Amazingly, the lie was accepted.

On the 15th of July, 1791, the National Assembly reinstated the King, and he finally approved the new constitution.

This was seen as a revolutionary new dawn.

The assembly wanted people to embrace a whole new way of living based on enlightenment and progress.

They were getting excited about all the latest developments in science, in philosophy, and in technology, including flight.

♪♪ The story of the French Revolution is usually all about anarchy and destruction -- the storming of the Bastille and the execution of Marie Antoinette.

♪♪ But the revolutionaries were also keen to bring rationality and progress to the world.

One scientist was inspired to fly a hot-air balloon, only recently invented, all the way from Paris to a little town 50 miles away.

♪♪ He took along piles of copies of the brand-new constitution.

La Constitution de la France Nouvelle.

Tres important.

And, of course, being French, he took some refreshments, too.

Some freshly baked bread -- for you, monsieur.

-Thank you.

Merci.

-A picnic of roast chicken.

-Ah.

-And, inevitably... un bouteille de vin.

Bon voyage!

-Merci.

♪♪ -Lift-off!

♪♪ Vive la révolution!

As he floated off, this revolutionary aeronaut scattered the constitution across the countryside.

Vive la révolution!

♪♪ He was spreading the word that France had finally become a democracy.

But this was only one side of the revolution.

After the initial optimism of 1791, things turned violent.

Maximilien Robespierre is the radical best remembered as the monster who unleashed the Terror, the arch-enemy who executed the King and Marie Antoinette.

He lived in this house in the center of Paris.

♪♪ The hardworking Robespierre was totally dedicated to the revolution.

He became known as the "incorruptible."

He's gone down in history as a cruel tyrant, as a despot.

But what's the real version?

♪♪ This is the main law court in Paris where the Terror was launched.

Now, Marisa, a lot of people think of Robespierre as a cruel, reptilian sort of a person.

But what were his redeeming features that I might be surprised to hear that he had?

-He was a very idealistic man.

He was very humanitarian, which might surprise you, but it certainly is the case.

He was opposed to the death penalty.

Right up until May 1791, he tried to get the death penalty abolished, because he said it was barbaric, and it didn't stop crime.

He was very strongly in favor of equality of rights, so this included the Jews.

The Jews were the biggest religious minority in France at that time, and lots of people didn't want to give the Jews political rights.

Robespierre certainly was one of those who argued for that.

♪♪ -One of Robespierre's fellow revolutionaries once said, "This one will go far because he believes what he says."

He's arguing with his fellow lawyers about the abolition of slavery.

He compares the cruelty of the slave trade with the treatment of the peasants in France.

-Ask a slave merchant, "What is property?"

And he will point to his cargo of human flesh in the coffin he calls a ship.

Ask a nobleman the same, and he will show you his land and the peasants who work it.

We must summon all to equality.

♪♪ -But by August 1792, many revolutionaries feared the young republic was going to be crushed.

France was riven by civil war and threatened by foreign armies.

Their main enemy was Marie Antoinette's homeland, Austria.

The royal family were imprisoned and the King put on trial for treason.

He was found guilty by a huge majority at the National Assembly.

95% of the 700 delegates voted against him.

They then had to decide the king's punishment -- either banishment, imprisonment, or the guillotine.

♪♪ Remember Robespierre, who was against the death penalty?

Well, he's changed his mind, which means that the king's fate now hangs in the balance.

-Yes, the death penalty is an unjustifiable crime, except in cases protecting the safety of society.

With regret, I pronounce this fatal truth.

The King must die so that France may live.

♪♪ -[ Sighs ] So as long as the king is alive, he will be a figurehead for his royalist supporters.

His very existence means counter-revolution and the spilling of the blood of French citizens.

So, execute one man, and you save the lives of many.

The end justifies the means.

It's rational...and ruthless.

♪♪ Despite Robespierre's argument, the execution of the King was by no means a foregone conclusion.

The vote for the guillotine, to be carried out immediately, was passed by a very close margin, just 6%.

Louis XVI almost survived the French Revolution.

On the 21st of January, 1793, the King was taken by carriage to the center of Paris.

The King's hands were tied behind his back.

His long hair was cut to expose his neck.

He was placed face-down on a board like this.

And then the rope was released, and that blade came whizzing down.

♪♪ Afterwards, the guards took his head out of that basket and waved it in the air so the crowd could see.

And they shouted out, "Vive la République!"

Marie Antoinette, held captive in prison, heard the jubilant cheers announcing the death of her husband.

♪♪ Today, there's just this small plaque to mark the end of a French dynasty that had lasted for 900 years.

♪♪ The King's execution marked the beginning of the Terror.

These violent events are rarely remembered by those who celebrate the French Revolution.

But the enemies of the Revolution use the bloodshed as a powerful argument against it.

One of the Terror's earliest victims was Marie Antoinette.

♪♪ One accusation was especially outrageous -- that the Queen had sexually abused her 8-year-old son.

Would you describe this as a true trial or more of a show trial?

♪♪ ♪♪ This is the exact spot occupied by the prison cell in which Marie Antoinette spent the final 75 days of her life.

At the time of her execution, she was 37.

She was not allowed to see her children, who'd been taken away from her two months before.

She wrote a very moving final letter to her sister-in-law.

She wrote, "I embrace you with all my heart, as well as those poor dear children.

My God, it is heartbreaking to leave them forever."

♪♪ On the 16th of October, 1793, Marie Antoinette was prepared for the guillotine.

♪♪ Kept in a cell and wearing a plain dress, she now came face to face with her executioner.

♪♪ -I was a queen, and you took away my crown.

A wife, and you killed my husband.

A mother, and you deprived me of my children.

Only my blood remains.

Take it.

Do not make me suffer.

♪♪ ♪♪ -The executioner has cut her hair off for what you might call practical reasons.

We don't want anything to impede the chop of the blade.

but I can't help thinking that he will quite soon be selling bits of that hair off as souvenirs.

After all, it's one of the perks of his job.

♪♪ Her hands were bound painfully behind her back, and she was put on a rope leash.

Unlike her husband, who'd been taken to his execution in a carriage, Marie Antoinette had to sit in an open cart.

She maintained her composure, despite the insults of the jeering crowd.

History's come up with wildly different ideas about the significance of the Queen's execution.

♪♪ For the revolutionaries, killing Marie Antoinette kept the fire of revolution burning brightly.

But for the critics of the revolution, it revealed their ultimate cruelty.

♪♪ [ Bird screeches ] ♪♪ The Terror was used to destroy opposition and frighten citizens into submission.

In Paris alone, up to 3,000 people were sentenced to death.

Nobody was safe.

There's no doubt that Robespierre played a key role in the Terror.

But he was part of a system of revolutionary committees with many enthusiastic supporters.

In the end, Robespierre would himself fall foul of the same tribunal that condemned Marie Antoinette.

In the summer of 1794, he was accused by fellow revolutionaries of being a dictator.

He and his allies were sentenced to death and quickly guillotined.

[ Blade slices ] -Do you think that Robespierre has the reputation that he deserves from history?

-Robespierre was made into a scapegoat after his execution for all the things that had happened in France during the period of Terror.

Once he was dead, yes, it became very convenient to say that this had all been Robespierre.

It had been all one man.

They invent this notion of him being the mastermind behind the Terror, like a sort of spider in the center of a web who'd been the one person who'd thought of all these things.

And this is nonsense.

♪♪ -We often think of the Revolution as being confined to France itself.

But at the time, France's neighboring nations were terrified that revolutionary ideas would spread across the whole of Europe.

And by 1793, France was caught up in a violent counter-revolutionary war.

The monarchies of Austria and Prussia were the main antagonists.

Before long, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Sardinia, and Naples were all piling in against the Revolution.

The King of Great Britain, George III, was horrified.

♪♪ The execution of Louis and Marie Antoinette had been the final straw.

And in 1793, Britain joined the European coalition dedicated to restoring the French monarchy.

A British naval force sailed to the port of Toulon in the South of France.

But the expedition failed largely because of the brilliance of a young republican artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte.

He was known as the little corporal, and he wasn't actually that little -- he was 5'7", fairly average height.

But we think of him as little, because British propaganda always made out that he was super small.

He did very well at Toulon, and Europe would be hearing a lot more about this chap.

The French Revolution has gone down in history for bringing autocratic rule in France to an end.

But is that really true?

In 1789, France had an absolute monarch.

That was Louis, and then monarchy was ended with the Revolution.

But just 10 years later, by 1799, France was once again under the control of just one man.

It was the hero of the siege of Toulon, Napoleon Bonaparte.

♪♪ Napoleon would soon be the most powerful man in Europe.

♪♪ This painting shows his and his wife, Josephine's, coronation as emperor and empress of France.

♪♪ But in 1814, after the coalition deposed Napoleon, they put a Bourbon king back on the French throne.

This new royal dynasty lasted for 15 years.

Yet this lot are often written out of the story, because more French revolutions were on the way.

♪♪ But it's the first Revolution of 1789 that's still remembered as "the real French Revolution."

-Mike, do you see the French Revolution as the granddaddy of revolutions?

-Absolutely, I do.

It provides a kind of a blueprint for subsequent revolutionaries, I mean professional revolutionaries in Europe and around the world, of what to do and what not to do, what to try to avoid.

And in 1917, Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolsheviks who take power in Russia see the French Revolution as a lesson, as an inspiration.

-The leaders of the Russian revolution appropriated the symbolism of the French one -- workers marching through the streets, riots and uprisings, and the storming of significant state buildings.

The crowds even sang "The Marseilles."

Lenin admired the most radical French revolutionaries.

He had statues of Robespierre erected in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks described themselves as "glorious Jacobins."

The parts of the French Revolution that particularly appealed to Lenin were the revolutionary tribunal and state-sponsored Terror.

Just as King Louis and Marie Antoinette had been executed, the Russian revolutionaries killed the Tsar and Tsarina.

♪♪ The French Revolution has also been adopted as a model for action against oppression, especially in France, from the Paris riots of May 1968 to the recent yellow jacket demonstrations against the Macron government's reforms.

But people aren't always honest about the Revolution's legacy of violence, dictatorship, and bloodshed.

Modern France has a complicated relationship with the French Revolution.

This extraordinary building -- or is it a sculpture?

-- was opened in 1989 to commemorate 200 years since the Revolution.

And it's called the "Grande Arche of Fraternity" in reference to revolutionary ideals.

President Macron often refers to these ideals.

In 2018, he celebrated France's "fraternity" with the United States in Congress.

-Our two nations are rooted in the same soil, grounded in the same ideals of the American and French Revolutions.

We have worked together for the universal ideals of liberty, tolerance, and equal rights.

-But along with many of his compatriots, Macron rarely mentions the Terror of 1793.

You know, it seems to me that the French have almost airbrushed the more horrific aspects of their Revolution out of their national story.

And who can blame them?

Why would you concentrate on the bits that make your nation look bad?

[ Bell tolling ] While the French often gloss over the Terror, the British remember a very different version of the story.

In Britain, a die-hard monarchy, we have a long tradition of using the Terror as a warning against ideologues who take things too far.

♪♪ And that perhaps explains the popularity of Charles Dickens' revolutionary novel "A Tale of Two Cities."

It's about what happens when the brutality of revolution gets out of hand.

As he writes, "Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death -- the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!"

♪♪ With Madame Tussaud's waxworks, the Terror became a national obsession.

In the early 1800s, Tussaud escaped from France to England and set up her museum in London.

She exhibited the wax heads of executed victims, including Marie Antoinette.

Madame Tussaud even claimed to have the original guillotine blade.

Britain would never forget the Terror.

♪♪ Americans have yet another perspective on the French Revolution.

♪♪ They're big fans of Lafayette, the moderate revolutionary who'd helped the Americans win their own independence.

-They see the French Revolution through the lens of the American Revolution, their own revolution.

And for that reason, I think they tend to see the French Revolution as more radical, more extreme, more violent, but also less successful, because the French Revolution leads to the Terror and to dictatorship under Napoleon Bonaparte.

-I love this idea that the Americans had a "better revolution" than the French did.

♪♪ There are still some people in France who'll never allow the Terror to be written out of history.

♪♪ The cathedral of Saint-Denis is the resting place for most of the kings and queens of France, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

And every year on the anniversary of the king's execution, a small group of royalists, some of them wearing the Bourbon white, gather here.

♪♪ They love the Queen.

♪♪ Marie Antoinette's reputation is finally being re-appraised.

♪♪ Instead of seeing her as a hate-figure whose careless words caused the Revolution, many now view her with more sympathy.

This exhibition in Paris is a celebration of her life and her image.

Fashion people really love her.

Here's John Galliano referencing her style for Dior.

It seems that fashion just can't get enough of the tragic glamour of the doomed queen.

The Revolution is a stirring national myth for the French Republic.

It's a powerful story that continues to be told and re-told all over the world, complete with exaggeration and manipulation.

From the exciting fall of the Bastille to the tragic execution of Marie Antoinette, everybody has their favorite parts of the French Revolution that they like to pick out to tell their own version of the story.

And the fib that poor Marie Antoinette said "let them eat cake" is going to be almost impossible to erase from history.

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