(Closed for Britwitch and myself)
July, 1794. As the armies of the French Republic steadily advance the enlightenment of the Revolution across Europe, the government of Paris turns to stamping out internal dissent. Under the control of Maximilien Robespierre's Jacobin Club, the National Convention has formed a Committee of Public Safety to oversee the Revolutionary Tribunal and promulgate the use of the instrument of terror: Madame Guillotine herself. The Reign of Terror has spread beyond Paris, touching all of France's provinces. The Vendee, Lyon, and Marseilles have all had the threat of counterrevolutionism stamped out.
Along the Mediterranean coast, in his first action upon the national stage, an enterprising young artiller captain named Bonaparte has ended the royalist insurrection in the important (if British-blockaded) port city of Toulon. To ensure such an event does not occur again, the Committee of Public Safety has dispatched a Suppression under Barras and Fréron to weed out the remaining counterrevolutionists.
The courtroom was small and cramped, the Mediterranean summer heat made even worse by the fact many of the windows were occulted by the massive Tricolor which had been nailed to one side of the wall by Bonaparte's men once the royalist governors had been removed from the house and shot when Toulon had been retaken. The same courtroom where the traitors and collaborators had once given orders to their mercenaries and British allies now was the seat of the Revolutionary Tribunal which oversaw the suppression of those very same elements.
The heat of the courthouse was also due in no small matter to the fact that the viewing platforms were filled to bursting with the sans-culottide of the city, eager to see their vengeance enacted on the upper class who had oppressed and trampled on them for centuries. Nor were they decorous, or did the government of the Republic encourage them to be: their expression was the expression of freedom and democracy, the unshackling of the Old Regime's social stratfication and needlessly obtuse rules and regulations of conducts. The expression of the mob mentality whose beating heart pumped its hate and vitality through the veins of the new France.
That mob now voiced, with loud cheers and hisses and huzzahs, the sentencing of the latest royalist: to be granted to Madame Guillotine. He was the fourteenth person before the Tribunal that day, and the fourteenth so judged; there could be no escape from Revolutionary justice and Republican virtue, not for one who had betrayed both by aiding foreigners against the Fatherland.
The two judges called for order as the fifteenth prisoner of the day was brought before the court. A wave of snickers and whistles passed among the san-culottide; although this was the third woman brought before the Tribunal today, she was by far the most attractive. As the two National Guardsmen who flanked her held her still, the woman shook their hands off of forearms, holding herself proud and defiant. Barras and Fréron glanced at each other: one of those types. Of course, it didn't matter, but Pontmercy would enjoy to toy with his victim regardless.
The man in question rose from his stool beside the judge's rostrum. Brown hair pulled back into a ponytail revealed his brown, intelligent eyes and nose that was just safely short of being too aristocratically acquiline, although Claude Pontmercy would have had strong words for anyone who dared to suggest he had been cursed with anything other than a commoner's life. A soldier for most of his thirty-four years, Pontmercy had fought in the foolishly optimistic and weak-spirited revolution of the Americans under de La Fayette, and had been in the right place in the right time afterwords: namely, in Paris to come to the attention of Citizen Robespierre, saving his life and in exchange becoming one of the top agents of the Committee, promulgating the Terror on their behalf throughout the provinces.
He had been sent here due to the fact that locals had been rather sluggish in their dealing with the riffraff. In the time before he had arrived, they had sentenced a mere four hundred suspected royalists to death; in the two weeks since he had arrived, nearly four times that number had been convicted, overwhelming the Instrument of Terror he had brought with him from Paris and necessitating such wasteful methods as drowning and firing squads. Of course, now that the pool of suspects was drying somewhat thin, Pontmercy supposed that the Madame would return to her normal diet, her gouging no longer needed.
"Who is this, Citizen Pontmercy?" Barras asked from the judge's rostrum.
"My name is Yvonne de Brignoles, and I spit on your revolution! Long live the King!" she yelled, defiant in exterior, but Pontmercy had seen enough terrified noblewomen to know what was beneath the surface.
"What we have, Citizen Judges, is Yvonne Renard, daughter of Alexandre Renard, self-titled Duc de Brignoles. She is accused of four counts: that of Catholicism, that of nobility, that of collusion with the British against the Fatherland, and that of collusion with the royalist party against the Republic and the Revolution."
"And how does she plead, Citizen Pontmercy?" Fréron asked in a bored voice. After the first few exciting convictions, such Tribunals tended to get rather dull. Much more sense to just kill them all right off. But then, the Republic was built of the rule of reason and law, and such summary executions had died with the lettres de cache and other unsavory aspects of the Old Regime.
The woman looked as though she was about to speak, but Pontmercy spoke first, cutting her off. "She is guilty on all charges, Citizen Judges."
"Well, that's that, then," Barras said equitable, not even needing to confer with Fréron. "As delegates of the Government of the Republic and agents of the Suppression, we find Yvonne Renard guilty on all charges and sentence her to the Instrument of Terror."
The sans-culottide cheered, and Pontmercy took the time to look smug as the girl, now white as the King's flag, was taken from the room by guards, to the cell where she would spend the last night of her life before her execution, sometime tomorrow morning or midday if the Madame did not require any additional maintenance, Pontmercy thought to himself. Yes, another suitable outcome. He allowed himself to join in a single shout of "Long live the Republic!" before he sat himself, waiting for the next prisoner to arrive before the Tribunal.
July, 1794. As the armies of the French Republic steadily advance the enlightenment of the Revolution across Europe, the government of Paris turns to stamping out internal dissent. Under the control of Maximilien Robespierre's Jacobin Club, the National Convention has formed a Committee of Public Safety to oversee the Revolutionary Tribunal and promulgate the use of the instrument of terror: Madame Guillotine herself. The Reign of Terror has spread beyond Paris, touching all of France's provinces. The Vendee, Lyon, and Marseilles have all had the threat of counterrevolutionism stamped out.
Along the Mediterranean coast, in his first action upon the national stage, an enterprising young artiller captain named Bonaparte has ended the royalist insurrection in the important (if British-blockaded) port city of Toulon. To ensure such an event does not occur again, the Committee of Public Safety has dispatched a Suppression under Barras and Fréron to weed out the remaining counterrevolutionists.
* * * * *
The courtroom was small and cramped, the Mediterranean summer heat made even worse by the fact many of the windows were occulted by the massive Tricolor which had been nailed to one side of the wall by Bonaparte's men once the royalist governors had been removed from the house and shot when Toulon had been retaken. The same courtroom where the traitors and collaborators had once given orders to their mercenaries and British allies now was the seat of the Revolutionary Tribunal which oversaw the suppression of those very same elements.
The heat of the courthouse was also due in no small matter to the fact that the viewing platforms were filled to bursting with the sans-culottide of the city, eager to see their vengeance enacted on the upper class who had oppressed and trampled on them for centuries. Nor were they decorous, or did the government of the Republic encourage them to be: their expression was the expression of freedom and democracy, the unshackling of the Old Regime's social stratfication and needlessly obtuse rules and regulations of conducts. The expression of the mob mentality whose beating heart pumped its hate and vitality through the veins of the new France.
That mob now voiced, with loud cheers and hisses and huzzahs, the sentencing of the latest royalist: to be granted to Madame Guillotine. He was the fourteenth person before the Tribunal that day, and the fourteenth so judged; there could be no escape from Revolutionary justice and Republican virtue, not for one who had betrayed both by aiding foreigners against the Fatherland.
The two judges called for order as the fifteenth prisoner of the day was brought before the court. A wave of snickers and whistles passed among the san-culottide; although this was the third woman brought before the Tribunal today, she was by far the most attractive. As the two National Guardsmen who flanked her held her still, the woman shook their hands off of forearms, holding herself proud and defiant. Barras and Fréron glanced at each other: one of those types. Of course, it didn't matter, but Pontmercy would enjoy to toy with his victim regardless.
The man in question rose from his stool beside the judge's rostrum. Brown hair pulled back into a ponytail revealed his brown, intelligent eyes and nose that was just safely short of being too aristocratically acquiline, although Claude Pontmercy would have had strong words for anyone who dared to suggest he had been cursed with anything other than a commoner's life. A soldier for most of his thirty-four years, Pontmercy had fought in the foolishly optimistic and weak-spirited revolution of the Americans under de La Fayette, and had been in the right place in the right time afterwords: namely, in Paris to come to the attention of Citizen Robespierre, saving his life and in exchange becoming one of the top agents of the Committee, promulgating the Terror on their behalf throughout the provinces.
He had been sent here due to the fact that locals had been rather sluggish in their dealing with the riffraff. In the time before he had arrived, they had sentenced a mere four hundred suspected royalists to death; in the two weeks since he had arrived, nearly four times that number had been convicted, overwhelming the Instrument of Terror he had brought with him from Paris and necessitating such wasteful methods as drowning and firing squads. Of course, now that the pool of suspects was drying somewhat thin, Pontmercy supposed that the Madame would return to her normal diet, her gouging no longer needed.
"Who is this, Citizen Pontmercy?" Barras asked from the judge's rostrum.
"My name is Yvonne de Brignoles, and I spit on your revolution! Long live the King!" she yelled, defiant in exterior, but Pontmercy had seen enough terrified noblewomen to know what was beneath the surface.
"What we have, Citizen Judges, is Yvonne Renard, daughter of Alexandre Renard, self-titled Duc de Brignoles. She is accused of four counts: that of Catholicism, that of nobility, that of collusion with the British against the Fatherland, and that of collusion with the royalist party against the Republic and the Revolution."
"And how does she plead, Citizen Pontmercy?" Fréron asked in a bored voice. After the first few exciting convictions, such Tribunals tended to get rather dull. Much more sense to just kill them all right off. But then, the Republic was built of the rule of reason and law, and such summary executions had died with the lettres de cache and other unsavory aspects of the Old Regime.
The woman looked as though she was about to speak, but Pontmercy spoke first, cutting her off. "She is guilty on all charges, Citizen Judges."
"Well, that's that, then," Barras said equitable, not even needing to confer with Fréron. "As delegates of the Government of the Republic and agents of the Suppression, we find Yvonne Renard guilty on all charges and sentence her to the Instrument of Terror."
The sans-culottide cheered, and Pontmercy took the time to look smug as the girl, now white as the King's flag, was taken from the room by guards, to the cell where she would spend the last night of her life before her execution, sometime tomorrow morning or midday if the Madame did not require any additional maintenance, Pontmercy thought to himself. Yes, another suitable outcome. He allowed himself to join in a single shout of "Long live the Republic!" before he sat himself, waiting for the next prisoner to arrive before the Tribunal.