Nelson


 * Name:** Jacques Barret
 * Age:** 19
 * Gender:** Male
 * Occupation:** Medical Student at College Royale
 * Social Class:** 3rd Estate - Bourgeois
 * Financial situation:** Moderately Rich
 * Appearance:** Medium height, neatly dressed, College Royale traditional dress
 * Location ([|map]):** Paris
 * Habitual locations:** Restaurants and stores in the Latin Quarter
 * Daily routine:** Wake up early, study/breakfast, 1.5 hours of class, lunch, 1.5 hours of class, studying/free time, go out for the night, return to rooms and sleep.
 * Personality/Quirks/Unique Personality Traits:** Able to see the flaws in anything, scrutinizing, careful, observant
 * Past/individual-family history:** Father Jean-Claude Barret was formerly a general in the French Army; divorced mother when I was 6 and married into the Second Estate. Mother was forced to close down her business and became a servant in his house. I was sent to live with my uncle Jean le Rond d'Alembert and my cousin, Pierre-Montag d'Alembert.
 * Family:** No relationships as of yet, cousin Pierre-Montag is my roommate, family lives nearby. Father is estranged and both Pierre and I hate him deeply for how he abandoned my mother and his aunt.
 * Social relations with your own and other classes:** I am influenced by the writings of the philosophes, the great thinkers of our generation. I can tell that there is a huge inequity between the clergymen/nobles and everyone else, and I can feel the frustration of the common people. Although I have many friends from noble families, I only truly value the ones who can see the same flaws as I do in our society; the rest all seem to be blind, arrogant, unintelligent pranksters. I try to avoid religious people and stay away from churches, for I am sure I will be viciously attacked if I ever voice my observations.
 * Religion:** Although my family is Catholic, I question whether god exists, or at least if he is compassionate as so many people imagine him to be. If he was, then why has he let our country slip into such a dismal situation?
 * Education:** I have been studying medicine at College Royale since the age of 10. Before then, I was taught the principles of scientific reason by my uncle, the scientist Jean le Rond d'Alembert.
 * Style of speaking in France:** I speak like most other Parisians, although with a slightly larger vocabulary because of my education.
 * Languages you speak:** I can speak French and fluent English.
 * Main privileges and/or conflicts:** Although my family is relatively rich, we still have a bit of trouble paying all the taxes AND supporting my life as a student; however, my education ensures that I can secure a well-paid job after I graduate. I expect the tax problems to change very soon, though...


 * Portrait:**



__**Diary 1: Before the Storm**__ //September 1st, 1788//

//I was surprised today to find that that I am not the only one in our campus to have a head full of radical, dangerous thoughts. While I was studying at the breakfast table in our dormitory, a few of my closest friends sat down next to me and began talking about human rights, taxes, and the problems with the estate system. Everyone at the table that morning was generally brighter than the rest of the school population, in that they would rather not spend their free time getting into pointless fights at the local pub, and were all 3rd Estate citizens who, like myself, were able to muster the funds and status to attend College Royal. Of course, I could not just sit there eating my bread and reading up on lab procedures that I had learned years ago, while my neighbours went on whispering (at a dangerously loud volume, I have to say) about the inherent problems of our society. So I put down my book and joined in the conversation. My cousin, Pierre, proposed a solution to the King's financial problems: start taxing the Church and perhaps the nobles as well for their ownership of land. I agreed, stating that the clergies were no different from us, except that they had no practical skill but somehow had managed to escape oblivion by shaving their heads and shamelessly advertising some impossibly powerful figment of imagination (in fact, I have a little theory that whoever came up with the idea of a god must have been a schizophrenic). My dry humour apparently offended Jean, a devout Catholic whose father was a clergy. He promptly left the table. There was an awkward silence that followed, which Pierre broke by saying, "It's a shame how an intellectual like Jean would ignore all of society's problems in favour of blind faith..." Another one, who I had never met before, said, "True. It's inevitable that we must break free of illogical shackles such as religion if we are ever to progress as a nation." With that said, the table was abuzz with conversation again as we ventured into the deep, dark waters of the topic of theism.



I think we distanced ourselves sufficiently from the other groups in the room that none heard our (at least in their minds) blasphemous debate, or at least were not motivated enough to come over and cause any trouble. However, in the end, one notoriously arrogant student came up to us and said in a loud voice, "In exactly 1 minute, you will be late for a class which I have no need to attend." It was then that we realized that our conversation had almost carried us into class hours! Luckily, our teacher was an old man who had trouble seeing the clock at the far end of the room. The lesson was nothing special, another vanilla one and one half hour of chemical formulae that half of us had picked up the night before from our reading. I feel a slight pang of regret for taking medicine instead of mathematics; but then again, as my uncle said, a mathematician would rather spend time calculating profit than actually gaining it!//

//After lunch and the second session of class in the afternoon, I went out alone to the Latin Quarter, and picked a random restaurant to sit down at like I do almost every night. However, as I sipped my drink (a moderately expensive one; I've never been known to be a money-waster, but neither am I overly thrifty) and relaxed after a day's study, I overheard students from another school discussing the same radical concepts that I had been debating over that morning. I was once again pleasantly surprised to find that what was at other times a suffocatingly conservative student community was for some reason starting to see the light of reason. It appeared to me that these ideas were propagating like some sort of __disease__ that affected only intellectuals, but in fact it is more of a cure - a cure for our problems, a cure designed by the philosophes, a cure that has finally begun to be swallowed and digested! I only wonder what it's side effects are...



I returned home from dinner to find Pierre reading a book by Voltaire. I went to my room and opened a locked drawer, in which I had kept the secret of a potentially deadly hobby of mine. But seeing that Pierre and the others had the same __strain__ of the Cure, as I now thought of it, I saw no reason why I should keep the secret any longer. Thus when I showed Pierre the pistol that I had built myself as a boy, and maintained and improved upon ever since, he did not respond negatively at all. However, even though I explained that I kept it only as practice for mechanical engineering, and the occasional hunting trip, I saw a spark in his eyes and, I imagine, his mind as well, a spark that frightened me a little...//


 * __Diary 2: From Crisis to Revolution__** //July 4th, 1788

The past few months have been exceptionally hectic. Nowadays I am very busy; after my inception into the National Assembly and the Tennis Court Oath, which I will explain later, I had to stop attending classes in order to continue my political work. It worries me little, though, as I already read through all the material beforehand and that old man still can’t see past the first row of students. I still manage to find time for my gunsmithing hobby, however. This is what has happened so far:

For the rest of the year of 1788, nothing much happened apart more and more heated discussions among our peers; the group of six students that met on that day in October grew to a group of thirty-odd young intellectuals, both men and women. Pierre and I decided that we were of critical mass to form an actual organization. We did so, and named it the// __Royale Union des étudiants révolutionnaires__ //(Union of Royale Student Revolutionaries). I had wanted to leave out the "Union" part as it implied that we were a bunch of irate workers, but Pierre countered that since we were all Third Estate members, we should represent those poor oppressed farmers. That made sense to me, so we left it in.// //Around April, Pierre emerged as the official leader of the Union (hardly surprising, as he has the most dominant and risky personality out of us all, a perfect fit for a revolutionary leader). The timing could hardly have been better, as just a month later, the King called together the Estates General for the first time in about a century. This was the perfect opportunity for the Union to present our opinions to the public and to the government. As Pierre was an excellent public speaker but was no good at mind games, he did not want to represent our organization at the meeting. Instead, I volunteered for the job, partially out of curiosity and partially because I enjoyed this kind of mass political debate.//

//I took another couple Union members with me to the Estates General. As we drafted complaints and demands with a myriad of other citizens from the Third Estate, the situation seemed to be working along nicely. The status quo had, up till that point, appeared to have been in our favour, as we had as many representatives as the two other estates combined (still far from proportionate, as we outnumber the clergies two hundred to one!) and had assumed that every man had a vote. Our expectations, however, were suddenly grabbed by the neck, strangled, thrown to the floor and trodden over as the King announced that for every proposal, __every Estate had but a single vote.__// //Well if our proposals could be beaten down by the two other Estates with a two-to-one vote __every single time__, then how the hell were we supposed to accomplish anything at all?! It became apparent at that moment that the Estates General was a joke, an illusion conjured by that vile, unjust King and his clergies and nobles to shut us all up! I had the distinct urge just to walk over and knock that man upside his head with a block of wood or some other blunt object, but I calmed myself down and instead resorted to storming out of the assembly with the rest of the Union representatives. The others must have felt the same, for a few days later the entire Third Estate left the Estates General, and we established our own National Assembly.// //Now at this point it became apparent that the King was in a desperate mood; he locked us out of the meeting hall after the clergies decided to join us (such a juvenile act! I have no doubt the King would suffer in any chess game he might play). Undeterred, we marched through the rain into a tennis court situated conveniently nearby. There, we made an oath to continue our plight until France’s corrupt government and society was repaired. The oath was named the “Tennis Court Oath.” I found it quite fitting.//

//For a while afterwards, we were a bit afraid that Louis might order his soldiers to come break us up. On the contrary, he gave in to our sheer will and handed the nobles over to our cause (Again, if the man ever played a game of a chess I have no doubt he would just hand his pieces over to the opponent). There was much celebration, and Pierre and I set off fireworks in the Latin Quarter to commemorate our success.// //I must stop writing now. A clergy by the name of Emmanuel Bagley has requested that the Union draw out a plan of action for economic reforms. I don’t particularly trust this priest, as he seems rather sketchy and dishonest even for his breed of religious nutcases. Still though, we must co-operate if we want to make any progress, and as much as I distrust this man I will still have to work with him.

__July 21st, 1789__//

//A lot has happened since the last time I opened this book. I have little time to chronicle the events of the past few days here; such is the haste of my current situation. The revolution that my friends and I spoke of so hopefully last October is now becoming a reality, but a much more violent one than we had imagined. Still, I must remain truthful to the cause, no matter how ugly it may get.//

//After our success with the National Assembly, a messenger came from the countryside. He claimed to have been sent by a Francois Cheney, some farmer who had heard of our political movement in Paris. I was surprised, however, when I read that he had begun torching the mansions of nobles nearby. It seemed that the revolution had taken a violent turn; instead of peaceful socio-economic reforms like I had hoped, we’ve started attacking our oppressors. It may end up being our best strategy, but violence is still something that is extremely hard to justify.//

//Anyway, there was a second part of the message that was meant only for Pierre-Montag D’Alembert. I trusted my cousin to use whatever information we had wisely, so I passed that letter on to him without breaking the wax seal.//

//Later, I realized that I wouldn’t have had to break the seal at all; it became apparent from Pierre’s planning and actions that the Union was to take part in this violent uprising as well. The weekend after the arrival of the letter, he started took some of us out to go hunting, and had me tune the others’ rifles and pistols. I found this odd at first, but soon I realized what he was doing; training us as a revolutionary militia. It was then that he finally imparted to me the contents of the second letter. On the noon of July 14th, we were to storm the Bastille, a symbol of overwhelmingly evil oppression of the people, to find weapons and free political prisoners. The reason for this, besides the hatred that everyone held for that place, was that Louis had begun amassing troops in Paris, and the National Assembly feared that it might be forced to dissolve. The recommendation to carry out a first strike had come from Cheney in the countryside.//

//There was a catch, however. Before we could steal weapons from the Bastille, we had to have weapons to fight with in the first place! As skilled as our men were with hunting pistols, those were no match for the military rifles with bayonets and finely tuned iron sights. Even with my expertise in gun mechanics, it was impossible to replicate the power, accuracy, and rate of fire behind an army rifle. Even if I could, we had nowhere near enough money, even as an organization, to buy bread for all of our members, let alone gun components! Our only option was to actually use military-grade rifles… and that was when I had the idea.//

//My father,// //Jean-Claude Barret, was a commander in Louis XVI’s French Army when he met my mother, a merchant in Paris. They were both of the Third Estate, as despite his military prowess my father did not have enough money to purchase nobility. He eventually did manage to gain membership to the Second Estate, but at the cost of everyone else in the family; when I was six, he abruptly left my mother and married a frivolous, unintelligent daughter of a duke. My mother, devastated and without financial support, had no choice but to sell her business and send me off to her brother Jean le Rond, a famous philosophe who had the means to look after me. He could not support my mother, however, so she ended up as a servant in my father’s new home. Imagine that! Ordered around every day by the person you loved, treated like a slave by the person who ruined your life, while your own child was being raised apart from you. Since the night that I left my mother I have always felt sad and sorry for her state, while at the same time angry and vengeful against my father and his callous actions. How dare he discard his family like that, uncaring for their lives and for their future, and leaving his own son for another man to raise!// //I was determined to exact revenge on Jean-Claude Barret, and Pierre was willing to help sabotage the undeserved good life of the man who destroyed his aunt. We decided we would raid his mansion the next day. Since he was now a retired general he was sure to have and armoury, most likely in the basement.//

//The next day, we set out as planned; Pierre, two other militiamen, and I disguise ourselves as peasants and hid our pistols in the baggy pants that were part of our costume. We probably would not need to use the weapons, but we needed some form of self-defense if things went awry. Loitering outside the mansion, we saw Barret leave his home. On the way out, he thumbed his nose at us, simply because we were Third Estate citizens. This did nothing but to strengthen my resolve. We waited until he was out of sight and then we broke a window and jumped into a bathroom. Thankfully, there was nobody inside and the mansion was too large for anybody else to hear the sound of shattering glass. It took about ten minutes of searching to find the stairs to the basement. We crept down, hands on our pistols in case there were guards on the bottom level.//

//When we reached the armoury, I found my mother cleaning the floor while another servant set a few rifles in place. They both froze when we entered, with bewildered looks on their faces. I quickly pulled off my hat so my mother could see who I was, and Pierre did the same. After a moment, she recognized both of us and we embraced. She stuttered, unsure of what to say, and I simply told her I was part of the revolution and I was here to take some supplies. She nodded, and the other servant stepped aside. We quickly took several rifles off the shelves, strapped one to each person’s back and held another one in our hands. The servant loaded pellets and gunpowder into a sack and handed it to us. At that moment, we heard my father’s yells on the floor above; he had come home and found a window shattered. The only other way out was a staircase on the other side of the massive basement. We raced towards it, and pellets began flying in our direction as my father and his guards fired at us.//

//We took cover behind some crates near the staircase. Splinters and chips of wood flew off the edges of the crates as the guards fired fusillade after fusillade of lead pellets in our direction. If anyone had been foolish enough to make a dash up the staircase, they would surely have been filled with holes like a slice of Swiss cheese. The men and I fired back with our newly attained rifles. Miraculously, we managed to injure two guards without sustaining any hits ourselves. However, they still outnumbered us several to one and began advancing across the basement. If they reached us, we would have been finished.//

//It was then that one of the other two Union militiamen, a former student by the name of Paul-Henri, had the sense to fire not at the enemy, who moved too quickly and were too small of a target to hit accurately, but instead to target the barrels of gunpowder that some were foolishly hiding behind. Within seconds, the ground near Barret and his guards was covered in spilled gunpowder; they, realizing the imminent danger, began to sprint in all directions. Pierre lit a match and tossed it into the piles of gunpowder, and in an instant half of the basement was ablaze. The guards yelled and ran about with burns on their skin, their rifles on the floor and firing on their own because of the intense heat, giving us the opportunity to escape. Before we did, however, I found my father Jean-Claude Barret lying nearby. On impulse, I pulled out my hunting pistol and pressed it against his head. He looked up into my eyes and in a paroxysm of realization and partial rage said, “You would not kill your own father.”//

//And he was right. I could not bear to pull the trigger. Behind me, Pierre yelled “Jacques, leave him while the same blood as his still runs in your veins!” Seeing that the guards had already begun to pick up their rifles again, I made the decision to leave (I still hit my father across the head with the pistol, as I couldn’t leave him unharmed) and we escaped up the stairs into the fields behind the mansion.//

//That day was a turning point in the revolution. Although we had not intended to harm anyone or destroy any property, others still took our actions as a sign that a violent uprising was the only way to continue the revolution. The word broke out that we were to storm the Bastille on July14th, and we did; I will not describe that incident as we found unimaginable horrors in the dark corners of that terrible place. Suffice to say, we got the job done, though not without a fair amount of bloodshed. Some crazy loons had chopped the head off of the prison’s chief, and paraded it around afterwards.//

//Following the Storming of the Bastille, King Louis gave up control over Paris, and the National Assembly formed its own defense force, the National Guard. Most of its members were from the Union. I became part of the new Parisian government, the Paris Commune. Although the events of the last 10 days have carried us very far, I still don’t know whether I did the right thing at the Barret mansion; I can no longer tell if my actions are for good, only that they serve a greater need, and that is scarce comfort for my guilt. Perhaps this is the price of a revolutionary life.//

//__October 17th, 1792__ I'm shipping out for the frontlines today. Who would have guessed? A medical student, one of the leading figures in the Revolution, risking his life alongside thousands others, a simple infantryman, a pawn on a figurative chessboard. It was my choice. We've been at war against our neighbours for months now, and we've been hit hard over and over again. Common men, revolutionaries just like me, are dying by the hundreds. For what? So that the Assembly can figure out which side Louis is on? How can men be equal if hundreds of them die for the allegiance of one? I had to escape this political madness. At home, prices are rising steadily. Even with my fortune, it's getting increasingly hard to support the same lifestyle I used to possess.
 * __Diary 3: The Reign of Terror__**

Add to our economic problems the sans cullotes. Those uneducated, violent bandits, are running free in the countryside torching everything they see, simply to quench their desire for blood. Even in the National Convention (the new Assembly), people are starting to turn on each other; our Union members are arguing more and more frequently with radicalists under a man named Robespierre. There is no doubt this entire carriage will crash and burn someday.

So while I still can, I'm heading somewhere where I can do some good. Our soldiers will need my medical skills, and I wouldn't do too terribly at being a marksman either. Hopefully I can sit out the worst of our country's problems until Pierre and his rivals can come to a consensus. At least the soldiers I'll be fighting with will be shooting true enemies, not their own countrymen.

__January 1st, 1793__ Happy New Year. Not so much. It's been a cold winter out in the battlefields, and many men have died in the various skirmishes we've had. I managed to save a few, but having your body shredded by lead pellets is not a disease they taught us to cure at Royale.

I was roused from sleep by the sound of gunfire this morning, just like most other mornings for the last two and a half months. The Austrians had taken a nearby hill under cover of night and were taking potshots at us as the sun rose. A quarter of our regiment fell in the first minute. The rest of us scurried for cover from nowhere, as bullets rained down from the enemies' raised position. Most of the soldiers I dragged to safety had minor injuries. Some had had bones shattered, and still others had died immediately or from bleeds. Thankfully, another regiment camped nearby was able to flank the Austrians and we captured the hill by dawn. Right now we're setting up camp on the hill. I'm off of medic duty right now, but it won't be long before I need to tend to more wounded soldiers. I'll try to write quickly.

I somehow regret volunteering for the war; I have seen enough death and terror here to last me a hundred lifetimes. My only consolation is that I've saved more lives here than I have taken.

Pierre sent me a letter yesterday. The rifts in the Convention are growing deeper and deeper, and he needs me to return to Paris and help him pull things together. He wrote that the Convention has already split into two factions, with the Girondins taking a moderate stance while the Jacobins, who are much more radical, are led by Maximillian Robespierre, Pierre's rival. I leave the frontlines at the end of the month. I don't know whether I want to stay in this mess or return to the previous one. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, they say.//

__//October 1st, 1793 - 10// //Vendémiaire, Year One//__ //Everything has fallen apart. I woke up today in the Union hideout in our old dormitories at College Royale to find that Pierre and many of his closest followers missing. After asking some of our other political refugees I discovered that my cousin had left last night with a team of Union fighters to gather some intelligence on our enemies and oppressors, the Jacobins.

After I returned from the war, Pierre and I worked with the many powerful authorities in the Girondin club to try and take control of the National Convention. As we were politically on much more solid ground, we managed to do so and the Jacobins lost power in the Convention. They accused us of failure to win the war, and even claimed that we had directly caused the losses on the battlefield! How could they say that, when I, a leader of the Union, went to the frontlines myself and witnessed firsthand the terrors of war? The Jacobins' outrageous remarks only prompted us to further strip them of power within the Convention, but in June they stormed the meeting hall with a mob of sans cullotes (those bloodthirsty, uncontrolled pigs!) and threw us out.

Everything went downhill from there. The Jacobins installed a Committee of "Public Safety,"// //which in reality only served the purpose of killing off any political rivals and terrorizing the population. All the work we accomplished in the previous years, including the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, was undone. In September the tyrants passed a "Law of Suspects" that enabled them to kill "enemies of Liberty," in reality anyone they had a grudge against. That is why we, the Girondin and Union members, had to hide from the public. Now if we make any explicit moves, we are sure to become victims of the guillotine. Even covert operations are extremely dangerous, which is why I was terrified for Pierre when I learned he had gone out and not returned this morning.

I quickly put on some ragged clothes, grabbed a small piece of bread, and headed outside to search for my cousin. I looked in every store still open in the Latin Corner, searched through all his usual paths until I wound up, unknowingly, at the execution grounds. That was when my worst fears were confirmed.

As I pushed my way through the crowd surrounding the guillotine, I suddenly felt someone grab my arm. I turned to see a young woman, a few years older than I, in tears and being dragged toward the holding cells by one of the Jacobin guards. With her were two young children, also in tears, and an unconscious man being dragged across the ground by his collar. She screamed, "Help me! They've taken my entire family! We are innocent... we have done nothing! Please..." I wanted to say something, wanted to help her in some way and save those poor children. But I knew that if I did anything at all, our entire movement would be found out and lose their heads. All I could muster was a weak, '"Who are you?" She sobbed, "////Jeanne Simon. I am but a farmer! I don't know why they took-" Before she could finish her sentence, the guard put his hand over her mouth and led her away, while giving me a threatening look. I stared in shock at the doomed family for another moment, before they were led around a corner and disappeared forever. Fighting back anger and sadness, I continued to search for Pierre.

I found him beside the guillotine, his hands tied and his skin covered in scars. They had tortured him before finally sentencing him to death. Standing at the front of the crowd, I looked into his eyes; they no longer held the bright spark of a promising revolutionary. Pierre's eyes were now empty, sucked dry of all hope but not showing any fear either. They were firm and uncompromising, and as I saw what my cousin had been reduced to, he gave me a discreet nod and walked as straightly and proudly as he could to the guillotine. I could not bear to watch as the rope was released. In a single moment, Pierre-Montag D'Alembert, philosophe and revolutionary, passed from man to legend.

This will be my last diary entry. There is no doubt as to what I must do now. Through his eyes, my cousin asked one last favour of me: to continue his legacy, to finish the fight for freedom. For the next few months// //the Union will work with supporters within the Convention to prepare a coup. Few of us will survive this turbulent times, but in the end Robespierre will have to answer for his traitorous actions and the death of Pierre.//