Bastille Day
"Laissez-les manger le gateau"- Marie Antoinette. (Did she have a good head on her shoulders or what?)
Bastian had always hated the rain as it washed through the city. This young fox farmer, a peasant whose home lay far to the north by the shores of Normandy had long been leery of the worldly Parisians, particularly those who could lay claim to a great deal of money. As a young immigrant from the northern edge of France which was as foreign to the other Frenchmen as any foreign country, Bastian simply could not ever like Parisian society for what it had become. The fox knew at some point, as did all his friends that there would come a time when the niceties and pretend appreciation that the people showed towards the royalty (and the corrupt clergy that protected the royalty) would come to an end.
The royalty was increasingly losing touch with the commoners who worked the land and these commoners, now empowered by ideals which they had financially backed only a few decades ago in the thirteen former English crown colonies of America. The French government had originally allowed this to occur if no other reason than to spite the English, their hated centuries-old rivals. But now, a new wave of intellectuals their minds now filled with dangerous ideas and philosophies sought to turn everything the ordinary French had believed on their ear. Bastian knew even without his vulpine wit that if he was not keen and aware in Paris, quickly becoming a dangerous city, his red pelt would soon be decorating the home of a murderer. The city was as his American friends often said a " vixen prostitute with crimson intentions, wrapped in a snow-white dress." Underneath the beauty of this ancient Roman outpost city lay plenty of filthy secrets and foul deeds covered for no one but God Himself to see. He had already heard rumors in the chateaus and parlors of his romantic yet also dangerous city of murders.
"Toulouse était un informateur à la Redevance," a mouse who worked at his favorite chateau would tell him about a stag who had died earlier that week. It appeared as if informing the Royalty in such a hotbed of fear and hatred would not necessarily be the brightest of ideas. And yet the mob of peasants now upset at the French royalty was only as brutal as the royalty itself, and these kings and queens had the Church of Rome at their behest, now a corrupt and arbitrary institution that had long ago distanced itself from Christ's message that His kingdom was "not of this world". How not to appear as favoring too much of one side was the question that Bastian had to answer every day of his life in Paris and a wrong answer could be absolutely deadly.
As much as he resented the measures of King Charles and the taxes which kept the French royal pride fat and happy, the plans the citizens were planning were filthy and blood-red. Bastian would not be so blinded by hatred as to do those things which the madmen were speaking of, even to his worst enemy. Upon hearing the secrets, he swore himself to secrecy, revealing none of the assassination plans to anyone, not even his wife or brother, nor even the priest who he was sure was an informant for the crown. He knew that someday the king and queen of France would bow down as the people rose up, an inverse of how things had always been. His entire nation was about to become inverted and Bastian knew it would be utter chaos.
This was absolutely hellish for the fox to even think about, his homeland of level-headed and perfectly sane individuals now revolting against all authority. And yet it was going to happen and there was nothing Bastian or anyone else could do about it. Bastian knew that all hell was about to break loose and so out of desperation, he found a receipt notifying Henri, his father for payment due for services rendered by an American commander during the Revolution over there. He would need to talk to Governour Morris, the diplomat in charge at the embassy to pay for passage out of France to Boston where the fox would be able to live free of fear in a truly democratic land.
Bastian's dreams had become prescient nightmares of the coming revolution which robbed sleep of its refreshing powers. In one recurring sequence which tormented him each night, Bastian saw the lifeless she-wolf wife of a nobleman covered in a puddle of her own blood, her muzzle contorted into a perpetual horrifying scream. And he knew that woman too, a kind and beautiful wife of a good-hearted wolf who served as the tailor for the king, always ready with a new and wonderful robe of the rarest colors for the Royal Pride. And yet they had connections to the Royal Pride and in spite of their neutrality, they would be cut down as well. In another, he saw he decapitated wraith-like head of Marie, advising him to leave immediately or suffer the same fate as her body now without its head. With the tension about to reach a flashpoint and the nightmares driving him to sanity's edge, Bastian finally, thankfully, by the mercy of God received safe passage for his wife and brother to Boston, all with the help of Governour Morris. He soon would feel the heat when the mob of ungodly and ruthless citizens would come hunting for the blood of French aristocrats. A year's worth of boredom on the open ocean was paradise compared to the adamantine gates of Hell opening up and swallowing massive amounts of his countrymen in the coming bloody upheaval. In America, Bastian and his family would at last be safe.
One year later, June 1790
The news had taken some time in arriving but every time the fox read it, a nameless fear gripped his heart a few hours after leaving a church service at a church just outside of Boston. The mob had taken the Bastille on July 14th of the previous year. Thankfully Bastian had escaped in time but he was amazed at how close he had come to death multiple times since talk of the French Revolution began. The lessons of following one's king and swearing fealty to a divinely-mandated family had been taught many times but it was never learned- in America, perhaps this wasn't such a good lesson anyway. Bastian knew very little of world history so he would just have to take the word of the wolf brewer he had met at the bar that this was "the dream of ancient Greek sages now made manifest and functional." All this fox knew was there was peace in this place whereas it seemed anger burned in a fire that would never be extinguished throughout the entire world. And in such places using the lessons of the past to author a new and sunlit future would not work at all.
No, the ignored and poverty-stricken masses of France had marched on to Bastille Day on that 14th of July, just ten days after the thirteenth birthday of America and a horrifying new invention, le guillotine had morbidly claimed its bloody prize, the head of Marie Antoinette and her husband. In this stunning and revolting news, Bastian the fox could hear the echoes of the centuries speaking to him a message best not ignored, "There is more that money can buy than just mere power."
The annals of history record the 14th of July as a date when the French people threw off the yoke of a wealthy power-hungry monarch and a corrupt and worldly clergy to form their own radical government. On this day centuries ago, the royalty of France would kneel as their subjects would rise.