Novel three Ninety Three by Victor Hugo

"Ninety-Three" by Victor Hugo really painted a picture for me of what Paris was like for peasants and soldiers (Republican Soldiers) in 1793 Paris. The other two books that I read were more about the people and said only some things about what Paris was like at the time. Ninety-Three, while it was still about the characters, it had more more detail about what it was like to live in Paris at the time of the French Revolution.

One of the really cool things about the book was that it showed what it was like in Paris for the peasants or citizens and also what it was like for the Republican soilders (revolutionary soilders). What I learned about the peasants was how scary and violent everything was for them. The revolutionaries didn't care about the peasants and neither did the French Army. Neither valued their lives and so they lived in fear unless they joined the army. Not only were they constantly scared for their lives, they were living off of the scarps of food they could find on the floor and living on the ground. We see all this throughout the novel, but especially through the one peasent womens conversation with some of the soilders that found her and her children.

"'Where do you sleep?' -soldier
'on the ground.' -peasant
'what do you eat?' -soldier
'Nothing.' -peasant
'Nothng?' -soldier
'that is to say aloes and dried berries left from last year, Myrtle seeds and fern shoots'".-peasants

The republic's army (revolutionaries) on the Other hand was brutish and violent and gave the peasants reason to be afraid. Their slogan was "no mercy, no quarter". And they showed no mercy most of the time. One scene there was a battalion on a ship and it was truly on of the most chilling scenes in the book. Everyone was talking at once, yelling about ple who had been killed and who they wanted to kill. They were fierce ans scary and single minded. They seemed like they wanted a better Paris, but they ended up making it worse for everyone involved. This book took place during the Terror and the republic army was the one that caused it with that brutality and no care for human life and the common peasants.