Reflections on the Revolution in Gallia

[Corile]

Reflections on the Revolution in Gallia

"Every thing depends upon the army in such a government as yours; for you have industriously destroyed all the opinions, and prejudices, and, as far as in you lay, all the instincts which support government. Therefore, the moment any difference arises between your National Assembly and any part of the nation, you must have recourse to force. Nothing else is left to you; or rather you have left nothing else to yourselves. (...) Massacre, torture, hanging! These are your rights of men! These are the fruits of metaphysic declarations wantonly made, and shamefully retracted!"

—Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolutions in France

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"It's a long story, Dia."

...

"I suppose you are right. Very well. So, where shall I start?"

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"The beginning, mhm. The beginning, perhaps, was the evacuation of the embassy. That was when we realised the writing was on the wall for the Kingdom and it was not long for these stars. The revolution reached New Paris while the bulk of the Royal Navy fought in Leeds and New London. The vultures of the Council descended on the capital and caused untold amounts of chaos. The bulk of the populace did not seem to particularly interest themselves in that affair. A thousand-year-old order just ceasing to exist, and they did not care. Not the first time in our history, I guess. Ironic."

...

"It is ironic because later the Confederacy started paying attention to the people. That's the folly of democracy. The absolute monarchy is absolute because, among other things, the commoner absolutely does not care what the king thinks. He might, of course, but he stands very little chance of influencing the monarch's feelings, so he just follows. And the king seems to care surprisingly little about the commoners, too. As long as there is no unrest and the taxes are paid, there is a lot freedom. Not political freedom, of course, but personal."

"When the République came around, all of a sudden those people had to care about politics. Most did not have proper education for it. But, what I should note, is that the people in Gallia were not uneducated. It was a supremely prosperous nation, technologically, artistically, philosophically. It's just that they were not educated in what one might call governance. There were some, indeed, those that advised the king and planetary or provincial governors, who were well-read in those subjects, but most did not care. Neither engineer who came up with the engine for this Camara, nor the manufacturer who put it together, nor the salesman who sold it, nor the mechanic who would fix it cared about politics. It was a transparent subject. It made no difference on their daily life if the king was Louis, Henry or Charles."

"And one day, they were made to care."

"The Confederacy was an utterly corrupt system because of that, it is no wonder that it collapsed so quickly and was replaced by a stratocracy. It is exactly what the revolutionaries did not want: all the downsides, none of the upsides. It is now a rotting corpse, a decrepit husk, a shattered remains of once prosperous nation."

"And who to blame for all of that? In a monarchy, there is a king, a king who is accountable. If there is no king, there is a royal family. Who is accountable for the current sorry state of Gallia to their own people? The Confederacy? Non-existent. The Council? Same. Their general? Dead. The current leadership? They are just doing their best. It's a perfect crime — to assassinate a state with such dexterity that no one can even begin to look for a culprit."

...

"There was a lot of turmoil during the transition period. I began learning French shortly after arriving there. It was unusual how many of our words they retained over the centuries. Fewer than English, but some that one would not expect. In any case, I had a fairly firm grasp of the tongue once this entire mess started. I comfortably passed for a local, with an odd accent perhaps. For some reason they deliberately destroyed the bureaucratic records of the Kingdom — not that there was much of that — so one just needed to shout a few pro-Council, pro-République slogans to be issued the new papers. That was when I became a librarian, too."

...

"I could not get in touch because the Gallic communication infrastructure is actually quite different from the Sirian one and to actually be able to send anything to Sirius is not that easy. Not to mention, to Crete. You did not experience it thanks in no small part to IDF. And I could not risk trusting anyone else to pass a message. To be honest, after leaving you that note in the documents, which I am very glad you found and deciphered, I understood that what I could have done was done, and I would either be somehow rescued and returned home, or I would live out my days on New Paris. Whatever the fates had in store for me, I was ready."

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"Stoic or not, we are here."

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"I did found a number of interesting things. There are works that shed light on our own history on Earth that we do not have, because they were researched by Ancient French historians that never made it onto the Hispania, and, subsequently, to the library at Alexandria. There was one account, for instance, that sheds light on our own so-called proud tradition of democracy, although both you and I know that the Custodi democracy is a democracy in name only."

"The account, in essence, stipulated that the ancient Athenian democracy was such only shortly before its downfall. We think of it as this ancient golden age of our people, but really, it was like a death rattle. It lasted for a very short time and our ancestors lived for most of their history under a monarchy. Custodi managed to survive primarily because of the lack of stresses and shakeups from the outside, but it seems like this tide is starting to turn away. Your father contributed to it."

...

"That is neither good nor bad. His intentions were noble and I should never say a bad word about Icarus. He wished to see us out of a state of stagnation into new greatness. Inadvertently, he exposed us to this sort of external pressure that could prove to be our undoing. From what you told me about Angelos, it seems that he does his best to place our figurative head firmly back in the sand, but that ship has sailed. Careful navigation will be required."

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"I am partial to order, not monarchy. But there is no value in elections if anything but the ablest man is elected, and that was neither the case in Gallia, nor in Heraklion. Sometimes a charismatic leader can swing the vote, as was the case historically, with Stylianos, with Aesop, even with your father. But there is an equal or even greater chance that someone worse will be chosen, or even someone who does nothing at all. It is difficult to predict. But the worst elected leaders did worse than the worst of princes. And the best elected leaders were not close to the greatness of the greatest of princes by any margin."

"There is more to this, of course, but monarchy is more just than democracy. Whether it is more just than the Custodi oligarchy, that is difficult to say. What remains obvious to me, though, is that Gallic monarchy was better for its people. I love my nation not because of her form of government, but because it is lovable thanks to her people. I am sure many a Gaul thinks the same."

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"I can see what has been done. But the king was not responsible for Leeds any more than Angelos VIII for the Attican famine thirty years ago, when you were just a girl. It's a tragedy, same as the famine was a tragedy. Those responsible should be brought to justice and made into an example. It's a complex problem. But blaming the entirety of Gallia, or just the king for that matter, is a mistake."

...

"Etsi parerchetai kosmos."

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Reflections on the Revolution in Gallia
Custodi // High City of Heraklion // The Cult of Archangels
Log Filter // Post Creator // Manhattan