There is no such thing as a French Revolution
I know it sounds weird to claim the French Revolution didn't happen on a sub called r/FrenchRevolution but I am just making a point here.
People treat the French Revolution like a unified event that can be supported, opposed and betrayed, many will have debates about who is the actual revolutionary and argue about Girondins and Montagnards or Marat and Corday... I just want to show you that this is way more complicated and why people would (not) refer to these events as a single Revolution. This is not a full history, just some snapshots.
The Triple Revolution
The common historical view on the start of the French Revolution is that there was an intersection between three independent movements. After lots of devastating spending the state was bankrupt and the ancien regime desperately needed money calling the Estates General of 1789. The rural poor have plundered local aristocratic mansions and destroyed archives, the urban poor have taken overpriced bread at prices they felt were sensible and the representatives of the Third Estate and some lower clergy and noblemen have finally turned the royal dependent Estates General into a National Convention establishing a parliament.
What people often fail to see is that while these events were interdependent (as in each allowed the others to happen) they didn't have the same interests.
The urban poor: those were the most radical of them all, later establishing both the sans-culottes and the enragés movements. Their primary interest was just to get affordable food which at the time was really hard.
The rural poor and farmers in general: these are two intertwined categories, they often aligned on the fact that they wanted to simply get money for their produce while landless peasants additionally wanted land to work on for themselves.
The bourgeoisie: they were the enlightened liberal capitalist middle classes that actively called for a Republican model. They tried to push through their own agenda normally aligning with the Montagne (social democrats), Gironde (liberal democrats) or Marais (independents sorta).
Initially everyone was monarchist, it took a lot of alienation from the former Monarch to get rid of that sentiment but that is a story for another day.
The invention of European Party Politics
The concept of parliamentary factions was quite new at the time so people did not officially belong to one, they just voted alongside whatever they thought sounded good at the moment - though some had a sense of loyalty to their factions. Also there were no parties as they are known in our times, people organized themselves in political clubs.
The Jacobins were on of those political clubs, they were in favour of a constitution, later against the Monarchy altogether, and largely opposed to slavery (on paper). Both major political forces of the Republic had ties to this club: Montagnards and Girondins.
The Girondins were your average liberals, they opposed government intervention in the economy, opposed centralisation and were the favourite party of the upper middle class and moderate democrats.
The Montagnards were a radicalist party (something between Social Liberalism and Social Democracy), they were in favour of intervention into the economy, opposed to federalism and had more support from poorer people - so, they were in favour of lowering the voting requirements too.
Montagnards - Girondins - Marais
The Reign of Terror
One of the major misconceptions people have is that these political groups accurately represented the people. Most deputies were elites (jurists, merchants, landowners or even former royals), when their policies appealed to ordinary people then these were just strategically aligned interests. The programme of Robespierre is a good example. While in power the Montagnards have implemented the General Maximum, a price limit on grain that secured the loyalty of the sans-culottes in Paris (who could topple any government) while alienating the farmers. They have tried to secure some rural backing with attempts at land reform but those went nowhere. Their reign is also associated with the Assignant (paper money backed by confiscated church properties) which they tried to defend at all cost during a major inflation. Lots of people from different backgrounds grew frustrated with these measures and didn't want to rely on the instable official currency thus creating the need to maintain the usage by force. Dissent was crushed under the Guillotine - in the millions.
The Montagne might have had a decent programme - it was more just than what Brissot envisioned - but it was dependent on the functioning of the state against the suffering of its people. This is where many people start to defend the Girondins, Thermidoriens or even Napoleon as saviors of the true Revolution and upright patriots but the Girondins have started the war responsible for the crisis, the Thermidoriens have done the same the Montagnards have done to implement their measures and Napoleon has drained Poland of every dime additionally to all the other stuff this guy has done.
You need to understand that these people had radically different upbringings and priorities than the average person making their interests inherently different.
The unity of the nation and the slow death of minorities in France
The interests of the revolution served as a catchphrase similar to the unity of the nation. By appealing to some common goal it was easier to implement the own programme and hold up ones rule. So there was a certain propagandistic nature to calling it a unitary revolution that certain actors just seek to defend, national interests don't really exist.
I hope no one gets the impression that I'm some kind of Monarchist, I swear I'm not, but while being starved to death by feudal famines the ordinary people at least retained their languages as the authority didn't really care about that. The French Revolution marks the point where French went from a language spoken by ~10% of the population to the national language. The modern state required a united population and local identities were a large barrier to that.
languages and their dialects on the modern borders of France
Appealing to some vague sense of unity among all French was a utile tool to have people die for your war and tolerate your authority (something every government made use of). So it was imperative to create a centralized state a unified curriculum and a national identity, a process that made the lingual diversity of France disappear step by step.
So tell me can an event be described as a united movement when some actors of this movement were interested in robbing, starving or even erasing other members of that movement in the name of the very same movement? My answer is clear.
