User:Bovkaffe/Sandbox2

Heralds

Italy

This killer stains the very stone of our city with his presence! Surely, God will be displeased with us, should we fail to strike him down!

Constantinople

It is the duty of all loyal citizens to collaborate with the stewards of Byzantium, to bring them to a swift end!

There is a vile, infernal Assassin plague walking among us! Terror spreas throughout the city! The terror of madness and death!

Do not be deceived by these voices seeking to justify their acts! They are nothing but cold killers, reveling only in death!

Leonardo conversations

• Leonardo: Back for more designs, again?
• Leonardo: Bene. I will return shortly.
  Wait here. I will be back soon.

Leonardo produced a second Hidden Blade for Ezio.

• Ezio: I can kill double the guards.

Leonardo produced a climb leap glove for Ezio.

• Ezio: Now nothing will be out of my reach.

Leonardo produced a poison dart launcher for Ezio.

• Ezio: Just a small sting, and my enemies will fall.
• Leonardo: If you decide to buy something, look for the chalk outline on benches.

The Banker

• Leonardo: Ezio! I just hear the most wonderful news. Cesare's banker has been killed. It seems Cesare's battle funds are in shambles.
• Ezio: What a surprise.
• Leonardo: You did not have anything to do with this, did you?
• Ezio: Do you really want to know?
• Leonardo: On second thought, let's stick with the inventions.

Papal turmoil

• Leonardo: Ezio. The papal apartments are in turmoil. Cesare is ill and the Pope, dead. It was your doing, was it not?
• Ezio: Leonardo, I swear to you, he did not die by my hand.
• Leonardo: This world gets stranger every day. I shall have to focus on my painting. I work on the small portrait of a woman. I am growing rather fond of it.
• Ezio: Do not let a beautiful girl distract you from constructing my designs.
• Leonardo: Have no worries. Women provide little distraction.

Leonardo put his hand on Ezio's back.

• Ezio: Wait, I don't get it.

Embarassed, Leonardo took his hand away.

Guards

1750s

Crime under control and not a Frenchman in sight.

Louis XVI material

AE

• Very mild mannered (i.e., boring). His speech to the Estates-General almost put me to sleep.

The royal family was forcibly transferred from Versailles to Paris on October 7, 1789. Ignoring advice from his advisors, Louis first refused to abdicate, then agreed to an escape attempt. The family was again brought back to Paris. Suspicions of treason led to the capture of the royal palace. The First French Republic was proclaimed on September 21, 1792, and that November, evidence was discovered that proved suspicions of treason on Louis' part to be correct.

Charges were made against the entire family. Louis was found guilty by the National Assembly, and executed on January 21, 1793.

Database

• Luxembourg Palace, additions to the Palace of Versailles, Maison-Royale de Saint-Louis anniversary

As his younger brother (the future Charles X) would say, not without irony: "Trying to get Louis to hold to a position was like trying to hold greased billiard balls together."

While food shortages were due to bad crops and weather, those who were hungry blamed them on the rich. Meanwhile, pampered and pensioned in Versailles far away from their roots, the nobility had become another adversary that would further undermine the system. The same went for the lower orders of the clergy, who shared the general misery of their flock. The king didn't see it coming. The nobles would bring about a revolution to which they too would fall victim.

Shortly thereafter, he was stripped of his power, arrested, and sent to the medieval fortress of the Temple, and from there, to his doom.

Le Patriote

Jacques' back! Following the hullabaloo we all rightfully raised on his behalf, the King has eased off and reappointed Necker to oversee the country's finances! Hear hear for King Louis!

Cockade

The idea of the three color flag was presented to Louis XVI by Lafayette during their meeting at the Hôtel de Ville on July 17th 1789. Next to the blue and red colors of the cockade of Paris, Lafayette had added the white cockade of the Monarchy, conferring upon the Sovereign a central role in the new definition of powers.

Guillotine

A persistent legend surrounds the design of the guillotine according to which Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin reputedly asked for the King's advice concerning the creation of his famous machine, at which point the king suggested an angled blade.

10 August

Louis XVI surely knew which way the wind was blowing after he was ousted from his Versailles hideaway, forcibly installed in the dreary Tuileries Palace and stripped of many of his rights and privileges. The indignities could, and probably should have ended there. However, Paris was consumed by Revolutionary fervour, France was on its knees due to the war with Austria, and the Royal Family were widely viewed as traitors. This was only ever going to end badly for King Louis and his kin – and especially for those who tried to protect them.

Louis had already survived the attentions of angry citizens who had broken into the palace looking for answers. On that occasion he was forced to don a red liberty cap and to raise a glass to the burgeoning Republic, while Marie Antoinette even earned a grudging respect for the bravery she showed in the face of the assault. Neither would be so lucky the second time around, when a crowd of more than 20,000 descended on the Tuileries with nothing less than the deposition of King Louis XVI and bloody murder in mind.

It was the morning of August 10th 1792 and Louis, perhaps smelling trouble, had already fled the palace and moved his family to the shelter of the Legislative Assembly building.

Women's March

The powder keg finally exploded on October 5 1789, when women of the Paris marketplaces decided to take their grievances straight to the man at the top – none other than King Louis XVI himself. Stoked by the ludicrous price of bread and the exhortations of agents provocateurs who were keen to press for change by any means, the disgruntled gathering soon turned into an angry mob hell bent on the Royal Palace at Versailles.

The crowd had swelled considerably by the time they reached (and then thoroughly looted) the Hotel de Ville. Arriving at Versailles several hours later, they were joined by large numbers of the Marquis de Lafayette’s National Guards who were sympathetic to their cause. In the face of such overwhelming numbers King Louis had little choice but to receive a group of six women who explained their complaints. Using all his charms, he wisely agreed to open his food stores. Some of the crowd returned to Paris at this point, but the majority remained behind, unimpressed at this token gesture and convinced that Marie Antoinette would yet make the King change his mind.

After an anxious night the crowd’s indignation was renewed and they tried to enter the Palace once again. They broke through an unguarded gate en masse and searched in vain for the Queen’s chambers. Royal guardsmen blocking their way were brutally beaten and some lost their heads, their disembodied bonces placed on a pikes for good measure.

The chaos eventually died down for long enough for the Royal Troops and National Guard to parlay. Lafayette even persuaded the king and queen to take to a balcony above the crowd, where they were surprised at the warmth of their reception. Louis reluctantly agreed to the crowd’s demands to accept the new constitution and return to Paris, but he was left with no uncertainty that his reign, with all its rights and privileges, was well and truly over.

The nine hour march back to the capital was a grand and somewhat morbid victory parade – a crowd of more than 60,000, loaves of bread carried merrily aloft, and several heads on sticks. The Royal Family was quickly installed in the gloomy Tuileries Palace, but only as symbolic figureheads.

Trial and execution

The trial began on December 10th 1792 and concluded on January 15th the following year. In spite of impassioned pleas on his behalf and legal arguments that stalled the proceedings, the conclusion was eventually so forgone that even Louis’ own cousin voted against him. It was perhaps a portent of things to come that the infamous Maximilien de Robespierre was also among the majority who demanded the death penalty.

Louis’ execution was duly set for January 21st, and the day commenced with a lengthy journey to the Guillotine. The Irish priest Henry Essex Edgeworth accompanied him throughout his final hours and later documented events as they unfolded. What follows is a short edit of his recollections.

“The procession lasted almost two hours; the streets were lined with citizens, all armed, some with pikes and some with guns. ...As another precaution, they had placed before the horses a number of drums, intended to drown any noise or murmur in favour of the King.

As soon as the King perceived that the carriage stopped, he turned and whispered to me, 'We are arrived, if I mistake not.' My silence answered that we were. As soon as the King had left the carriage, three guards surrounded him, and would have taken off his clothes, but he repulsed them with haughtiness. He undressed himself, untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt, and arranged it himself.

The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough and difficult to pass, the King was obliged to lean on my arm, and from the slowness with which he proceeded, I feared for a moment that his courage might fail; but what was my astonishment, when arrived at the last step, I felt that he suddenly let go my arm, and I saw him cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold; silence, by his look alone, fifteen or twenty drums that were placed opposite to him; and in a voice so loud, that it must have been heard at the Pont Tournant, I heard him pronounce distinctly these memorable words: I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I Pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are now going to shed may never be visited on France.”

And with that the sentence was carried out swiftly. A young guard picked up Louis’ head and held it aloft for the crowd to see, apparently accompanying this gruesome display with “the most atrocious and indecent gestures”.

• Germain's role in the vote, duc d'Orléans, Saint-Just, La Madeleine, book collection