For the last several months, as background for a novel I am working on, I have been researching the French Revolution.

The question that fascinates to this day, historians and lay people alike, is just how it happened: How did the state justify sending so many thousands of people to their deaths?

King Louis and Marie Antoinette were seen as living symbols of despotic rule, and so they were beheaded. Some nobles and clergy also met their ends at the guillotine.

But hundreds and hundreds of average people, from soldiers to journalists to actors to farmers, also were swept up in the Terror and destroyed.