French Revolution Mafia [Concluded]

[GeneralHankerchief]

"We should be considerate to the living. To the dead we owe only the truth."
~ Voltaire

Night 5

Midnight in the Louvre.

The great medieval palace had been repurposed into a public museum, its progress symbolizing the work of the Revolution. What was once a dazzling luxury for the few had been transformed into a "preservation for the national memory". The artworks - the majority of them taken from the royal collection - were displayed haphazardly, several artists themselves lived in some of the old palace's rooms, and even the building itself had its share of structural issues, but it was generally looked upon with pride by the people of the new French nation.

After hours, the place was far less bustling. The public, obviously, was not visiting, and the few artists-in-residence were either out in the city or otherwise cooped up in the their rooms, possible working, possibly sleeping. The main corridors were deserted. This suited NotACop just fine. After all, the fewer people there were around, the fewer there were to try to kill him. He intended to spend his night safely wandering the palatial halls of the Louvre, safely view the myriad of artworks gracing its walls and floors, safely reflect on their meanings and what this meant for France as a whole. Safely.

Befitting France's status as an international power, there were many foreign artworks, most notably those by Raphael and Rembrandt (and of course Da Vinci's enigmatic La Jocande), but NotACop was most fascinated by the work of his countrymen. It was fitting that the country had produced so much output in such historical times as these; after all, art made clear the true feelings of a nation. All of these expressions counted for something in this new age.

However, he had to admit that not all pieces of art were created equal. Some of it looked downright shoddy, clearly just installed to fill space in the massive building. Others, though, truly belonged. The piece he was most drawn to was that of his dead compatriot Jacques-Louis David, perished only the previous night in the violence in Paris. David's most recent piece before his sensational The Death of Marat was a classically-inspired painting: The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons.

Brutus (not the one who killed Caesar, an older one) has been quite possibly the greatest hero in Roman Republican history. After all, it was he who had overthrown the last hated King of Rome and his actions were those that brought forth the Republic. This Brutus sacrificed everything, everything for the Republic, even his family: his two sons were monarchists and actively attempting to restore the old Roman Kingdom. Weighing family against country, Brutus had decided in favor of country and ordered his treasonous sons killed. This painting, and what it represented, was its result.

NotACop pondered on this. Rome was the greatest republic in history and served as one of the primary inspirations of the Revolution. Were France's people ready to equal Rome's greatness? Its sacrifice? So far, they were not - at least, the Convention was not. They demonstrated this by their actions over the past four days. After three Royalists were removed in the span of 24 hours, they grew complacent. They fought old factional hatreds, turned against each other out of a desire to fully control the course of the nation. In this moment, they turned away from the examples of Brutus and Rome. By attempting to seize, not sacrifice, they demonstrated themselves unworthy of true Republican values.

Yes, NAC realized, this would be the crux of his speech in the Convention tomorrow. He had been planning this for some time. A relatively quiet figure, he was nonetheless universally respected, partly because he had been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt lacking any Royalist sympathies whatsoever. He would finally break his relative silence and summarily both admonish and inspire his colleagues to put aside factional rivalries once and for all in favor of uniting against the true enemy who so clearly still lurked among them.

NotACop got more and more excited and inspired by the speech he would deliver that his guard started to drop. As he pondered exactly what classical allusions he would make in his opening statement, he turned his back to a certain side alcove, out of which a shadowed figure stepped out of and proceeded to re-enact another scene from Roman history:

Caesar's death on the Ides of March.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NotACop has been killed! He was:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Jacques Brissot, a Girondin!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Not a Royalist.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is now Day 6!

Voting will end Saturday, March 25, at 6:00 PM US Eastern Time (GMT-4).



Feedback will go out and Post 2 will be updated shortly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Still alive (4):
Choxorn
Csargo
Manasi
Zack

Killed:
Fenn
Monstrdude
Logic
Kagemusha
Arakhor
BSmith
Askthepizzaguy
Renata
autolycus
Al Sipsclar
Snerk
Winston Hughes
seireikhaan
Montmorency
NotACop

Guillotined:
Jabbz
atheotes
Dp101
El Barto
Lewwyn