User blog:Nygma PI/Ubisoft News — Assassin's Creed: Unity

Up to the release of Assassin's Creed: Unity, Ubisoft had multiple news articles on their website about the French Revolution. I've done my best to collect them here so it can both be an archive and an easy reference.

Some notes:

• This page does not include promotions or DevBlog's, just articles that establish the history and lore of the AC universe.
• None of the hyperlinks on this page were included in the original articles.
• Every article is treated as their own page, so there are a lot of hyperlinks.

[26.08.14] Calendar confusion!

The days of far too many French citizens were numbered during the Revolution. However, if intellects of the time had things their way, the dates of their demises might have been recorded in an altogether different fashion.

Planet Earth orbits the sun in a little over 365 days and rotates around its own axis once every 24 hours. Natural rhythms such as these underpin the way we measure time, while many of the names we give its increments recall ancient deities and emperors of yore. All of which must have seemed completely nonsensical to the free thinkers of the French Revolution, who decided to abandon the old ways in favour of their fancy new metric system.

It was all done with the admirable principles of Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité in mind, of course, and that meant doing away with anything that had any association with the royalty, clergymen and aristocrats of France's Ancien Régime. So out went such quaint conventions as seven day weeks and months of varying length, and in came the new Republican Calendar with 30 day months, ten hour days, 100 minute hours and 100 second minutes.

Under this new scheme the months were broken into three 10 day weeks called 'décades'. The months themselves had new titles inspired by nature and weather. Starting in autumn, since that's when the new Republic was proclaimed, we have 'Vendémiaire' relating to the annual grape harvest, then 'Brumaire' which takes its name from the French word for fog, and likewise 'Frimaire' to denote the frosty conditions typical at that time of the year.

The remaining months followed the same template: 'Nivôse' (snow), 'Pluivôse' (rain) and 'Ventôse' (wind); then Germinal (germination), Floréal (flowers) and 'Prairial' (pasture); and finally 'Messidor' (harvest), 'Thermidor' (heat) and 'Fructidor' (fruit).

Ah, but there was still the traditional Gregorian method of counting the years since the birth of Christ to consider. No self-respecting secular society was going to stand for that, so France began its new calendar afresh on the first day of the first décade in Vendémiaire, year 1 of the Republic. That's 22nd September 1792, as you probably wouldn't have dared to say at the time.

The internet abounds with calculators that allow you to view your special dates through the pleasingly wonky prism of the Republican Calendar. The French people quickly tired of the system, though – no doubt they had more urgent matters to worry about – and it was abolished for good by the recently crowned emperor Napoleon in 1805. And all of that just goes to prove the old French adage 'plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose' – literally, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Oh, and if you're wondering what happened to the five or six days left over at the end of every Republican Calendar year, they were conveniently designated as public holidays. All things considered, the beleaguered French public probably could have done with as many of those as they could manage.

Assassin's Creed: Unity is scheduled for launch on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on 22 Germinal CCXXIV. Alright already, that's the 28th of October 2014 if you absolutely insist.

[27.08.14] The Storming of the Bastille: Just 7 prisoners?

It is the most famous event of the French Revolution, but the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris on 14 July 1789 was perhaps not entirely as you might envision.

With so many 'prison break' TV shows and movies to influence our imagination, many of us picture hundreds of disgruntled prisoners seizing weapons from guards to aid rioters during the storming of the Bastille. Also, these prisoners would surely include the most unruly specimens ever to stalk the streets of Paris: serial killers, rapists, drug barons... and a few politicians.

Instead there were only seven, mildly misbehaving prisoners freed that day: counterfeiters Jean Antoine Pujade, Bernard Laroche, Jean Béchade and Jean de la Corrège; Count Gabriel-Charles-Joseph-Paulin-Hubert de Solages accused of sexual deviancy; mentally unstable Irish nobleman Jacques- François-Xavier de Whyte de Malleville; and long-term inmate Auguste Tavernier, conspirator against the Crown imprisoned in 1757.

Whyte is certainly the most amusing of the septet, a wizened old man said to have a waist length beard. He was known for proclaiming himself to be Julius Caesar, or even God. After escaping the Bastille Whyte was recaptured and sent to Charenton lunatic asylum where a fellow Bastille inmate, the Marquis de Sade, had been locked away since 4 July that same year. Similarly, the four freed counterfeiters were almost immediately imprisoned at Bicêtre for being common crooks after all.

It has been suggested that Hubert de Solages was victim of familial feuding, accused of 'libertinism' so that his relatives might lay claim to his share of land. Either way, this made it difficult to present de Solages as a man of the people, symbolic of the wrongfully imprisoned.

In order that the Storming of the Bastille should at least present some heroic act other than robbing the place of its gunpowder with the aid of the newly established National Guard, an ideal prisoner was invented for posterity. This fictitious character became the Count de Lorges, who physically resembled crazy old 'Major' Whyte and with a name that sounded similar to Count de Solage, with a history loosely based on the supposed anti-Royalist efforts of Tavernier.

Although de Lorges was a complete fabrication, at least one noteworthy author claimed to have met the man, even going so far as to write a small book about him. De Lorges was also immortalised in newspaper articles together with etchings for illustration purposes. Guess the media hasn't changed too much this past 220 years or so...

(Sources: The Bastille: A History of a Symbol of Despotism and Freedom, by Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink; Citizens, by Simon Schama)

[02.09.14] The Marquis de Sade - Mad, bad and dangerous to know

Okay, so the phrase wasn't coined to describe the infamous nobleman, but it surely could have been. Having said that, the Marquis was all of those things and so many more besides. Here are ten fun facts for starters...

As a child he beat up a young French prince so badly that he was sent to live with his uncle, the Abbe de Sade (sic), where he was to witness a world of pornographic literature and debauched behaviour. He was less than ten years old at the time.

Joining the cavalry at 15 de Sade enjoyed a brief but distinguished military career. He fought in the Seven Years War, rose quickly through the ranks and gained notice for his bravery and his eye for the ladies. Rumours of his unusual preferences regarding the latter were not proven at the time, but were probably true in hindsight.

He married the dull but stinking rich Renee-Palagie de Montreuil, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. He also had an affair with his sister-in-law, Anne-Prospère, and frequently enjoyed making a bit too merry with local prostitutes. All of which enraged his mother-in-law, who saw to it that he was imprisoned. For one reason or another he was to spend a great many of the following years behind bars.

A brief taste of porridge did little to discourage him and de Sade soon returned to his wicked ways, partying with ladies of ill repute and, on one occasion, trying to liven things up with the help of the alleged aphrodisiac 'Spanish Fly'. This led to an accusation of poisoning, for which he was tried and sentenced to death. De Sade fled to Italy, but his effigy was executed in his absence.

De Sade's infamy spread after he hired the services of several local girls (and one boy) and subjected them to weeks of experimental orgies and general deviancy. The angry father of one girl tried to shoot him, but his gun didn't fire.

Following further incarcerations the Marquis found himself locked in the Bastille, where he told passersby that the inmates were having their throats cut. This accusation helped to kindle the unrest that led to the storming of the prison. However, he was transferred to an insane asylum and missed the big event by two days.

De Sade produced 15 books during his 30+ years behind bars, including '120 Days of Sodom' and 'Justine', a work that de Sade himself claimed was capable of "corrupting the devil". The outrageous content of his written works gave rise to the word 'sadism', meaning the enjoyment of inflicting pain and humiliation on others.

De Sade's children didn't exactly follow in their old man's footsteps. His favourite son Louis-Marie (sic) did join the military, though, and was killed while fighting for Napoleon. His other son Donatien-Claude (sic) shared something of his father's mischievous spirit but took exception to his literary works, burning many of his manuscripts for good measure. His sole daughter Laure, meanwhile, was pretty much a lifelong nun. Given her pa's blasphemous ways, her career choice was ironic indeed.

In spite of his privileged upbringing de Sade enjoyed positions of responsibility and political power during Robespierre's Reign of Terror, which is all the more remarkable considering the number of fellow toffs who lost their heads during the Revolution. However, Napoleon wasn't quite so easily won over and he was eventually returned to an asylum where he lived out the rest of his days. He was still able to conduct an affair with the young daughter of a prison employee, of course.

A devil in his own time, the Marquis de Sade is nowadays regarded as a libertarian and philosopher worthy of serious study. His works may have lost much of their shock value but are still controversial, with certain filmed adaptations falling foul of the censors. His final days were eventually dramatised in the film 'Quills', which is about as tame a depiction as one might expect in a mainstream movie.

And those are all the stories of the man that we can tell in polite company. Speaking of which, Arno encounters the Marquis on a number of occasions during Assassin's Creed: Unity and finds him to an affable and erudite fellow, if a little unkempt. How much of a corrupting influence he is, though, well, that's for you to discover.

[05.09.14] Peasantry, nobility or clergy?

Peasantry, nobility or clergy? The French Revolution saw the rise of the common man against religious and wealthy establishment. There were three classes during what was known as the 'Ancien Regime': The Clergy (First Estate) and nobles (Second Estate) that taxed the merchants, city workers and peasants (collectively the Third Estate) in order to bear the brunt of the country's dwindling fortunes, which of course wasn't fair. Under pressure to reverse the downward trends, King Louis XVI summoned representatives of all three Estates to an historic meeting called the Estates General in May 1789. We thought it'd be fun to consider which Estate best suits your personality and this short quiz will help you to decide:

1. You find a bag of silver in the street; it looks to have been there quite a while. Upon picking it however somebody cries "Thief!" What is your reply?
a) Let God be my witness!
b) Finders keepers... yeh?
c) Pah! I am above the law.

2. A friend suggests that you find yourself a partner, it's been a long time since you were last romantically involved. How do you respond?
a) Take the vow of celibacy.
b) Wait for your true love.
c) Pay for the privilege.

3. You skipped breakfast and are feeling peckish. What seems like a good idea for a snack?
a) Bread and wine.
b) Half a mouldy fruit.
c) Roasted pig with all the trimmings!

4. Congratulations, it's your birthday! How are we going to celebrate?
a) Give thanks to God.
b) Stay out all night (sadly nothing new)
c) Commission an opera.

5. While perusing the delicious food on display in Les Halles, you take a wrong turn and find yourself in a backstreet about to be mugged. What next?!
a) Pray for mercy!
b) Roll up my sleeves!
c) "Guards!"

6. If you were a famous Paris location, which would you be?
a) Why, Notre Dame (sic) of course.
b) The sewers, boss.
c) The Palace of Versailles.

7. When the time comes to meet your maker, where will be your final resting place?
a) With my father in heaven.
b) Here in the gutter.
c) Head in a bucket (body in a ditch).

8. It's dreadfully hot in Paris today, you're feeling very thirsty so you drink from a...
a) Holy chalice.
b) Filthy puddle.
c) Silver goblet.

9. While out walking with friends a band of minstrels invites you to dance. Not wanting to appear boring, you step into the open and...
a) Move in mysterious ways.
b) Bust the latest street moves.
c) Bow or curtsy, hold out your hand.

How did you do? If you replied mostly 'a', may God be with you as you fit the description of the First Estate very well my child. If mostly 'b', well "vive la revolution" because you are common as they come. If 'c', there's a horse and carriage waiting... to take you to the Guillotine!

Affiliations are not so cut and dried in Assassin's Creed: Unity, the newest in a magnificent series of adventures from Ubisoft. It is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC from November 14.

[09.09.14] Marie Antoinette: Diamonds aren't a girl's best friend

Marie Antoinette, the wife of King Louis XVI, was frivolous, profligate and aloof. To say that she wasn't especially popular with her subjects would be an understatement. However, her reputation hit an all time low when she became embroiled in the so-called 'Diamond Necklace Affair'. Ironically, it had very little to do with her at all.

It all began when Louis XV commissioned the jewellers Boehmer & Bassenge to create a fabulous diamond necklace for his mistress, Madame du Barry. It was to surpass all others in its splendour and cost, but the King died before he was able to complete the purchase and Madame du Barry fell out of favour with his successor, Louis XVI.

At this point messrs. Boehmer & Bassenge hoped that the new King would buy the necklace for his wife, but she declined the offer, wisely suggesting that the money might be better spent on France's Navy instead. And so the necklace remained unloved and unsold until a certain Jeanne de la Motte entered the picture.

A confidence trickster by any other name, she managed to convince her former lover, the Cardinal de Rohan, that Marie Antoinette really did want the necklace after all, and that he might restore his poor reputation with the Royal Court if he could obtain it for her. La Motte even went as far as faking an order in the Queen's handwriting and disguising a local prostitute as Marie Antoinette in order to complete the subterfuge.

The fish was duly hooked and the Cardinal was able to acquire the necklace on credit. He was doubly duped when the palace sent an envoy to collect it – it was actually Jeanne de la Motte's partner Rétaux de Villette dressed as a footman. The intention was to break the necklace up and sell the diamonds and precious metals, but this plan began to unravel when the Cardinal was unable to make the first payment to Boehmer & Bassenge. Unaware of the ruse, they took their complaint directly to Marie Antoinette instead.

Needless to say that Marie Antoinette refused to pay for a necklace that she didn't order. In any case, it wasn't long before the clumsy plan was exposed and its perpetrators punished – the Cardinal was exiled and Jeanne de la Motte imprisoned (she later escaped to England). However, the damage to Marie Antoinette's reputation was already done, the majority of the disgruntled French public readily accepting that the whole affair was merely an elaborate attempt to defraud the jewellers and obtain the necklace for free.

This wasn't quite the straw that broke the camel's back, metaphorically speaking, but the Diamond Necklace Affair did much to discredit the Bourbon Dynasty and consolidate the belief that Marie Antoinette was a reckless spendthrift who would rather waste public money on personal fripperies while common people struggled to buy bread. Thus, the Diamond Necklace Affair became one of many factors that enraged the French public and stoked up rebellious sentiments that later turned into the Revolution.

History records the many heads that rolled therein, Louis XVI's and Marie Antoinette's included. Yours too from November 14th when Assassin's Creed: Unity launches, unless you're very careful...

[10.09.14] The Rights of Man – Equality for everyone...

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the French Revolution was little more than a ten-year exercise in futility, in which far too many heads were needlessly lopped from their bodies and all that France achieved was the swap of one dictator for another. That's all true, of course, but some good did come out of it all. Honest.

For all the radical upheavals and overflowing rivers of blood, the Revolution was actually founded on the admirable principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. All of which were neatly articulated in the landmark 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen' (sic) of 1789.

The notion of a constitution that held all men to be equal originally took root in France at the end of the 17th Century, during the period of intellectual and political discovery known as 'the Age of Enlightenment'. The idea was also inspired by the American Declaration of Independence, and Thomas Jefferson would later lend a hand in writing the French document. However, its French authors were the Marquis de Lafayette, fresh from fighting the Brits in the US, and man of the people Honoré Mirabeau.

Of the Declaration's 17 assertions, the highlights include:

• Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
• Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else.
• Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society.
• All citizens are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents
• All persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty.
• The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man.
• Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.

And so it goes. But does anyone else notice a certain male bias in all of this?

Yes, in spite of such noble statements, it seems that the Rights of Man didn't really apply to women – the clue was in the title all along. They also excluded anyone who was deemed to be a 'passive citizen', which meant servants and any man under the age of 25 who didn't work for at least three days a week and pay his taxes.

Playwright Olympe de Gouges had plenty to say about that and was even a bit sarcastic saying it in her 'Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen' of 1791. It begins with the stinging amendment to the first article of the original "Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights. Social distinctions may only be based on common utility" and the rest is a thinly veiled parody.

Snippy retorts notwithstanding, the rights of French women didn't really move on during the Revolution – indeed, they were only given the right to vote in 1944. Nevertheless, The Rights of Man and the Citizen, flawed as it was, has been the inspiration for democracies the world over. Your rights in Assassin's Creed: Unity, meanwhile, include the permission to feel excited, bedazzled and very, very smug at your wise purchasing decision. Vive November 14th!

[15.09.14] The Great Fear – Paranoia and Pitchforks

'The Great Fear' was a peasant uprising that spread throughout the French countryside and was just one aspect of the widespread disgruntlement that eventually gave rise to the Revolution. It was founded on little more than hunger, desperation and plain old ignorance. But, hey, those are as good reasons as any for rampant rural rioting, right?

Trouble had been brewing for some time prior to the events of 'La Grande Peur'; the French peasantry growing fed up with the relentless toil and unfair taxation while the nobility and the clergy kept all their cash and lived large. That imbalance would be corrected repeatedly and most bloodily in due course. In the meantime, the previous year's crops had been poor, grain prices were skyrocketing and people were getting edgy.

Adding lit matches to what was already a highly combustible situation, unemployed townsfolk and vagrant labourers were also roaming the land in search of whatever food, work and charity was available. Needless to say, all were in dramatically short supply and the locals, already suspicious of outsiders, were in no mood for sharing.

To make matters even worse, rumours began to circulate that wealthy landowners were paying gangs of heavies to damage crops and frighten people into paying their taxes without complaint. None of which was actually true, but with all of that and the general paranoia about the civil unrest unfolding elsewhere in the country, the whole thing finally blew up in July of 1789.

At which point it's hard not to imagine baying mobs of wild-eyed farmers wielding flaming torches and pointy agricultural implements. However, the outbreaks of violence that spread like wildfire across France were often better organised than that. Chateaus were liberally looted and razed to the ground, and some aristocrats lost their lives in the attacks, but savvier saboteurs were also keen to destroy records of feudal dues that they owed. And to help themselves to any wine cellars they came across, of course.

It all died down quickly enough, though. The recently formed National Assembly was forced to act quickly and abolished the old ways entirely during an all-night sitting on August 4th. Feudalism was thus wiped out in one fell swoop and a true milestone on the road to full equality was established. It's just a pity that it all couldn't have ended there, without any further bloodshed. Unfortunately, it would take a further decade before the Revolution was finally brought to an end.

Arno Dorian's quest in Assassin's Creed: Unity takes place in the middle of the tumultuous events of the French Revolution, where he plays his part, encounters some of the key personalities and soon discovers that the battle lines that separate the opposing factions are not always quite so easily defined. Your task is keeping a cool head amid the hubbub and hysteria in order to ensure that he survives the conflict unscathed. You have until November 14th to prepare...

[17.09.14] The March on Versailles – Wild Women, Worried Royals and Heads on Sticks

It was 1789 and the mood in France was turning ugly. Revolutionary fervour was rapidly gaining pace; first in the storming of the Bastille and then in the 'Great Fear' that gripped the countryside that summer. The latter led to the abolition of feudalism and the end of the advantages afforded to the aristocracy and clergy. However, ordinary citizens continued to starve, and they still weren't enjoying the benefits of their newfound liberties. If the men of France weren't going to do something about it the women surely would. And heaven help those who stood in their way...

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. The real power would remain with the people from then on, at least until Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself Emperor ten years later.

King Louis and Marie Antoinette would eventually make their appointments with Madame Guillotine, although both are in one piece when their fates entwine with Arno Dorian's in Assassin's Creed: Unity. Your date with destiny is November 14th in the meantime.

[01.10.14] Killer tunes – morbid songs of the Revolution

Say what you want about the Revolution, but the French liked a nice tune to help keep a beat while they were lopping the heads of aristocrats and generally massacring one another at the slightest provocation. Okay, so maybe that's not quite how it was, but the words for many of these songs were surely murderous enough.

We begin with one that we've all heard before – the French National anthem, otherwise known as 'La Marseillaise', which was written by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792. If you're still scratching your head, listen to the first few bars of 'All You Need is Love' by The Beatles. La Marseillaise itself is a rousing ditty in any language, although the lyrics are rather less cheerful. The opening verse sets the scene:

"Forward children of the homeland!
The day of glory has arrived;
Against us, tyranny's bloody standard
Has been raised.
Do you hear the roar of ferocious soldiers
Coming from the countryside?
They are coming into your very homes
To slaughter your sons and wives!"

And if that wasn't already inflammatory enough, there's even a special verse reserved for children. Sing along now kiddies:

"We will enter the pit
When our elders are no longer there;
There, we will find their dust
And the traces of their virtues.
Much less eager to outlive them
Than to share their coffins,
We will have the sublime pride
Of avenging them or following them!"

Other Revolutionary songs don't waste any time getting to the point either. The chorus from the smash hit (of the day) 'It'll be okay' is a solid gold party-starter. Hold on a moment while we fetch the accordion:

"Oh. It'll be okay, be okay, be okay,
Hang the aristocrats from on high!
Oh. It'll be okay, be okay, be okay,
The aristocrats, we'll hang 'em all."

However, such disquieting sentiments were not the sole preserve of radical firebrands. Those who kept faith with King Louis had a similar line in lethal libretto. If anything, though, they were even more bloodthirsty. Here's a refrain from 'The Alarm of the People'. Join in if you know the words:

"French people, people of brothers,
Can you watch, without shuddering in horror,
As crime unfurls its banners
Of Carnage and Terror?
You suffer an atrocious horde,
Of assassins and brigands,
Soiling with its savage breath,
The lands of the living!
What is this barbaric languor?
Sovereign people, hurry
To return to the monsters of Tenairon
All these drinkers of human blood.
War against all those who practice this crime!
Hound them to the death;
Share the horror that impels me,
They shall not escape us."

The Alarm of the People was later adopted as the anthem of the so-called 'Gilded Youth'; a gang of wealthy young upstarts who were keen to avenge the untimely demises of their friends and relatives during Robespierre's infamous 'Reign of Terror'. Counter-Revolutionary to the core and unafraid to achieve their goals by whatever means necessary, these foppish fellas nevertheless cut a dash with their bizarre haircuts, affected mannerisms and outrageous duds.

Arno Dorian is quite the dandy himself, of course, and players will soon discover the delights of customising his wardrobe in Assassin's Creed: Unity from November 14th. But do those gauntlets really go with those pantaloons? Hmmm...

[03.10.14] Terror at the Tuileries Palace – a bad day to be a Swiss Guard

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. All that stood in the way of the advancing horde were several hundred volunteer soldiers and 900 of the largely ceremonial Swiss Guards. With their commander absent, or at least his orders not being communicated, the loyal troops opened fire on the mob. Vastly outnumbered they soon realised that their efforts were futile.

The few who thought quickly jumped from windows to escape, casting away their uniforms to avoid detection. The majority who stood their ground were butchered pitilessly – stabbed, stoned, hacked to pieces and, as was de rigueur for the age, decapitated; their heads placed on pikes as grisly trophies. Corpses were liberally ransacked, genitals were cut out with scissors and stuffed into the mouths of their deceased owners, body parts were burned or fed to dogs, and such was the savagery that the crowds even slaughtered a few of their own, tragically mistaking the red uniforms of the sympathetic Fédérés troops for those of the opposing forces.

A scant 300 of the Swiss Guard outlasted the horror, only for most of them to die in the notorious 'September Massacres' – and more about that unfortunate chapter in due course. King Louis and Marie Antoinette did not dodge Revolutionary justice either, and were soon caught and thrown into the lowliest dungeon, although Madame Guillotine would call for them both before too long. Mob rule thus ended the monarchy in France, once and for all.

Large crowds have always been a signature feature of Assassin's Creed games, of course, but they've never been larger, livelier or more autonomous than those seen in Assassin's Creed: Unity. If this horrible history is anything to go by, heaven help Arno Dorian if they decide to turn nasty!

[06.10.14] The September Massacres – France's most horrible history

With the French Revolution in full swing, staple foods in short supply and the Prussian Army apparently on the verge of invading Paris to restore the monarchy, the stage was set for one of the period's bloodiest chapters. Many factors and factions threatened to destabilise the new Republic, but as far as revolutionary leaders were concerned the real enemies were a little closer to home.

September 1792 found France in an uncomfortable state of flux. King Louis XVI had been stripped of his legislative powers, but the new National Convention had yet to be installed. In lieu of anyone really being in charge, radical troublemakers such as Jean-Paul Marat began to stir up angry sentiments towards royalists, aristocrats and anybody else related to the old regime – many of whom were now languishing in the dankest cells of Paris' prisons. And there they might have remained were it not for the lingering concern that the Prussian Army might advance as far as the capital and liberate them all, thus triggering a violent counter-revolution.

Ignorance and paranoia can make good people do terrible things, of course, but rarely with the scale or savagery that ensued from 2 – 7 September, as vicious gangs of National Guards set out to eliminate all those who were deemed traitors to the Revolution. Priests who had refused to accept the terms of the new constitution were among the first victims; 24 of them were dragged from their carriages and butchered as they made their way to the Abbaye prison. More bloodshed followed over the next few days as makeshift courts were formed in other prisons. Inmates who were found to be innocent were freed with the proclamation "Vive la Nation", but a horrible fate awaited those who didn't hear this rallying cry.

These poor unfortunates were liberated too, only to be greeted by a murderous crowd – "...an arch of wild sabres, axes and pikes, hewn asunder", as the historian Thomas Carlyle later described it. Many hundreds met their fate in this way; summarily judged, brutally despatched and often horrifically despoiled. One notable case involved the Princesse de Lamballe, a close associate of the hated queen Marie Antoinette, who was released to the mob and hacked to pieces. Her head was placed on a pike and paraded for her old friend to see, but it's not known whether she did or not.

Others escaped the wanton carnage, although not necessarily the indignity. The daughter of Monsieur de Sombreuil, the former Governor of Les Invalides, was successful in her pleas to save her father's life, but only on the condition that she drank the warm blood of aristocrats to prove her hatred of them.

Street children, common criminals and prostitutes were also among the 1200 or so who died in those five days. Unsurprisingly, the September Massacres became known as the first terror of the French Revolution, the second came with Robespierre's rise to power. But more about him, his fondness for the Guillotine and his particularly grisly comeuppance soon – providing you have the stomach for all this unpleasantness, that is. We trust you'll the appetite to hear a bit more about Assassin's Creed: Unity in the meantime.

[08.10.14] The Execution of Louis XVI – Dignity in the Face of Death

The days of King Louis XVI were numbered from the moment he came to power. He was heir to an economy ruined by his forebears, wed to a wildly unpopular woman, unskilled as a ruler and reluctant to submit to the tides of change. The raid on the Tuileries Palace ended with the capture and imprisonment of Louis and his Queen, and he was soon put on trial for crimes against his people. With France in the throes of the Revolution, the verdict was only ever going to go one way...

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". The inhumanity certainly didn't end there either – Marie Antoinette met her fate with similar decorum later in 1793, and tens of thousands more were beheaded during Robespierre's 'Reign of Terror'.

Such are the savage times that Arno Dorian must endure in Assassin's Creed: Unity, and he may yet be unlucky enough to encounter many of its principal architects His journey begins this autumn.

[10.10.14] Female Assassin Charlotte Corday – Deadlier than the male

The Journalist Jean-Paul Marat was among the more enthusiastic advocates of the French Revolution. A troublemaker by any other name, his radical pronouncements helped to stoke the fires that led to all manner of inhuman acts. However, it wasn't long before he too was snuffed out.

Marat liked to talk big, and wasn't afraid to express his strident opinions in his newspaper 'L'Amis de Peuple' (The Friend of the People). While his fiery criticisms helped to mobilise common people and informed such events as the September Massacres, a chronic skin condition meant that the man himself conducted much of his business from a warm bathtub. That, sadly, only made him a sitting target for the woman who had decided to kill him.

Charlotte Corday didn't start out with murder in mind. A simple Normandy lass, she had become increasingly appalled at the way the Revolution was unfolding and had fallen in with the Girondins, who stood in opposition to Marat and those of his ilk. When her her sympathies turned to patriotic zeal, she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Her original plan to assassinate Marat in public was thwarted because of his illness, so she resorted to subterfuge instead. On the morning of July 13 1793, carrying the sharp kitchen knife she'd bought earlier, she attempted to meet with Marat to deliver news of an uprising against him. There was no such thing, of course, and perhaps sensing the lie Marat's wife Simonne (sic) turned her away. She was granted an audience later the same evening, but as Marat gleefully transcribed the names of his alleged opponents she struck with a surgeon's precision. The blade pierced his heart and lung, and severed an artery which is supposed to have sprayed Simonne in a shower of blood. Marat died with the tragic words "Aidez-moi, ma chère amie!" – literally, "Help me, my dear friend!"

Charlotte Corday would later utter some immortal words of her own, telling those at her trial that she had "killed one man to save 100,000." Her actions certainly removed one of the French Revolution's key agitators too, but the bloodletting didn't end there – tens of thousands more were killed during Robespierre's ongoing 'Reign of Terror'. Corday's own head would roll just four days later, but not before she'd had time to draft her valediction:

"Pardon me, dear Father, to end my existence without your permission. I avenged innocent victims, I prevented many other disasters. The people, in a less abused day, will rejoice to be delivered of a tyrant," she begins. "I hope you try to forget me, or rather you rejoice at my exit, the cause was beautiful. I kiss my sister and all of those in my heart, as well as my parents. Do not forget the words of (the 17th century playwright Pierre) Corneille, 'The crime causes the shame and not the scaffold.'" Another Corneille quote might have been more relevant to her predicament – 'Just vengeance does not call for punishment', but she was Guillotined on July 17 nonetheless, aged just 25.

After the event her head was held up for the assembled crowd to see. The story goes that her face was then slapped for good measure, and it took on a look of indignation. There's some debate about the truth of that, which is just as well since it's almost too horrible to comprehend otherwise.

Meanwhile, back in the land of confirmed facts, Assassin's Creed: Unity is launching on November 14th, exclusively for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. With killers seemingly at large on both sides of the political divide, it's going to be hard to know who Arno can trust.

[10.10.14] Six things you (probably) didn't know about Marie Antoinette

King Louis XVI didn't really add up to much as a monarch and he certainly didn't last very long once the French Revolution had kicked into gear. However, as much as Louis dithered and meddled as France slid into chaos, it was his queen, Marie Antoinette, who was seen to symbolise the very worst of the old regime. She would eventually meet the same fate as her husband, and we'll have more about her inglorious end in due course. In the meantime, we present six fun facts that may or may not convince you that she deserved her reputation.

The cake is a lie

Marie Antoinette is most famous for her offhand remark "Let them eat cake", which she is supposed to have said in response to news that the French peasantry was starving. That much is true, and it was one of the reasons why the Revolution started in the first place, but there's no evidence that she ever uttered those words. Indeed, there's some debate as to whether they actually belong to King Louis' aunties, the Spanish wife of his ancestor Louis XIV or even a 4th century Chinese emperor. Either way, Marie Antoinette was innocent as charged. Historians put the words in her mouth forever nonetheless.

Deranged marriage

Royal families don't like to leave things to chance, least of all their bloodlines. As such, Marie Antoinette was married off good and early. How early, you reasonably enquire? Well, she was 14 at the time and Louis was barely out of short trousers at 15. You may be relieved to know that the pair of them didn't actually consummate their marriage for a further seven years. Once the Love Train had finally departed the station they went on to have four children.

Fright wig

Even in the days of powdered periwigs and perfectly preened pompadours it's unlikely that any barnet ever trumped Marie Antoinette's bonkers bouffants. Her biggest hair-don't, at nearly four feet tall, was capacious enough to include a replica of the victorious French battleship 'La Belle Poule'. Nice work!

Village idiocy

Of all the silly, frivolous and downright wasteful things that Marie Antoinette ever did, surely the daftest was the full-scale fairytale village that she had built in the Versailles Palace grounds. Called 'Le Petit Hameau' ( the 'Little Hamlet'), her rural retreat came fully-stocked with farmyard animals, tranquil fishponds and a collection of suitably bucolic buildings. She even had her servants dress up as peasants to complete the illusion. The village has been reinstated to its former glory in recent years (see http://en.chateauversailles.fr/ for details), but it must have driven Marie Antoinette's many detractors absolutely crazy at the time.

Sprechen sie Français?

In spite of a particularly French-sounding moniker, Marie Antoinette was actually an Austrian. She was the youngest daughter in a brood of 16 children (ouch!) born to Empress Marie-Theresa and Francis I. Oh, and her real name was actually 'Maria Antonia Josephina'.

No rest for the wicked

Marie Antoinette was shown little in the way of pity or dignity when she was executed in October 1793 and, as a final insult, her body was unceremoniously dumped into an unmarked grave afterwards. It remained there for more than 20 years too, but was eventually disinterred by King Louis' younger brother, Louis XVIII, who saw to it that she was given a Christian funeral and reburied alongside her husband in the Basilica of Saint-Denis. A great many other royals and nobles are buried there too, although none are quite so infamous.

So there she is, not quite warts and all. Truth be told, things had gotten so bad in France that Marie Antoinette probably couldn't have done right even if she'd tried, thus her appointment with the 'national razor' was assured. Her head is still firmly affixed as the events of Assassin's Creed: Unity unfold, but who knows whether that will remain the case by the time that Arno's quest is finished? Far be it from us to say...

[12.10.14] The Execution of Marie Antoinette – Bourbon Queen takes a dunk

Marie Antoinette's path to the scaffold was as clearly defined as her husband's before her. But where Louis XVI had been afforded an almost stately send-off, his queen enjoyed nothing of the same. Denied all dignities, she was borne to her appointment with Madame Guillotine on little more than a plain wooden ox-cart.

Some people are vilified unfairly in life, and then there's Marie Antoinette; a woman whose extravagant lifestyle had come to represent the very worst aspects of a spendthrift ruling class at a time when vast swathes of the French population struggled to buy bread. 'Madame Deficit' is one of the less pejorative nicknames that she accrued during her reign. As the Revolution gathered pace, though, such spiteful sentiments soon turned to vengeful fury.

Her trial of October 14 1793 was a one-way affair from the outset, with her accusers stooping so low as to suggest that she had seduced her own young son. Among other trumped-up indictments of conspiracy, fraud and sexual depravity, Marie Antoinette did her best to retain her regal composure. As the proceedings reached an inevitable conclusion she bravely summed up her tragic predicament thus: "I was a queen and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you robbed me of my children. My blood alone remains. Take it, but do not make me suffer too long." If nothing else, she was to get this final wish.

On the morning of October 16 Marie Antoinette donned a simple white dress for the fateful day ahead. Her executioner, Henri Sanson, then entered the cell, cut off her famous locks in order to aid his grisly duty and tied her wrists rather too tightly. Her journey thereafter, perched on the bare boards of a plain wooden cart, left her open to the jeers and insults of the crowds that had gathered. Even so, on arriving at the scaffold she leapt up the steps with such vigour that she lost one of her shoes. She even found it within herself to apologise for stepping on Sanson's foot as she was bound and placed in the Guillotine.

After a few final words of prayer the blade fell at 14.15pm. Her head was then held aloft to the delight of the baying mob and her body was taken away to be thrown into an unmarked grave. However, the short delay in doing so allowed a young Marie Tussaud – Madame Tussaud, as she became known – to create a death mask, which can be seen above. The eerie wax depiction is said to capture her prominent lower lip that is not shown in more conventional portraits.

Tussaud herself was lucky to escape execution, and went on to make waxwork masks of several other notable personnel from the French Revolution – Jean-Paul Marat, Maximilien de Robespierre and Napoleon Bonaparte included. Marie Antoinette and King Louis were later disinterred and given a burial perhaps more befitting of their former status.

The dramas that unfold in Assassin's Creed: Unity might not find them in happier times, but at least both are in one piece. Maintaining our hero Arno Dorian in the same pristine condition is a significant challenge in the game. Find out if you're up to it from November 14.

[13.10.14] Cult of the Supreme Being: Revolutionaries reinvent God

Midway through the French Revolution its leaders were rather forced to reconsider what it truly represented. With the bloody regime of the terror in full flow, during which 16,594 Parisians were guillotined, the politician Maximilien de Robespierre took his chance to represent a new voice of reason. Such was his oratorical prowess that he appointed himself mouthpiece of a new god.

So it was that in May 1794 Robespierre formally announced the cult of the Supreme Being, to be celebrated in a series of festivals across the land. Though the revolution had so far proven violently opposed to religious leadership of any sort, the dechristianisation of France was not sitting too well with a public used to sustaining on faith (in the absence of actual sustenance – i.e. daily bread).

The Supreme Being, which Robespierre defined as "Nature itself", was a patriotic reimagining of the spirit that guides us all. The Paris event, held on 8 June 1794, was staged by neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David who commissioned the construction of a plaster and cardboard artificial mountain placed in Champ de Mars. On top of this mountain stood a 50-foot column upon which was a statue of Hercules. Down below a procession of girls carried baskets of fruit along avenues lined with roses, and a new anthem was sung to the music and lyrics partnership of composer François-Joseph Gossec and poet Théodore Désorgues: 'Hymne à l'Être Suprème' ('Hymn to the Supreme Being').

Although the song's purpose was surely anti-hymnal, its similarity to popular God-fearing Catholic chants was unmistakable: "Your temple is on the mountains, in the air, on the air; You have no past, you have no future; And without the care you fill all worlds; Which can not contain thee." Etc.

Robespierre brought proceedings to a rapturous close with a speech, sporting a blue coat, tricolor sash and plumed hat acquired especially for the occasion. He then burned an effigy representing Atheism to reveal a statue of Wisdom. Meanwhile, across Paris, the guillotine continued to chop the heads of anyone deemed to be even the slightest counter revolutionary, or showing such potential.

Understandably, the image of Robespierre resplendent in the exact costume worn during the Festival of the Supreme Being was later mocked in the anonymous anti-terror engraving, 'Robespierre guillotining the executioner after having guillotined everyone else in France'. Behind Robespierre and the contraption is an obelisk that reads "Here Lies All France."

In the wake of all this hypocritical ugliness the Christian faith was eventually re-consecrated across France. There is no record of when the cult of the Supreme Being was officially abandoned, or even reports of it ever fully catching on. And no voice of the Supreme Being was invoked in defence of Robespierre when the time came for the man himself to be executed.

Sources: 'Citizens' by Simon Schama, 'The Oxford History of the French Revolution' by William Doyle.

Assassins Creed: Unity is released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on 14 November.

[20.10.14] Eye Spy – The French Revolution and the New World Order

Look again at the 'Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen', which was drafted at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. Its 17 articles defined the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity (Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité), which are all very admirable, but is there more to it than meets the eye? Specifically, the eye that is seen in the radiant triangle atop the document itself?

American citizens and keen currency collectors will be familiar with this well known icon. The 'Eye of Providence', as it is known, also appears on the reverse of the Dollar bill and is supposed to represent the eye of God watching over man's endeavours. 'Novus Ordo Seclorum' is one of the Latin mottos on the US banknote, which means 'New Order of the Ages'. However, modern day conspiracy theorists prefer the more ominous translation 'New World Order'. It was even suspected at the time of the Revolution that shadowy forces were at work behind the scenes.

According to the Jesuit priest Abbé Augustin Barruel, in his catchily-titled 1797 book 'Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism', the French Revolution was merely an elaborate plot cooked up by the Freemasons and the secretive 'Illuminati' order to destroy the French monarchy, the aristocracy and the Roman Catholic church itself.

All of that came to pass during the Revolution, of course, and Abbé Barruel even thought that the rabble-rousing slogan "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité" was in fact the secret phrase of the covert agencies that were really pulling the strings. But did they also leave their mark on the document that defined the era? The Eye of Providence is one of the key symbols of Freemasonry, after all, and others have frequently pointed out that the Freemasons and the Illuminati are really just two sides of the same coin, and that they are seeking nothing less than the establishment of a New World Order.

Abbé Barruel's paranoid interpretations certainly resonated in some quarters, and his book remains in print to this day. However, most right thinking people now see the whole period as the inevitable consequence of social and economic crises rather than a sinister plot. The Eye of Providence on the Declaration of the Rights of Man, meanwhile, was likely just a design flourish to denote God's approval. In any case the Freemasons didn't begin to adopt the symbol until eight years after the Declaration was written, and even now tend not to enclose it in a shining triangle.

For all of that, it's easy to see how suspicious-types have had a field-day with Abbé Barruel's theories over the years. There's still fun to be had with the Eye of Providence too, and once you start looking for it you can see it everywhere – Katy Perry videos, the covers of fashion magazines, photos of Jay-Z and basically anybody covering up one eye or making triangular gestures with their hands. All of which has most likely already been turned into a six-hour David Icke lecture.

Back to reality, and the only hand guiding Arno Dorian's movements in Assassin's Creed: Unity is most definitely your own. What other agencies are at large and manipulating events is for you to uncover. The mystery begins to unravel from November 14th.

[22.10.14] The Terror of the French Revolution was... terrible

Scenes from The Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794) are the most commonly associated with the French Revolution. During this time, the dreaded guillotine descended upon the necks of 16,594 citizens, but an even greater number of executions took place across the country – all in the name of freedom. So much blood flowed through the streets that an aqueduct was built to drain away the gore in Paris (Archibald Alison History of Europe from the Commencement of the French Revolution).

The French Revolution began with the common people revolting against unfair treatment in terms of tax breaks and representation in government. This uprising soon became a political tool for the likes of Maximilien de Robespierre to gain power for his 'enlightened' Jacobin faction, who recommended the most severe consequences for enemies of the Revolution at home or abroad. "Terror," said Robespierre, "is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice."

The Terror got into full swing with the arming of the sansculottes (common people), empowering raging Revolutionary Armies as judge, jury and executioner of anyone suspected of counter-revolutionary intention, let alone doings. Under the authority of the newly established Committee of Public Safety, so many thousands of suspects were rounded up that buildings such as the Palais de Luxembourg became temporary prisons.

Marie Antoinette was the first notable figure to fall under the guillotine during The Terror, shortly followed by 21 Girondins. The despised queen was held at The Conciergerie, an official prison that earned the nickname "antechamber to the guillotine" after briefly holding 2,700 doomed suspects.

So many people were found guilty of treason that the guillotine was not capable of maintaining the death toll all by itself. According to the historian William Doyle in The Oxford History of the French Revolution, prisoners were blasted directly into open graves using cannon-fire and grape-shot. Those that did not instantly die were stabbed to death with sabres and bayonets.

Even so, the guillotine was celebrated as the most efficient of killing machines, officially recorded as chomping through 32 necks in 25 minutes one week, followed by 12 in five the week following.

The most horrible, nightmare-inducing episodes took place in region of Vendée. In December, General François Joseph Westermann wrote to the Committee of Public Safety that he had "crushed children under the feet of horses, massacred women who at least will engender no more brigands." Two-hundred prisoners were executed at Angers, and 2000 in Saint-Florent according to Simon Schama in his colourful account Citizens. And if that isn't enough to turn your stomach, consider the massacres at Nantes where men and women, sometimes strapped together, were stripped of their clothes, had their hands and feet bound and then slowly drowned in sinking barges beneath the river Loire. Whereas the guillotine became known as the National Razor, the river Loire earned the nickname National Bathtub.

With reports of atrocities that also included the burying alive of women and children, small wonder that there came a public backlash to the bloody campaign after stomaching it for 10 months. When Robespierre's former allies rather suspiciously began falling under the blade he was himself brought to trial by fellow Jacobins and guillotined on 28 July, 1794.

Mercifully Assassin's Creed: Unity, released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on 14 November, depicts none of the above explicitly. You will also be glad to know that hero Arno Dorian is instrumental in ensuring that such acts are thoroughly shamed and brought to their rightful end.

[24.10.14] The execution of Maximilien de Robespierre – spilled claret and just desserts

As the architect of the wanton slaughter that was 'The Reign of Terror', Maximilien de Robespierre had the blood of nearly 17,000 French citizens on his hands. His own demise, however, was among the most horrible of all. What's more, it was probably no less than he deserved.

How differently events might have transpired, though, if a would-be assassin named Cécile Renault had found her mark. Instead, her efforts to end Robespierre's existence on May 23 1794 sent her to the Guillotine, and the man himself into something of a paranoid tailspin. As bad as things had been prior to the failed attempt on his life, he then introduced a new law that effectively doubled the number of executions permitted; often without the requirement for such necessities as a public trial let alone proof of guilt.

As growing public discontent became large-scale grievance, even those close to Robespierre began to turn against him. For some of his fellow Jacobins, Robespierre just wasn't radical enough, for others he was a megalomaniacal madman who was killing more Frenchmen than any foreign invader. Either way, a coalition began to form against him and it wasn't long before the National Assembly called for the arrest of Robespierre and his followers.

On July 27, less than two months after the instigation of his draconian policy, Robespierre, his brother Augustin and several other allies were taken to the Luxembourg prison in Paris, although all promptly fled to the Hôtel de Ville when the sympathetic warden refused to do his business. The National Convention subsequently pronounced them all to be outlaws who could be executed within 24 hours of capture. Upon hearing this, and perhaps realising which way the wind was blowing, Robespierre shot himself in the head. Alas, he only succeeded in shattering his lower jaw. Augustin threw himself from a window in a bid to evade capture, breaking both of his legs into the bargain.

Well, so much for the desperate measures of the Robespierre boys. Maximilien spent his final hours bleeding profusely on a table in the Committee of Public Safety and later incarcerated in the very cell that had held Queen Marie Antoinette. He was executed without trial the following day, although not before one final act of cruelty when the executioner ripped off the cloth that had been holding his jaw in place. Suffice to say that Robespierre's valediction was a prolonged and doubtless tortured scream. That is until the blade fell to silence his cries.

For all the evils perpetuated during his bloody tenure, Robespierre had noble intentions at heart – nothing less than a democratic republic, governed by the principles of Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité. His single-minded pursuit of such goals was his undoing, and, ironically, the Revolution pretty much ended with him. France would thus end up swapping an out of touch monarch for a powerful dictator, although that's a story for another occasion.

There are many other tales to tell in the meantime. Specifically that of Arno Dorian in Assassin's Creed: Unity, which begins on November 14th. Yours too, providing you have the stomach for the drama that unfolds. Well, have you...?

[10.11.14] The French Revolution in quotes

Restraint was off the menu during the French Revolution; 'open mic' for anyone seeking their 15 minutes of fame. All manner of hyperbole spouted forth from minions to the monarchy.

"The more I see of men, the more I like dogs," opined Girondist supporter and political influencer Madame Roland of events unfolding in France between 1789 and 1794. She found herself on the guillotine for such comments, of course. Indeed, it would seem that the French Revolution was an era that invited famous folk to eat both feet before their headless bodies were dumped in a ditch.

With good intention the politician Maximilien de Robespierre proclaimed: "Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil," and, "Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all." His solution, however, leaved much to be desired. "Terror," said the doomed orator "is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice." This launched the Reign of Terror, the epitome of inhumane acts, marking Robespierre's cards for an untimely death by public execution.

Robespierre's sentiments were likely influenced by the celebrated Enlightenment philosopher that should've known better, Denis Diderot. "Man will only be free when the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest," said he. Prophetic words from the man that died in 1784, age 70. One wonders what he may have said upon witnessing the horrific acts that mirrored his intentions.

The common people of Paris – or sans-culottes – took to the streets, empowered by the vision of a fairer republic presented by the new National Assembly. Among the protesters was farmer and family man Ernest Dominique François Joseph Duquesnoy, who proudly expressed upon the surrender of class privileges: "Great and memorable night, we wept and hugged one another. What a nation! What glory! What an honour to be French!"

Revolutionary thought-leader Jean-Paul Marat was not so easily fooled, however, reminding his brethren: "It is the height of stupidity to claim that men who for a thousand years have had the power to berate us, to fleece us and to oppress us with impunity, will now agree, with good grace, to be our equals." He more or less nominated Robespierre for the role of new leader by requesting: "someone bold, to put himself at the head of the disaffected and rally them against the oppressor. Some great character who could captivate the people... someone wise who could direct the actions of an unbridled and floating multitude." Marat was not long after assassinated in his own bathtub.

God was by no means the solution to leadership, according to Jacques Hébert's uncompromising words in radical newspaper Le Père Duchesne. "Tell me, fellow Frenchmen, is it possible?" asked Hébert. "If the man you call the Holy Father takes it into his head to oppose your laws, do you dare? Or are you stupid enough to give them up? What do you expect from a Pope? Screw the Pope. Believe me, it is your turn, because for ten centuries he has been screwing you."

Two quotes from Napoleon Bonaparte neatly summarise the before and after of French Revolution verbal bluster. In its first year, 1789, the ambitious second lieutenant observed: "This year has begun hopefully for right thinkers. After all these centuries of feudal barbarism and political slavery, it is surprising to see how the word of 'liberty' sets minds on fire." Yet in the late 1790s, when all was done and dusted (else heaved away and mopped up), the man who was now captain proclaimed: "Vanity made the revolution; liberty was only a pretext."

Actions count more than words in Assassin's Creed: Unity, released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on 14 November.

[11.11.14] The guillotine: It could've been worse

What a gruesome spectacle it would've been, crowding into the Place de la Concorde to watch a mechanised blade fall onto a victim's neck – one among thousands. Yet these coldly efficient killings made famous by the French Revolution were considered tame compared to what had gone before...

Public execution was nothing new to 18th century French folk. It had been going on since medieval times after all. Practices included public mutilation (thieves losing a hand, before being paraded through the town with said body part strung around their neck) and hanging. The latter might involve leaving the body on display for days afterwards; a pretty sight on the way to the shops.

Heretic such as Joan of Arc were burned alive, a process that either eats away at the internal organs or else strangles the victim owing to the swelling of the air passages upon heat inhalation. The last recorded French incident of burning at the stake was in 1784.

Similarly vicious was the practice of the breaking wheel – or 'Catherine Wheel', named after Saint Catherine of Alexandria who suffered this extraordinarily cruel ordeal. Yeah, so now you know! Popular across France and Germany, the breaking wheel involved strapping a person to a cartwheel resting against two beams of wood. The stretched-out limbs were broken by jamming an iron bar between the limbs and the beams as the wheel was slowly turned. Incredibly, victims were known to survive the ordeal but were often left as food for the birds. Depending on their crime, however, some mercy could be shown: they might get away with being strangled to death first.

Beheadings by sword were still common just prior to the introduction of the guillotine, which made the practice much easier. Those of you that have recently read or watched Game of Thrones will know that beheadings achieved with a sword or axe rarely, if ever, happen too cleanly. The true horror of the guillotine was that its beheadings became such a routine that in-demand contraptions were required to be booked by towns and villages in advance.

As for the infamous 'machine' itself, it was genuinely devised as a humane solution to the grotesque circuses of gore. Also, the guillotine was more efficient – far more criminals could be dispatched within a fraction of the time it took to perform the entire Catherine Wheel act. It was the result of a proposal by Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin in 1789 for capital punishment reforms, but as late as 1791 a suitable method had not been agreed, although beheading was deemed appropriate. The invention of the guillotine was spurred along in 1792 after the public executioner Charles-Henri Sanson raised concerns that decapitation by axe was literally hit and miss, supported by secretary of surgeons Dr. Antoine Louis' advice that a mechanical blade would cause instantaneous death.

The unlikeliest of candidates was commissioned to build a prototype, piano maker Tobias Schmidt. One week later a device was tested on corpses. The first living victim was the thief Nicolas Pelletier in April 1792. And the rest is horrible history... though still not as horrible as it might've been.

The spectre of the guillotine looms over events in Assassin's Creed: Unity, released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on 14 November.

[12.11.14] Revolution Reaction – Fops on the march!

With Robespierre's head freshly lopped and rolling around at the bottom of the executioner's basket, the heat rather went out of the French Revolution. The bloodletting would continue for some time yet, though, as those he had oppressed took to the streets in search of vengeance.

The revolt started almost as soon as the National Convention had declared Robespierre and his acolytes to be outlaws who could be executed without trial. This was the 'Thermidorean Reaction' of 1794, denoting the month of the Revolutionary Calendar when these events started to unfold.

This political uprising brought an end to the notorious Reign of Terror and ushered in a conservative and comparatively more tolerant regime that, among other things, enabled religious freedom without fear of reprisal. None of which went quite far enough for the sons and daughters of the merchants and nobles who had been sent to their deaths in previous years. These wealthy upstarts wanted a little revolutionary justice of their own, although their battle dress often left much to be desired.

Among the first group to take up arms, the 'Muscadins' sported tight breeches and long tailcoats that had black collars to mourn the death of Louis XVI. Many affected a rough or lisping manner of speaking and walked with weighted canes called 'constitutions', which they put to use cracking the skulls of the Jacobins and Sans-Culottes who they now hunted. Many of their intended victims must have smelled them coming too, since their name was apparently derived from the musky perfume they liked to wear.

With their tousled haircuts and dandyish accoutrements, the Muscadins must have cut quite a dash on the drab pavements of Paris. However, as much as they were the bully-boys of the Thermidorean Reaction, their political usefulness expired after a couple of years and new fashions became the talk of the town.

Enter the Incroyables (incredibles) and their ladyfriends the Merveilleuses (er, marvellouses?). Often more aristocratic than the Muscadins, and perhaps less motivated by revenge, their chief concerns were lavish balls to make up for the privations of the previous administrations and outrageous duds to scandalise polite society.

Outfits de jour for women included blonde wigs and diaphanous gowns, which were styled on ancient Greek and Roman styles but left almost nothing to the imagination (pictured). Perhaps that accounted for the oversized monocles that became trendy among the Incroyables, although others have speculated that their use was more likely a foppish mark of disdain for the lower classes. The Incroyables themselves liked to back-comb their hair up at the back as a gruesome reminder of the way their forebears had been prepared for the Guillotine.

Fashions and the need to shock passed in time, as these things do, however the Incroyables left a more indelible imprint on history. Paul François Jean Nicolas, a leading light of the movement, was a member of the five-man Directorate that filled the vacuum left by Robespierre. His lavish lifestyle and wild partying ways eventually led to his downfall and paved the way for a certain Monsieur Napoleon Bonaparte.

His rise to power is a tale to tell in itself, and his end was inglorious even if he did manage to hold on to his head. Arno Dorian has his own troubles in the meantime. You will be able to lend a hand from November 14th. Fancy clothes and silly haircuts are optional, but might help...

[14.11.14] French Revolution Forged: Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821)

With Robespierre's head freshly lopped and rolling around at the bottom of the executioner's basket, the heat rather went out of the French Revolution. The bloodletting would continue for some time yet, though, as those he had oppressed took to the streets in search of vengeance.

The revolt started almost as soon as the National Convention had declared Robespierre and his acolytes to be outlaws who could be executed without trial. This was the 'Thermidorean Reaction' of 1794, denoting the month of the Revolutionary Calendar when these events started to unfold.

This political uprising brought an end to the notorious Reign of Terror and ushered in a conservative and comparatively more tolerant regime that, among other things, enabled religious freedom without fear of reprisal. None of which went quite far enough for the sons and daughters of the merchants and nobles who had been sent to their deaths in previous years. These wealthy upstarts wanted a little revolutionary justice of their own, although their battle dress often left much to be desired.

Among the first group to take up arms, the 'Muscadins' sported tight breeches and long tailcoats that had black collars to mourn the death of Louis XVI. Many affected a rough or lisping manner of speaking and walked with weighted canes called 'constitutions', which they put to use cracking the skulls of the Jacobins and Sans-Culottes who they now hunted. Many of their intended victims must have smelled them coming too, since their name was apparently derived from the musky perfume they liked to wear.

With their tousled haircuts and dandyish accoutrements, the Muscadins must have cut quite a dash on the drab pavements of Paris. However, as much as they were the bully-boys of the Thermidorean Reaction, their political usefulness expired after a couple of years and new fashions became the talk of the town.

Enter the Incroyables (incredibles) and their ladyfriends the Merveilleuses (er, marvellouses?). Often more aristocratic than the Muscadins, and perhaps less motivated by revenge, their chief concerns were lavish balls to make up for the privations of the previous administrations and outrageous duds to scandalise polite society.

Outfits de jour for women included blonde wigs and diaphanous gowns, which were styled on ancient Greek and Roman styles but left almost nothing to the imagination (pictured). Perhaps that accounted for the oversized monocles that became trendy among the Incroyables, although others have speculated that their use was more likely a foppish mark of disdain for the lower classes. The Incroyables themselves liked to back-comb their hair up at the back as a gruesome reminder of the way their forebears had been prepared for the Guillotine.

Fashions and the need to shock passed in time, as these things do, however the Incroyables left a more indelible imprint on history. Paul François Jean Nicolas, a leading light of the movement, was a member of the five-man Directorate that filled the vacuum left by Robespierre. His lavish lifestyle and wild partying ways eventually led to his downfall and paved the way for a certain Monsieur Napoleon Bonaparte.

His rise to power is a tale to tell in itself, and his end was inglorious even if he did manage to hold on to his head. Arno Dorian has his own troubles in the meantime. You will be able to lend a hand from November 14th. Fancy clothes and silly haircuts are optional, but might help...