During the first 20 - the most violent - years of the Spanish Inquisition,
at the end of the 15th century, some 2,000 people were killed in the name of Faith.
By
contrast, about a quarter of a million people (out of a population of
roughly 800,000) were killed in the Vendée [Western France] when a
peasant rebellion against the rationalist, anti-religious,
Enlightenment-engendered French Revolution was put down by Republican
armies in 1794.
And some 17,000 men, women and children were
guillotined in the purge that ended in July that year, including the man
who had designed the new revolutionary calendar which featured the 'rational' ten-day week.
- Read John Gray's review of Karen Armstrong's new book
on Religion and the History of Violence.
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