> Were they able to send their message to 10s millions of people instantly and lead them to things?
No, definitely not. Some states would have had mechanisms for distributing stuff that the leaders wanted publicised, but it wouldn't generally have been all that common. And, in practice, in many cases, if the leader happened to be insane, the system would suppress it. George III wasn't bothering everyone in Britain with weird rants every few hours, say.
The ability of leaders to harangue the general public whenever they feel like it is, in practice, _very_ new; basically since Twitter became popular.
No, definitely not. Some states would have had mechanisms for distributing stuff that the leaders wanted publicised, but it wouldn't generally have been all that common. And, in practice, in many cases, if the leader happened to be insane, the system would suppress it. George III wasn't bothering everyone in Britain with weird rants every few hours, say.
The ability of leaders to harangue the general public whenever they feel like it is, in practice, _very_ new; basically since Twitter became popular.