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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.

Map - Important Dates and Authors

MAP KEY - IMPORTANT DATES (with authors)


1789 - The French Revolution starts
       July 14 - Bastille is stormed by French peasants
       October 5 - Women protest in Versailles and demand bread from the King
Thomas de Mahy executed (famous Parisian author - anti revolution


1790
       June 19 - Abolition of Nobility and titles (what the revolutionaries wanted)
       August 18 - First counter revolutionaries form assembly in Halles


1791
       July 17 - National Guard fights and kills many revolutionaries
       January-March - Food riots across Paris
Marquis de Sade; after being released from prison, he wrote many novels in Paris
Thomas Paine - The Rights of Man
Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau - French Revolutionary author dies


1792 
       August 10 - Jacobin masses storm the palace and grow in popularity 
Pierre Beaumarchais - Famous revolutionary known for his drama play writes


1793
       January 21 - King Louis XVI executed by guillotine
       September 5 - Reign of Terror begins with Jacobin Constitution accepted
Jean-Louis Laya - French dramatist in Paris, very active at this time


1794
       July 27 - Robespierre executed and Reign of Terror ends


1797
François-René de Chateaubriand - founder of Romanticism in French Literature


1799
       November 9 - Napoleon Bonaparte elected First Consul (becomes dictator)  

Book 2 Thoughts - The Gods Are Athirst

"The Gods Are Athirst", by Anatole France, really shows how single-mindedness can create such horrific and terrible things in a whole city. And while it is good to have an opinion, it is way better to understand not only your opinion, but all the others around you, and decide for yourself.

Evariste Gamelin was of the opinion that if you were, in any way, not supporting the revolutionaries, whether you were actually, physically against the revolutionaries or you just ran away from Paris to protect yourself, you were a traitor and deserved to die. He became a member of the Jacobin party, led by Robespierre, who used the slogan, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death." They believed that if you were not actively involved in the revolution, you didn't support Liberty or Equality or Brotherhood, and therefore would be killed.

The Jacobins truly wanted a better Paris and a better France. The Paris they lived in was terrible and people starved and had to rights, and the Jacobins, along with Gamelin, really started out fighting a revolution that would make France a better country. The were honestly were fighting for Liberty, equality and fraternity.  I think the revolutionaries got too obsessed and too passionate that they forgot the reason they were fighting was to make a better France and create peace and rest in the nation and give everyone rights. The revolutionaries were got their rights, but they also took away everyone else's rights. And not only the horrible people who had oppressed the Parisians for so long, they even took away the rights of those who didn't believe in fighting or ran away to escape the violence. Gamelin became a juror on the Grand Tribunal and basically sentenced thousands of people to death, without a real trial. He started out fair, as did most of the other jurors, but as the revolution went on, they all became worse. Gamelin thought he was doing what was best for Paris still by sentencing everyone who came in...he thought that he was showing equality by sentencing the rich and the poor, but he was only spreading the hatred and murder. Even though all the revolutionaries started out with good intentions and wanted a better place for everyone to live, they became blinded by their obsession and passion and made Paris and France worse off than before. 

What this book made me realize about the French Revolution that I hadn't before was that the revolutionaries were actually the Reign of Terror and were the reason that France fell so low. The revolutionaries could have stopped fighting and killing everyone because the government of France was pretty week at the time and as soon as they started giving in a little at the beginning, there was really no reason to keep up the fighting, but they were just so filled with passion, they became irrational and thought they had to keep going. The Jacobins were the ones that inflicted the reign of Terror on France, not the government, like I had always thought, because they sentenced all those people to the guillotine and didn't let anyone have a say, unless they had the same opinion as them. No one had rights unless they were a Jacobin. The revolutionaries also caused all the wars that France was in at the time, because they killed all the French armies and then didn't create an army that could fight outside of France for 10 years and didn't have a functioning government for that long as well. France was in so much debt and all these countries were trying to fight them, and there was no real organized army to fight back because the revolutionaries were killing everyone in France. A good cause is only as good as the plan to enact that cause, and the revolutionaries of Paris were not organized or rational enough to plan fight for there cause and change Paris for the better.

One other thing I really liked about this book was that, while a lot of the characters were like Gamelin, and were really crazy about the revolution and unfair, there was also someone who stood firm to their beliefs and wouldn't compromise them for anyone or anything. Maurice Brotteaux didn't believe that all the fighting and killing and what the Jacobins were doing to Paris was right and he didn't want to be a part of it. Even though Gamelin was his friend and very powerful, he wouldn't do what he didn't believe in and fight with the Jacobins. Gamelin ended up sentencing him as a traitor, but I liked that the book showed that while most everyone in Paris at the time was blinded by their passion and became irrational, they all still had a choice and could have chosen a different path, like Maurice.