French Game Web Stuff

Syllabic matters
Schedule, test information, essay assignments, and the like.

Guides, texts, & links
Guides, texts and info on the French revolution on this site and elsewhere.

Minutes & Announcements
Minutes of NA meetings, and Gamemaster's News Service.

MATTER FOR REFLECTION BY THE CROWNED JUGGLERS

so that their impure blood may water our fields
(From the La Marseillaise, the French National Anthem)

Monday 21 January 1793 at a quarter after 10 o’clock in the morning in the Square of the Revolution (formerly called the Square of Louis XV). Tyranny was buried by the sword of the law. This great act of justice has dismayed the aristocracy, destroyed royalist superstition and created the Republic. It imprinted a grand character on the National Convention [the current version of the National Assembly] and made it worthy of the confidence of France . . .

It was in vain that a bold faction and some treacherous speakers employed all the resources of slander, fakery, and trickery; the courage of the Republicans triumphed: the majority of the Convention remained unshakeable in its principles, the spirit of intrigue yielded to the spirit of liberty and the ascendancy of virtue.

Extract from the Five Letters of Robespierre to his constituents.

[On the bottom, a red cap of liberty (resembling caps worn by poor Frenchmen, but also with reference to the “Phrygian caps” worn by freed slaves in ancient Rome) sits atop a triangular level. The triangle held many revolutionary meanings (which changed as the revolution went on), and appeared on assignats with Liberty, Equality, Fraternity printed on its sides. The level emblematized equality. The triangle had also been used for the Christian Trinity, and by freemasons. Check out the back of a US dollar bill for a pyramid also inspired by the masons.]

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