#Advantages of studying in France

[rimaakter45]

نگاهی به نظام آموزشی فرانسه

این  نظام آموزشی کشور فرانسه  یک سیستم بسیار متمرکز است که به سه مرحله آموزش ابتدایی، آموزش متوسطه و آموزش عالی تقسیم می شود.

آموزش ابتدایی

آموزش ابتدایی در فرانسه برای کودکان 6 تا 11 ساله اجباری است. این دوره به دو دوره تقسیم می شود: دوره اول (maternelle) و دوره دوم (élémentaire).

در چرخه مادران، کودکان اصول اولیه خواندن، نوشتن و ریاضی را می آموزند. آنها همچنین در مورد رشد اجتماعی و عاطفی یاد می گیرند. در چرخه élémentaire، کودکان به یادگیری اصول اولیه خواندن، نوشتن و ریاضی ادامه می دهند. آنها همچنین در مورد علم، تاریخ و جغرافیا یاد می گیرند.

آموزش متوسطه

تحصیلات متوسطه در فرانسه به دو مرحله تقسیم می شود: دوره متوسطه پایین (کالج) و مرحله متوسطه عالی (لیسه).

مرحله کالج برای دانش آموزان 11 تا 15 ساله اجباری است. در مرحله کالج، دانش آموزان مبانی دروس مختلفی از جمله فرانسه، ریاضیات، علوم، تاریخ و جغرافیا را یاد می گیرند. آنها همچنین فرصت دارند در دروس انتخابی در موضوعاتی مانند موسیقی، هنر و زبان های خارجی شرکت کنند.

مرحله لیسه اجباری نیست، اما اکثر دانش آموزان شرکت را انتخاب می کنند. مرحله لیسه به سه جریان تقسیم می شود: Général (عمومی)، Technologique (تکنولوژیک) و Professionnel (حرفه ای).

در جریان عمومی، دانش آموزان موضوعات مختلف دانشگاهی از جمله فرانسه، ریاضیات، علوم، تاریخ و جغرافیا را یاد می گیرند. آنها همچنین فرصت دارند در دروس انتخابی در موضوعاتی مانند موسیقی، هنر و زبان های خارجی شرکت کنند. جریان عمومی دانشجویان را برای تحصیل در دانشگاه آماده می کند.

در جریان تکنولوژی، دانش آموزان موضوعات فنی مختلفی مانند مهندسی، کشاورزی و گردشگری را یاد می گیرند. جریان تکنولوژی دانش آموزان را برای مشاغل در این زمینه ها آماده می کند.

در جریان حرفه ای، دانش آموزان انواع مهارت های حرفه ای مانند لوله کشی، نجاری و آرایشگری را می آموزند. جریان حرفه ای دانش آموزان را برای مشاغل در این مشاغل آماده می کند.

آموزش عالی

آموزش عالی در فرانسه به سه نوع موسسات اصلی تقسیم می‌شود: دانشگاه‌ها، بزرگان مدارس و مدارس تخصصی.

دانشگاه ها موسسات دولتی هستند که طیف گسترده ای از برنامه های کارشناسی و کارشناسی ارشد را در زمینه های مختلف ارائه می دهند. دانشگاه ها معمولا برای همه دانش آموزانی که دارای مدرک لیسانس (دیپلم دبیرستان فرانسوی) هستند باز است.

Grandes écoles موسسات نخبه ای هستند که برنامه های بسیار گزینشی را در مهندسی، تجارت و سایر زمینه های تخصصی ارائه می دهند. ورود به دانشگاه‌های بزرگ معمولاً دشوارتر از دانشگاه‌ها است و دانش‌آموزان را ملزم به شرکت در آزمون ورودی رقابتی می‌کنند.

مدارس تخصصی موسساتی هستند که برنامه هایی را در زمینه خاصی مانند هنر، طراحی یا مد ارائه می دهند. مدارس تخصصی از نظر گزینش و شرایط پذیرش مت��اوت است.

منابع مالی

سیستم آموزشی فرانسه توسط دولت تامین می شود. دولت برای تمام مدارس دولتی از جمله مدارس ابتدایی، دبیرستان ها و دانشگاه ها بودجه تامین می کند. دولت همچنین برای مدارس خصوصی یارانه می دهد.

سیستم آموزشی فرانسه با چالش‌های متعددی مواجه است، از جمله:

• نرخ بالای ترک تحصیل: تعداد قابل توجهی از دانش آموزان فرانسوی قبل از اتمام تحصیلات متوسطه ترک تحصیل می کنند.

• نابرابری های منطقه ای: کیفیت آموزش از منطقه ای به منطقه دیگر به طور قابل توجهی متفاوت است.

• کمبود معلم: در برخی نقاط کشور کمبود معلم وجود دارد.

ابتکارات دولتی

دولت فرانسه اقداماتی را برای مقابله با چالش های پیش روی سیستم آموزشی انجام می دهد. این ابتکارات عبارتند از:

• سرمایه گذاری در آموزش دوران کودکی: دولت در حال سرمایه گذاری در برنامه های آموزش دوران کودکی است تا به کودکان کمک کند تا پایه ای قوی برای یادگیری ایجاد کنند.

• کاهش اندازه کلاس ها: دولت برای بهبود کیفیت آموزش، اندازه کلاس ها را کاهش می دهد.

• بهبود آموزش معلمان: دولت در حال بهبود برنامه های آموزش معلمان است تا اطمینان حاصل کند که معلمان برای آموزش به دانش آموزان خود به خوبی آماده هستند.

• سرمایه گذاری در زیرساخت ها: دولت در حال سرمایه گذاری در زیرساخت ها برای بهبود کیفیت ساختمان ها و امکانات مدارس است.

نتیجه

سیستم آموزشی فرانسه یک سیستم پیچیده با تعدادی نقاط قوت و ضعف است. دولت اقدامات متعددی را برای رفع چالش های پیش روی سیستم انجام می دهد، اما هنوز کارهای زیادی برای انجام دادن وجود دارد. لطفا به اینجا مراجعه کنید  نظام آموزشی کشور فرانسه   برای اطلاعات بیشتر.

[boxboxluckybird]

List of articles and books that are about Motorsports or Motorsports adjacent

Idk if y'all will have total access to these- I get to them through my university's library database- I'll give titles so you can find them- and if i have links to pdfs, ill put them in too

i will continue to update this list as i continue to read more books and articles :3 also i need to go on my uni laptop to get all the crash and safety books i have on there to put on this list

Motogp-

article about Franco Morbidelli and Joann Zarco's crash in 2020- gives full analysis with the numbers and a discussion of everything (link) Name of Article: Descriptive Kinematic Analysis of the Potentially Tragic Accident at the 2020 Austrian MotoGP Grand Prix Using Low-Cost Instruments: A Brief Report by Marco Gervasi et. al. (2020-10)

article about the myth surrounding Valentino Rossi- (it is in french but there is also an italian version) Name of Article: Valentino Rossi : la construction médiatique du mythe by Charlotte Moge pp. 363-383 (DOI link)

Book Chapter Valentino Rossi: A Uniquely British Look at an Italian Motorsport Legend by Sean Bell in "More than Cricket and Football: International Sport and the Challenge of Celebrity" (2016)

this one is all about the economy and how motogp affects tourism in Indonesia-

Do Satisfied Visitors Intend to Revisit a Large Sports Event? A Case Study of a Large Sports Event in Indonesia by Pahrudin Pahrudin Link to PDF (Article) (2024-12)

Formula One-

Book about racism in sports- (i used this as a main secondary source when researching historic racism in f1) it has an article about Lewis Hamilton and other racism in formula one Title- Race, Racism and Sports Journalism by Neil Farrington (2012) (i recommend his other book about racism in sports social media)

"Technology Innovations and Consumption of Formula 1 as a TV Sport Product" by Christopher Schneiders (2022-09)

Analyzing Brand Strategy on an International Scale: The Sponsorship Performance Cycle in Formula One Racing by Jonathan A Jensen, et. al. (2024-09) (Article)

When Success Is Rare and Competitive: Learning from Others' Success and My Failure at the Speed of Formula One by Micheal A Lapre (2022-12) (Article)

Green Light or black flag? Greenwashing environmental sustainability in Formula One and Formula E by Annals of leisure research(2025-01) (Article)

Technological Discontinuities and Competitive Advantages: A Historical Perspective on Formula 1 Motor Racing 1950-2006 by Mark Jenkins (2010-07) (Article)

Sandwiched Between Sport and Politics: Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, Formula 1, and Non-Democratic Regimes by Hans Erik Naess (2017-05) (Article)

The age-productivity gradient: Evidence from a sample of F1 drivers by Labour economics (2011-08) (Article) pdf link

Book Chapter Chapter 10: Aryton Senna, Alain Prost, and the Spector of Death by Becquer Medak-Seguin, et. al. in "Cultural Exchanges Between Brazil and France" (2016)

Smoke and mirrors: new tobacco products and Formula 1 by The Lancet (2019-05) (Article)

NASCAR-

"If It Ain't Rubbin', It Ain't Racin'" Article about Nascar by Lawrence and Barbara Hugenburg (2008-08)

A comparison of college football and NASCAR consumer profiles: Identity formation and spectatorship motivation by Shaughan A Keaton (2015-03) (Article)

"Sport, Spectacle, and NASCAR Nation: Consumption and the Cultural Politics of Neoliberalism" by Joshua Newman (2011)

Book Chapter Louise Smith: The First Lady of Racing by Suzanne Wise in "South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times" (Volume 3) (2012)

Book Chapter The Most Southern Sport on Earth: NASCAR and the Unions by Dan Pierce in "Southern Cultures : The Fifteenth Anniversary Reader" (2008)

Special interest ones-

"Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness" by Ewan Thomas- pdf- link (2022)

"The future of motorsports: business, politics and society" by Hans Erik Naess, et. al. (2023)

"The Green Transition in Motorsport: Purpose, Politics, and Profit" by Hans Erik Naess, et. al. (2023)

More than "just a driver": A study of professional women racecar drivers' agency in motorsport by Jill Kochanek (2021-01) (Article)

'What on Earth are They Doing in a Racing Car?': Towards an Understanding of Women in Motorsport by Jordan J.K. Matthews, and Elizabeth C.J. Pike (2016-09) (Article)

tag list: @raikkonens @caleb-is-existing @books4ever03

[miiv12]

Turns out it wasn’t just the one class, apparently she shared multiple subjects with Miss Ulivieri, for a moment Annie had worried they were studying for the same degree, the relief she felt when the mysterious girl failed to show up for the last lecture of the day was immense. While she was sitting at one of the tables outside, going through her notes while waiting for the bus, her curiosity finally won out and she searched up the name on her worn phone (It still worked fine for what she needed and she really didn’t have the money to get a newer one right now) and it was no wonder the name had rang a bell. Ulivieri was the surname of an old, well respected and very wealthy family, they were best known for being one of the first and largest importers of goods originating from France, but what Annie knew them for was the fact that they’d been among the founders of Anders University and still funded the school to this day, basically every single member of the family had studied here.

And she just happened to be there at the same time with one of them, Élodie Ulivieri, who Annie had found very little on compared to anyone else in that family. Some might call it weird or even stalkerish to search stuff like that up about another person, but Annie had only used the tools that were freely provided, there was nothing wrong with doing a little research. Basically all she knew for sure about her fellow student was that her mother was Berenice Ulivieri, the current matriarch of the family, no mention of a father though, very mysterious.

Élodie was not what she would have expected from a ridiculously rich heiress, or maybe she was exactly what Annie expected, a spoiled, indifferent, lazy brat. Heck, none of the professors even mentioned her state of dress or the fact she did nothing during lectures but play with her phone and nap. It frustrated Annie to no end, knowing such an individual could do the bare minimum or even less and get everything handed to them just because their rich family had way too much sway in the running of the school.

Annie realized she was getting too worked up over this, she took a breath and clenched her hands into fists, tight enough to leave nail marks on her palms, unclenched them, and repeated this a couple times. Feeling calmer, she checked the time, eyes widening in alarm when she realized she was running late for the bus. She quickly gathered her things from the table where she’d been sitting, stuffed them into her bag and ran as fast as she could in an attempt to catch her ride, not noticing she’d accidentally left one of her notebooks behind.

“-and Miss Joyce showed us how to make butterflies and frogs out of paper! She said mine were really good!” Annie smiled at the young girl bouncing beside her as she told her about her day at school on their way home. “I can show you how to make them! It was really easy, I wanna make lots of them and hang them in my room.” The child continued, sounding very excited about the idea. “Sure Eva, but I have school work to take care of first, and so do you.” Annie reminded, earning a pout from the younger girl. “But I’m too hungry to do work.” She whined, looking up at her with a pleading look. “Can we get food first? Oh! Can we pick up something? Pleeeaaase?” This girl had long since learned exactly how to use what she had to her advantage, those things being her cuteness, and persistence. It was impressive, but it saddened Annie to know why she’d had to learn to be resourceful like that. She was going to deny the request, she’d already planned out their meals for the week and bought everything needed for them..but she had always been weak when it came to her sister’s large, well practiced puppy eyes. “Well..okay, it’s within our food budget for the month, so why not?” Eva’s expression quickly switched to a joyful one and she started to run ahead, dragging Annie along by her hand, almost making the older girl lose her footing. “Let’s go! I know exactly where we’re going!”

“Eva! Slow down!” Annie protested, but she knew once her sister got going there was little that would deter her, she had no choice but to keep up and try and keep her out of trouble.

Next: https://miiv12.tumblr.com/post/784106406839238656/where-is-it-where-is-it-annie-moved-from-one Prev: https://www.tumblr.com/miiv12/776318750535352320/annie-could-barely-believe-she-was-actually?source=share

[queenshelby]

Forbidden Desire (Part 21)

Pairing: Thomas Shelby x Reader (Female/Incestuous)

Warnings: Incest, Smut

Please comment and engage xx 😘

The following day, when you woke up, exhausted from tending to a crying child all night, it was Frances who brought you some breakfast to your room.

"Good Morning Miss Shelby," she said as, ever so gently, she laid out the food before you.

She seemed especially sensitive today, attuned to the tensions that permeated throughout the house. As she handed you a cup of tea, she offered, “If you need anything at all, please don't hesitate.”

"Thank you, Frances," you smiled without needing to take up her offer for assistance before enquiring about the whereabouts of your fiancé. "Do you know where Robert might be?" you wondered, seeing that he had risen early that day.

"I believe that he has gone hunting with Mr Shelby," Frances informed you, causing your chin to drop.

"He's gone hunting with my father?" you asked, but Frances shook her head. 

"No, miss. He has gone hunting with your uncle, Thomas Shelby," she said apologetically and, immediately, you froze, stunned by the news.

"Has anyone else gone with them?" you wondered, seeing that, not only had Robert never held a rifle before, nor did you consider it wise for him to spend time alone with Tommy while Tommy was in possession of a weapon of such kind. 

"No, they have left the house on their own. I believe that I heard Mr Shelby say that he wanted to get to know him a bit better now that he was marrying you," Frances elaborated, her sympathetic demeanor evident. 

Feeling concerned for Robert's safety, you could feel anger rising within you. How dare Tommy take advantage of Robert's naïveté, you thought, but, before you could interrogate Frances further, there came a knock at the door.

Opening it, you discovered your father, Arthur, standing on the other side, an amused smile playing upon his lips.

"Fucking Hell, Love," he drawled, raising an eyebrow teasingly. "You cannot seriously marry this man," he laughed before shaking his head disapprovingly. 

"Excuse me?" you murmured, taken aback by his demure.

"Your Uncle has gone out to the woods with him to shoot a stag and he threw up all over his own fucking suit," Arthur chuckled, referring to the fact that Robert felt somewhat sickened by the act of the hunt. "And I thought he is a fucking doctor," he then added, laughing even more.

"He is a doctor yes and, unlike you and the rest of my family, he may not enjoy the act of killing," you retorted defiantly, feeling slightly irritated by your father's mockery, just as Robert barged into the room as well.

His face pale and sweaty, he looked almost ill and, just as he approached you, you could smell the vomit on his clothes.

"Frances will have these cleaned for you," you assured him kindly, gesturing for him to sit down. Ignoring your suggestion, Robert went straight for the mirror in your suite, studying his reflection intently. Seeing his discomfort, you decided to intervene.

"Perhaps hunting isn't for you darling, and I don't blame you," you remarked carefully, but Robert was evidently upset and offended. 

"Just shut up, Y/N! Please!" he snapped, his hands clenching into tight fists as if daring them to betray his fragile state. His expression clouded over with frustration and shame.

"Did you just tell me to shut up?" you demanded incredulously, surprised by his uncharacteristically harsh response.

Robert visibly crumbled under your gaze, looking genuinely repentant.

"I…I didn't mean it like that, alright? Sorry. But, Jesus Christ, Y/N. I don't belong here. I shouldn't have come here," he admitted miserably, clearly regretting his outburst. "And neither should you. You don't belong here either," he then lectured you sternly, unable to conceal his disappointment and frustration. "This place isn't suited for people like us – we aren't killers, murderers, criminals," Robert told you without knowing that you, too, had killed a man before, albeit in self-defense. 

"Last night, I saw two body bags being carried out of the yards. Your uncle and father were watching on as some gypsy picked them up. You were fast asleep finally, so I did not mention it at the time. I knew you needed the rest," Robert continued, choosing his words carefully. His vulnerability was touching, making you want to reach out and comfort him. However, unsure how to approach him after his earlier outburst, you remained silent until he asked a very relevant question.

"You aren't involved in any criminal activities back in Boston, are you?" Robert prodded cautiously, attempting to reconcile the disparity between the life he knew of you and the reality of living amongst the Shelby Family.

Looking away briefly, you struggled to find the right words. While you couldn't deny that you weren't entirely innocent, it wasn't something you wished to discuss with him.

Instead, you decided to provide him with an answer which would suffice for the moment.

"My line of work is complicated," you began diplomatically, causing Robert to sigh with frustration.

"Is it alcohol or is it drugs you are bringing into Boston?" he wanted to know earnestly, his brow furrowed in concern.

Suddenly aware of the depth of trust he was seeking from you, you took a deep breath before answering honestly.

"It's only alcohol and I promise you that I will not get involved in the import of anything else. No drugs. No weapons. No prostitutes," you replied firmly, determined to give him an account that wouldn't put you in immediate danger upon returning home and, after several moments of silence, Robert cleared his throat awkwardly, changing the subject. 

"When we get back to Boston, we will plan our wedding. I want you to leave this life behind. You can stay home and look after Edward. You can be a housewife, be looked after and cared for by me. I am a good man Y/N and you deserve a good man," Robert insisted passionately, his green eyes burning brightly with determination.

"We shall see, Robert," you told him just as Edward began to cry once again. You had no intention of becoming a stay-at-home mother and knew that, a life like this, as a doctor's wife, would not satisfy you. 

The idea of giving up the excitement and thrill you derived from working alongside the menacing figures around you made you uneasy, yet simultaneously, you craved stability.

***

As you went on with your day at Arrow House, you and Edward spent time in the gardens before tending to the horses while Robert took solace in Tommy's vast library and Lizzie went for yet another dress fitting for her wedding.

Along with the maids and two Blinders he had employed for security, Tommy was the only other person at home and, with Robert having indulged himself in some books, this gave him the perfect opportunity to bond with his six-month old son without raising suspicions. 

"May I hold him?" Tommy thus asked as you met him in the stables to show Edward the horses. There was a certain tenderness about him, an empathy that seemed completely misplaced among those present. And yet, his gentleness and compassion struck you as oddly familiar. Something stirred deep within your heart, echoing through forgotten memories, resonating beneath your skin.

"Of course. Just watch out for the horses," you cautioned lightly, handing over your son to Tommy.

Though it appeared effortless when holding Edward, the way he cradled the baby showed immense care and attention.

There was a palpable air of trepidation surrounding Tommy when he was near his son, a hint of fear mixed with uncertainty lingering within his heart. 

"He is perfect," Tommy whispered reverentially, staring deeply into Edwards’ wide round eyes and tiny fingers. It was as though he was trying to memorize every aspect of his son before you would return to the US. This unspoken need reflected a level of desperation Tommy tried hard to hide, but you could sense it. 

"Perhaps you could visit us in Boston one day?" you suggested tentatively, hoping to ease some of the tension building around you and, though this notion was not unappealing to you, you also recognized the potential risks associated with crossing paths with Tommy again, especially considering the circumstances that led to your departure from Birmingham in the first place. 

"Yes... perhaps," Tommy agreed reluctantly, avoiding eye contact. As much as he desired a connection with his child, he feared what reuniting with you might bring.  

"I should take him back inside. He needs a sleep," you eventually said softly, breaking the tension between you and Tommy.

Handing Edward back gingerly, you noted how Tommy tenderly held onto the baby, savouring every last second before parting ways.

"Good luck," he chuckled, seeing that Edward was a terrible sleeper, just like his father.

"Thank you," you smiled warmly, turning to make your way back into the house, leaving Tommy alone with the horses. Although there was still an underlying tension between you both, the fleeting interaction left you with a strange mix of emotions - sadness, nostalgia, desire. Intrigued by the unexpected affection you shared for Tommy, now more than ever, your curiosity peaked further.

Back inside, you proceeded toward the guest room in which you were staying and, just after Edward finally went down for his sleep, you sought out Frances to locate some writing paper, wanting to write to your mother who had since located to Belfast. 

"Usually there is some paper inside the reading-room, on the cabinet to the left,"

she informed you helpfully, leading you to where you thought you may find what you were searching for.

When you arrived, however, you discovered that Robert had fallen asleep there and neither of you wanted to disturb him.

"Mr Shelby should have some in his office," she added tactfully, indicating that you should seek him out instead and, since you knew where he usually kept his writing supplies, you entered his office unannounced, knowing full well that he was still inside the stables. 

Entering the opulent space, adorned with luxurious leather furniture and expensive Persian carpets, you approached his large mahogany desk and began rifling through its contents, finding exactly what you were looking for.

However, when you picked up a pile of elegant writing paper from one of the draws, buried beneath it you found several letters that were addressed to you. 

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[anotherhumaninthisworld]

Can you please give an explainer on the friendship between Robespierre and Desmoulins and what their dynamic together was like? I know they were at school together as kids but were they really as close as movies usually portray them as? Was Robespierre better friends with Saint-Just?

Bonus: What's the story behind Desmoulins using Roussaeau against Robespierre?

Merci!

That’s an interesting question considering how often their relationship, as you say, has gotten dramatized.

The good days of the relationship

Both Robespierre and Desmoulins started attending the boarding school of Louis-le-Grand at the age of eleven, the former in 1769, the latter in 1771. We don’t know when exactly they first ran into and/or got to know each other, nor exactly just how close or not they actually grew to be while at college. To me, the following two statements do however suggest that their relationship back then was at least better than ”mere acquaintances”:

Oh, my dear Robespierre! It is not long since we were sighing together over our country’s servitude, since, drawing from the same sources the sacred love of liberty and equality, amid so many professors whose lessons only taught us to detest our land, we were complaining there was no professor of cabals who would teach us to free it, when we were regretting the tribune of Rome and Athens, how far was I from thinking that the day of a constitution a thousand times more beautiful was so close to shining on us, and that you, in the tribune of the French people, would be one of the firmest ramparts of the nascent freedom! Desmoulins in number 15 of Révolutions de France et de Brabant (March 8 1790)

I knew Camille in college, he was my study companion, he was then a talented young man without mature judgement. Since then Camille has developed the most ardent love of the Republic;... one must not look only at one point in his moral life, one must take the whole of it; one must examine him as a whole. Robespierre defends Camille at the Jacobins December 14 1793 (only time he ever admitted to a college friendship with anyone at all)

Liévin-Bonaventure Proyart, who worked at the college up until 1778, would give the following description of the relationship Desmoulins and Robespierre had back then in his La vie et les crimes de Robespierre: surnommé le Tyran… (1795):

In his lower classes, and however young he had been, [Robespierre] was very rarely seen sharing the amusements and games which most please childhood. His cold and misanthropic heart never knew those outpourings of lively and frank joy, natural signs of candor and ingenuity. Of all the noisy and endlessly varied amusements which make the public recreation of a college such an animated scene, none pleased him, and he preferred dark reveries and solitary walks. If someone, at these moments, approached him, he received him with a cold gravity; and answered him at first only in monofyllables. If he took it upon himself to praise his style and his scholastic productions, Robespierre did him the favor of striking up a conversation with him. But, however little one ventured to thwart him, one instantly became the object of some harsh and virulent trait. Camille Desmoulins, who lived at the same college, and whose impetuous and untidy character did not adapt well to the philosophical arrogance of Robespierre, had from time to time grapples with him, but from then on as since, the champions did not fight on equal terms. Always more reflective than the opponent who provoked him, and more master of his moves, Robespierre, watching the moment, pounced on him with all the advantage that cold prudence has over temerity.

Fellow students Beffroy de Reigny and Stanislas Fréron would in the latter half of the 1790’s similarly make the contradiction of stating both that the young Robespierre didn’t have any friends at school and that he and Desmoulins had been college comrades (Beffroy writing that Robespierre was ”his (Desmoulins’) comrade and mine” and Fréron that Desmoulins was Robespierre’s ”childhood comrade”). Though given the time these texts were written, I think this might should be read more as these Robespierre-dislikers wanting to have the cake and eat it too (ergo they both want Robespierre to have killed his childhood friend and to have been so repulsive he had no friends at all) than as full blown evidence Camille was Robespierre’s ”only friend” at school as the latter puts it in La Terreur et la Vertu.

Finally, Marcellin Matton, when writing a short biography over Camille in 1834, stated the following regarding his college days:

It was [at Louis-le Grand] that Camille got to know Maximilien Robespierre. They differed in character, but both had this passion which always distinguishes men of genius — love for liberty and for independence. The fully republican education one gave to young people born to live under a monarchy contributed a lot to their character. Without stop and in all forms, one presented them with history of Gracchus, Brutus, Cato. Camille was always together with Robespierre and their conversation most often revolved around the constitution of the Roman Republic.

While this certainly sounds like it could just be romantizing, we do know Matton was friends with Camille’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and it it’s therefore possible it’s them (who in their turn would have gotten it from Camille) who have given him this account of a close college relationship.

It’s sometimes argued that Robespierre and Desmoulins can’t have been friends while at school since they were never in the same grade, and it therefore would have been really hard for them to socialize. And indeed, when looking over the school regulations that were in motion during their time there, that does indeed come off as quite a hard thing to do — students were to stick to their ”quarter” both in dormitories, during classes, study hall, on Sunday outings, and at table (at first I thought maybe these ”quarters” weren’t neccessarily made up of students who all came from the same grade, but this other piece seems to rule out that possibility). This leaves the thirty-minute recesses as the only places where students from different quarters would have gotten a chance to interact with one another (bc they all seemed to have recess at the same time according to the schedule…). I do however think Robespierre and Desmoulins’ own testimonies weigh heavier than this. Desmoulins would also go on to admit college friendships with other students we know for a fact can never have been in the same grade as him.

In 1774 and 1775, both Robespierre and Desmoulins’ names featured on the list of students that had been awarded annual prizes for their hard labors, which means that they, according to the regulations, got presented before the bureau of administration by the principal ”to there receive praise and rewards due to their work and the success of their studies” together.

After graduating (Robespierre in 1781, Desmoulins in 1785) the two seemingly lost sight of one another, at least we don’t have any evidence they corresponded or in other ways kept up contact. Two pieces do however show us they did not forget about each other entirely. The first is a letter dated spring 1786 Camille adressed to the aforementioned Beffroy de Reigny, who in January the same year had openly thanked his ”former study comrade Robespiere [sic]” for sending him two of his works as a gift.

It was noticed lately, as a misfortune attached to the house where we were brought up together, that none of those who had distinguished themselves there fulfilled in the world the hopes that he had first given, that you alone seem happier right now, and we rejoice in your many subscribers. Although the subscribers are your dear and beloved cousins, we can clearly see that you have not forgotten the rest of the family, nor lost sight of the mountain where we were the first to applaud you. The advantageous manner in which you have spoken of M. Robespiere [sic] has charmed us all; up to now, M. Jéhanne has missed only one opportunity to provide you with the occasion of doing him justice as well. The joy with which you gave well deserved praise to a comrade reproached me for my conduct towards you, and obliges me to retract. 

In 1793, Robespierre did in his turn admit to before the revolution have read a poem (that according to Camille had been written in 1787), and felt proud once he realized who the author was:

Remember that at a time when the monarchy was best established on its foundations, Camille, a simple individual, without support, without advocate or patron, a lawyer without a cause on the fourth floor, dared to put into verse the proudest principles of the most determined Republican. Then, in the depths of my province, I learned with secret pleasure that the author was one of my college comrades.

Interestingly, Robespierre’s younger brother Augustin started studying law at Louis-le-Grand in 1784, one year before Camille graduated from said program, although neither would claim to have known the other while at college.

On May 8 1789, Desmoulins authored a letter to his father, telling him about the opening of the Estates General at Versailles three days earlier. Lamenting the fact he himself didn’t get elected for it, he writes: ”one of my comrades has been more fortunate than I, it’s de Robespierre, deputy from Arras. He has been wise enough to plead in his own province.” The fact Camille was able to recognize Robespierre eight years after their separation (and care about it enough to write it down), could be read as yet another sign their college relationship had at least mattered somewhat, especially since this letter is from before Robespierre had made any kind of name for himself politically. How exactly Camille found out Robespierre had been elected (did he recognize his face in a crowd, accidentally run into him or just see it written down somewhere?) is however unknown.

After the ceremony, Camille did however head back to Paris, while Robespierre would remain at Versailles up until October 1789. On July 23 1789, the latter writes to his friend Antoine Buissart that he has been shown the stormed Bastille after the king and the National Assembly’s brief visit to Paris following July 14, but there’s no evidence he saw Desmoulins during it, or even that he knew he had been the one inciting the storming at this point.

In the beginning of September, Camille released Discours de la Lanterne aux Parisiens, the first of his works which he mentioned Robespierre in:

I would at least congratulate M. de Robespierre for opposing with all his strength the release of the Duke of Vauguyon. M. Glaizen opposed it in an even more eloquent manner. Member of the criminal committee, he resigned immediately. This speaks of conviction. Honor to MM. Glaizen and Robespierre!

Later the same month, Camille went back to Versaille after having been invited by Mirabeau, and the day after his arrival (September 20 1789) he could write to tell his father: ”If you hear bad things said about me, console yourself with the memory of the testimony that MM. de Mirabeau, Target, M. de Robespierre, Gleizal and more than two hundred deputies gave me.” Camille stayed with Mirabeau for two weeks before returning to Paris, but there’s no proof he saw Robespierre any more times during his stay.

When Robespierre too went to Paris soon thereafter, he settled in an apartment on Rue de Saintonge, today a 45 minute walk away from Camille’s erstwhile home on Rue de Tournon 19. Despite finally living in the same city again, it’s not until March 6 1790 I’ve discovered something more concreate tying the two together. It’s a note from Desmoulins to Robespierre, found listed in Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences, agriculture, commerce, belles-lettres et arts du département de la Somme (1907) as one of many Desmoulins related text published in Journal de Vervins during the summer of 1884. Unfortunately, I can’t find this journal online anywhere, so I don’t know what the note was about.

In November 1789, Camille founded his very first journal — Révolutions de France et de Brabant — that would run until the fall of 1791. Searching for the term ”Robespierre” in the seven digitalized volumes of the journal, I find Camille talking about him around 85 times. The first time is in number 4 (released December 19 1789), where he makes sure to underline the fact that he and Robespierre had been ”college comrades”:

…If my dear college comrade, Robespierre, had said the same thing to the viscount, he wouldn’t have been able to respond like Saint Peter.

This was the first in a long series of homages Desmoulins’ journal would pay Robespierre. Throughout the years, he called him among other things ”The last of Romans and my hero” (number 41, September 6 1790), ”So pure, so inflexible, the peak of patriotism” (number 46, October 11 1790), ”the living commentary on the Declaration of Rights” (number 65, February 21 1791) and ”immutable” (number 76, May 9 1791). Desmoulins was also second in giving Robespierre the famous nickname ”the Incorruptible.” Not even Robespierre’s erstwhile boyfriend brother in arms Pétion, where Camille still admitted it was impossible to speak of one without thinking about the other (number 55, December 13 1790) got the same almost saintlike treatment. While Robespierre got praised by several journals positive to the revolution, I don’t think it would be that unfair to say Desmoulins was his cheerleader number one during at least its first few years. Several times, Robespierre also sent Camille speeches and letters of his which the latter willfully inserted into his journal (1, 2, 3).

I’ve found only one time Révolutions de France et de Brabant had something negative to say about Robespierre, and it is in number 27, released on May 31 1790, and conviently enough, the next piece of information regarding Desmoulins and Robespierre’s relationship that I know of:

I wasted my time preaching the republic. The republic and democracy are now down, and it is unfortunate for an author to shout in the desert and to write pages as worthless, as little listened to, as the motions of J. F. Maury. Since I despair of overcoming insurmountable currents, tied for six months to the bench of rowers, perhaps I would do well to regain the shore, and throw away a useless oar. I should leave Garnery, continue writing Révolutions de France et de Brabant at a discount, without attempting with my librarian, the unequal struggle of Tournon with Prudhomme. But I hear Robespierre call my discouragement corruption, and exclaim that I am sold like the others to the King's wife and to the ministerial party. I must undeceive my dear Robespierre, I must give new proofs of my incorruptibility every week, show that I am as proud a republican as he is, and that when the number of patriots, which is diminishing prodigiously every day, would be reduced to one or two citizens, it is I who would like to remain the last of the Jacobins. […] How is it that I was accused of being a sold-out journalist, and that I saw Robespierre and L... among my slanderers, when it is so difficult to find proofs of corruption against me? […] So I could not have my neck wrapped in a handkerchief and complain of esquinancia without being reproached for argyrancia as well. Ungrateful Robespierre!

A week later, June 7 1790, Robespierre authors the following letter to Desmoulins, in response to something the latter has written about him in the number of his journal released right after the one quoted above:

Monsieur, I read the following passage regarding the decree from May 22 on the right of war and peace in your (votre) latest number of Révolutions de France et de Brabant: On Saturday, May 22, the little dauphin applauded a decree Mirabeau had put forward with a good sense way beyond his young years. The people applauded too. It led back in triumph Barnave, Péthion [sic], Lameth, d'Aiguillon, Duport, and all the illustrious Jacobins; imagiening itself having just won a great victory, and these deputies had the weakness to maintain it in an error which they enjoyed. Robespierre was more frank, he said to the multitude which surrounded him and stunned them with his beating statement: ”Well! gentlemen, what are you congratulating yourself on? the decree is detestable, detestable to the last bit; let's let the brat clap his hands at his window, he knows better than us what he's doing.” I must, monsieur, point out the error in which you have been led on the fact which concerns me in this passage. I told the National Assembly my opinion on the principles and consequences of the decree which regulates the exercise of the right of peace and war; but there I stopped. I did not make the statement you cite in the Tuileries garden; I didn’t even speak to the crowd of citizens who gathered in my path as I crossed it. I believe I must disavow this fact: 1, because it is not true; 2, because, however disposed I am to always display in the National Assembly the character of frankness which should distinguish the representatives of the nation, I am not unaware that elsewhere there is a certain reserve which suits them. I hope, monsieur, that you will be good enough to make my statement public through your newspaper, especially since your magnanimous zeal for the cause of liberty will make it a law for you not to leave bad citizens the slightest of pretext to calumniate the energy of the defenders of the people. De Robespierre.

There’s certainly not much in this letter implying Robespierre is friends with Desmoulins, or even knows him as anything more than a journalist… All readers’ letters published within Révolutions de France et de Brabant up to this point have however used vouvoiement and been about as formal, so it’s possible Robespierre (who, according to his conserved correspondence, doesn’t use a particulary warm tone with anyone around this period save his arragois friend Antoine Buissart) is trying to mimick them. It’s also not impossible his tone had something to do with what Desmoulins had written about him a week earlier. Desmoulins did however not let himself become influenced by it when publishing and responding to the letter in the the next number (June 14 1790) of his journal. He even chose to adress Robespierre in tutoiment, even though Robespierre addressed him with vouvoiement, and despite having adressed every other correspondent to the journal with vouvoiement up until this point.

If I insure this errata, my dear Robespierre, it is only to show your (ton) signature to my fellow journalists, and teach them not to cripple a name that patriotism has illustrated. There is in your letter a dignity, a seanatorial gravity which wounds college friendship. You’re rightly proud of the laticlave of deputy to the National Assembly. This noble pride pleases me, and what annoys me even more is that not everyone feels their dignity as you do? But you should at least greet a former comrade with a slight nod. I love you none the less, because you are faithful to principles, even if you are not so faithful to friendship. However, why demand this retraction from me? When I would have slightly altered the truth in the anecdote I told, since this fact is honorable for you, since I doubtless said what you thought, if not your expressed words, instead of disavowing the journalists so curtly, you had to content yourself with saying like the cousin, in the charming comedy of the supposed dead man: ”Ah! Monsieur, vous brodez!” You are not one of those weak men of whom J.J Rousseau speaks, who do not want anyone to be able to repeat what they think, and who only speak the truth in their negligee or in their dressing gown, and not in the National Assembly or in the Tuileries.

According to Brissot, the incident did however end up making both college comrades rather piqued against one another. In his memoirs (1793), he wrote the following about it:

I reread this letter to Camille, which chance put before my eyes at this moment, and of which Robespierre himself had brought me a copy to print so that it would have more publicity. It is dated June 8 [sic] 1790 […] Doesn't everything in this letter, on which I can't help but dwell yet, bear the character of a vague uneasiness, of a singular timidity? I remember on this occasion Robespierre with his fears and his scruples which he could not dissimulate. Desmoulins' thoughtlessness alarmed him; he didn't know what to think of it. Was this young man paid to write such follies, and thus compromise the friends of reason and liberty? The deputy's response to the journalist was dignified, proud; it was indeed the style of a patriot. Royalism? what clumsiness! […] Before inserting this complaint in my diary, I warned Camille, whose susceptibility I knew. His answer was made, he left it to me; but I thought I was agreeable to him by publishing neither this answer nor the complaint of which it was the object. He seemed to me strongly piqued against Robespierre. Was it in this tone that a college friend had written to him? What had this rose-watered Brutus to blame, and what power was he so afraid of displeasing? However, Cassius did not want to anger Brutus. Desmoulins always sought to stick to celebrities, to Danton as to Mirabeau, to Linguet as to Robespierre; he would have sought out Marat, had that wolf been able to live with someone in society. Moreover, Robespierre's letter, like his signature, struck his mind, and his answer smelt a bit of taunting.

If the relationship got damaged, it was however not enough to stop Robespierre from saving Camille after an arrest warrant had been issued against him during the session of the National Assembly held on August 2 1790:

M. Malouet: …Is Camille Desmoulins innovative? He will justify himself. Is he guilty? I will be the accuser of him and of all those who take up his defense. Let him justify himself, if he dares. (A voice rises from the stands: ”Yes, I dare.” A part of the surprised assembly rises; the rumor spreads in the assembly that it is M. Camille Desmoulins who has spoken; the president gives the order to arrest the individual who uttered these words). N…: I ask that we deliberate beforehand on this arrest. M. Robespierre: I believe that the provisional order given by the President was indispensable; but must you confuse imprudence and inconsideration with crime? He heard himself accused of a crime against the Nation, it is difficult for a sensitive man to remain silent. It cannot be supposed that he intended to disrespect the Legislative Body. Humanity agrees with justice, pleads in its favour. I ask for his release, and that we move on to the agenda. The president annonces that M. Camille Desmoulins has escaped and can’t be arrested. The Assembly pass onto the order of the day.

Desmoulins was grateful Robespierre had stepped in, and in number 38 (August 16 1790) of his journal, he described the incident in the following way:

My dear Robespierre did not abandon me at this moment. By condemning me at first he conciliated all minds, and then brought them back with great art by developing this motion: if it is someone other than M. Desmoulins who raised his voice, this breach of assembly wheat must be punished; if it is him; it is difficult for an accused who does not feel guilty not to accept the challenge of his accuser. I ask for his release. Robespierre was applauded.

When Fréron (who we know was on friendly terms with at least Camille) described the very same incident in his journal l’Orateur du Peuple, he did refer to Robespierre as ”[Camille’s] friend” so perhaps their relationship had indeed gotten better since Robespierre’s impersonal letter…

Three numbers later (September 6 1790) Desmoulins writes about having given Robespierre a book written by abbot Jean-Joseph Rive:

O most learned and most patriotic of abbots! I read your letters, in which you always start out angry with me, and in which you end up smothering me with patriotic semens, and I gave your dear Robespierre your 700 pages in-80. But when do expect us to find the time to read your little novel?

Pierre Villiers, who in his Souvenirs d’un déporté (1802) claimed to have served as Robespierre’s secretary April-November 1790, wrote that the latter during this period ”thought the highest (il a fait le plus grand cas) of Camille Desmoulins. He's going too fast, Robespierre said to me, he'll break his neck; Paris wasn't made in a day, it takes more than a day to undo.”

On December 11 1790, Camille was given permission to marry Lucile Duplessis. Two weeks later, December 27, Robespierre, alongside Pétion, Brissot, Mercier, Sillery, Danton, Duport du Tertre, Barnave, Viefville des Essarts, Charles Lameth, Alexandre Lameth, Mirabeau, Andrieu and Deviefville, signed the couple’s wedding contract (1, 2). Two days after that, the wedding ceremony was held in Église Saint-Sulpice. Writing to his father about it, Camille could report that the witnesses this time had been ”Péthion [sic] and Robespierre, the elite of the National Assembly, M. de Sillery, who wanted to be there, and my two collegues Brissot de Warville and Mercier, the elite among the journalists.” The priest presiding over the ceremony was Denis Bérardier, who from 1778 to 1787 had been Camille and Robespierre’s college principal, after which he had been elected to represent the clergy at the Estates general. In the previously cited letter to his father, Camille writes that Bérardier during the ceremony held a speech that moved both him, Lucile and all of the witnesses to tears. An anonymous anecdote from 1792 similarily claims Camille began to cry out of joy during the ceremony, only this time Robespierre, instead of crying along with him, responded: ”don’t cry, you hypocrite!” It was however dismissed as apocryphal by Desmoulins’ latest biographer. After the ceremony, Camille reports that groom, bride, the witnesses and Bérardier all went over to his place to have dinner together with Lucile’s parents and sister. 

A little more than a month after the wedding, Robespierre, impatient to see a speech of his printed in Révolutions de France et de Brabant, sent the following letter to Camille. This is the first time in his conserved correspondence where he doesn’t use vouvoiement, and it won’t be until February 1793 that he does so again (though I don’t have any appreciation on whether adressing someone in third-person is less formal or not):

Paris, February 14 1791 I point out to Monsieur Camille Demoulins [sic] that neither the beautiful eyes nor the fine qualities of the charming Lucile are reasons for not announcing my work on the national guard which has been given to him and of which I send him a copy if necessary. At this moment there is no object more pressing or more important than the organization of the National Guards. At least that is what the citizens of Marseilles think, of whom I am here attaching a decree relating to my speech. I beg Camille not to mislead himself and to try to also send me back the letters from Avignon and the replies which I gave him. Robespierre

Camille obliged, printing the speech a week later in number 65 (February 21 1791) of his journal. It happened to be Discours sur l’organisation des gardes nationales, in which Robespierre becomes the first person ever to use the three words ”liberté, égalité, fraternité” as a slogan. But it was Camille who in July 1790 had been the first to bring the three words together as a formula. Robespierre and Desmoulins can therefore be said to hold the shared responsibility for the invention of what today is France’s national motto.

Five days after Camille had published Robespierre’s speech, February 26, Madame Chalabre wrote to the latter that ”The patriot Camille, in his last speech, paints with a charming naturalness, a truly original precision, the character of your talents. One would think that the genius of the good and unfortunate Jean-Jacques inspired him; it is of such a delicate touch; he shed so many tears reading this passage! Good Camille, you deserve the happiness which I hope you will enjoy with your lovely companion.” A week later, March 3, Sillery writes to Camille that ”Madame de Sillery is coming to dine at my house with Pétion and Robespierre, I dare to ask your lovable and beautiful wife to too do me this honor. […] Come, my dear Camille, if you have ever found yourself in a pure and exact democracy, it will be eight o’clock on Sunday when I hope to embrace you.”

In number 79 (June 4 1791) of his journal, Camille praises the ”simplicity” of Robespierre ”going by foot from his home on rue Saintonge to the National Assembly and dining for 30 sols,” implying they are on good enough terms for him to know those details about him. A few weeks later, June 21, Paris woke up to the discovery that the royal family had disappeared from the capital during the night. In number 82 (June 27 1791) of his journal, Camille would describe in detail what he had been up to during this day:

I left [Lafayette] hoping that maybe the immense career that the King's flight had opened to his ambition had brought him back to the popular party, and arrived at the Jacobins, striving to believe in his demonstrations of friendship and patriotism, and to fill myself with this persuasion, which, despite my efforts, flowed from my mind through a thousand memories, as through a thousand outlets. The only man who has my full confidence, Robespierre, had the floor. See here a speech full of truths of which I haven’t lost a single one, and tremble: [he then transcribes a speech Robespierre holds on the flight of the royal family] How shall I express this abandon, this accent of patriotism and indignation with which he pronounced it! He was listened to with that religious attention from which we collect the last words of the dying. It was, in fact, like his testament that he came to deposit in the archives of the club. I did not hear this speech with as much composure as I report at this moment, where the arrest of the former King has changed the face of affairs. I was moved to tears in more than one place, and when this excellent citizen, in the middle of his speech, spoke of the certainty of paying with his head for the truths he had just pronounced, I cried out: we will all die before you!

Apparently no one ever taught Camille to be careful with what you wish for.

In the same number, Desmoulins also describes how, the next day, he and several others brought a woman who had information to give on the escape attempt to the Jacobin club, in the hopes that her testimony would get Robespierre to denounce Lafayette and Bailly. Once arrived, they talk to him and Buzot, who both quickly become convinced of the high credibility of the witness, but are taken aback by the measures proposed to be taken. ”We will be,” they said, ”pushed back from the tribune, referred to the research committee, and our accusation will be entered in this mortuary register of denunciations.” After a while Pétion shows up and definitely discourages Robespierre, who, according to Camille, ”at first was quite disposed to take away the reputation of Bailly and La Fayette via assault.”

The escape attempt resulted in the demonstration and shootings on Champ de Mars on July 17 1791. On the evening of the same day as these events, we find Desmoulins and Robespierre at the Jacobin Club, both speaking of what had just happened. Shortly thereafter Camille went incognito for a while, hiding out at Lucile’s parents’ country house at Bourg-la-Reine until finally resurfacing in Paris again in early September. In the meantime, Robespierre had changed address and gone to live with the Duplay family on Rue Saint-Honoré 398, today a 35 minute walk from Rue du Théâtre 1 (today Rue de l’Odeon 28) where Camille and Lucile had moved shortly after their wedding. In her old days, Élisabeth Duplay authored a list over the people who most commonly would frequent her family’s house during the revolution.

The Lamenths and Pétion in the early days, quite rarely Legendre, Merlin de Thionville and Fouché, often Taschereau, Desmoulins and Teault, always Lebas, Saint-Just, David, Couthon and Buonarotti.

However, judging by an anecdote told by the same Élisabeth, Desmoulins’ visits went from being frequent to rare after a certain incident (that I would guess happened in 1793 considering Élisabeth still places his overall visits under the ”often” section):

One day Camille familiarly enters the Duplay house; Robespierre was absent. He starts a conversation with the youngest of the carpenter's daughters; as he retires, Camille hands her a book he had under his arm. ”Elizabeth,” he said to her, ”do me the service of holding onto this work; I will come back for it.” No sooner had Desmoulins left than the young girl curiously half-opened the book entrusted to her custody: what was her confusion, seeing paintings of revolting obscenity pass under her fingers. She blushes: the book falls. All the rest of the day Elizabeth was silent and troubled; Maximilian noticed it; drawing her aside. "What's the matter with you," he asked her, "you look so worried to me?" The young girl lowered her head, and as an answer went to fetch the book with the odious engravings which had offended her sight. Maximilien opened the volume and turned pale. "Who gave you this?" he asked in a voice shaking with anger. The girl frankly told him what had happened. "It’s fine," Robespierre went on, "don't talk about what you've just told me to anyone: I'll make it my business. Don't be sad anymore. I'll let Camille know. It is not what enters involuntarily through the eyes that defiles chastity: it is the evil thoughts that one has in the heart.” He admonished his friend severely, and from that day on, visits from Camille Desmoulins became very rare.

In a diary entry entry from June 1792, Lucile seemingly confirms the connection she and her husband had with Robespierre’s host family when she writes ”I went with C(amille) and little Duplay (most likely Élisabeth’s little brother Jacques-Maurice) to an old madwoman’s.”

On September 30 1791, the National Assembly was shut down and Robespierre left Paris for Arras, where he arrived on October 14. He was back in the capital again on November 28. A little more than two weeks later, December 16, Brissot, held his first speech in favor of going to war. As known, Robespierre opposed this, holding his first speech against the idea just two days later. Desmoulins quickly joined his side, holding a similar speech on December 25. When Robespierre held his third big speech on the subject, on January 11, Desmoulins, who listened to the reading, was enthusiastic and the next day he wrote the following letter to the ”patriots of Millau” (cited in Camille et Lucile Desmoulins: un Rêve de République):

At the moment I am still enthusiastic. This speech will be reread in all sections, in all clubs and in all patriots' houses; everywhere one will admire and especially love the author, but what would have happened had you heard him speak yourself! Those who were his college comrades, and even those who last year were his colleagues in the National Assembly, have not recognized Robespierre for some time. From a man of spirit, he became eliquent, and now he is sublime at intervals. It seems that he grows by one foot every month, as it is true that the home of talent is the heart. When, two years ago, I presented him, in my journal, as a Cato, I was far from foreseeing that he would never rise to the height of the talent of Demosthenes.

A month later, Desmoulins also aimed a blow against Brissot with the release of the pampleth Jean Pierre Brissot démasqué. While said pampleth definitely outlined who Camille considered his enemies, it also made clear who were his champions, with Robespierre, who’s name got mentioned nine times throughout, taking up the forefront:

This true patriot (Rœderer) has not forgiven me, him and his cabal, for loving Robespierre, my college friend, venerable, great in my eyes, although it has been said that there was no great man for his valet-de-chambre, nor for his college friend and the witness of his youth.

In a letter written shortly thereafter to François Suleau, another one of their former college comrades, Desmoulins claimed that ”[Robespierre] sees me as invulnurable after the proof of incorruptibility that I produced in my latest writing to Brissot.” Apropos of Desmoulins still seeing Suleau, a firm royalist, he added: ”I cannot blame my friend Robespierre when he tells me that he would run away from my house on seeing a notable from Coblentz (Suleau) enter.” 

War was nevertheless declared on April 20 1792. The very same day, Camille and Fréron, who had both had to quit their journals in the aftermath of the massacre on Champ de Mars, signed a contract for creating a new one — La Tribune des Patriotes. The first number was meant to be released on May 7, but the following day, their publisher Charles Frobert Patris told Camille he had refused to print it, on the charge of it being ”a libel.” Camille reported this to the Jacobin club the very same day, and the following session Patris came forward to explain himself. Things did however not go the way he’d planned, and in a pampleth released shortly afterwards, Patris wrote the following regarding the session:

How come you (Robespierre) tolerated that the vile informer (Camille), to whom I was answering, seeing the club cover with long applause the hard truths that I was beginning to tell him, left his place to go sit down behind you, pulled you by the tailcoat and spoke to you in a low voice and with an air of intelligence! Didn't you have to feel that such intimacy would favor him, and turn to my prejudice?

Soon thereafter, La Tribune des Patriotes could finally be released. This work too was in part meant to protect and advocate for Robespierre, starting already in the first number:

O my dear Robespierre, I gave you this name (the Incorruptible) three years ago! Let people re-read my writings: at the time of my highest admiration for the Mirabeaus, the Lafayettes, the Lameths, and so many others, I always set you apart, I always placed your probity, character and soul above all; and I have seen that the public, while learning from my writings, has hitherto confirmed my judgments, six months or a year after I had made them. Since degenerate friends of truth come to the aid of the impotence of our means to defray the cost of this journal, Fréron and I will not abandon you in the breach, in the midst of a cloud of enemies. The efforts of all these false patriots relentless today - against you alone, we will divide them, by drawing on us their hatred, and by fighting at your side, not for a man, not for you, but for the cause of the people, the equality of the constitution, which has been attacked in you.

Desmoulins and Fréron had originally planned to have the journal run for at least a year, however, it failed to catch an audience and was put down already after four numbers. Robespierre’s name did however still get mentioned a total of 40 times throughout the journal, always in a positive light.

On July 6 1792, Lucile gave birth to a son who received the name Horace. The idea that Robespierre was his godfather would appear to be nothing but a myth seeing as the baptism record doesn’t mention any godparents but only two witnesses — neither of which is Robespierre but instead Laurent Lecointre and Merlin de Thionville. After the good days of the relationship were over, both Lucile and her mother would however contemplate over Robespierre having held Horace in his arms on multiple occasions, the former writing: ”You (Robespierre) who have smiled at my son and whom his infantile hands have carassed so many times…” and the latter asking if he still remembered ”the caresses you lavished on little Horace, how you delighted to hold him upon your knee.”

Three days after his birth, Horace was sent off to a wetnurse, while Lucile soon thereafter went to her parents’ country house to rest up. Camille remained in Paris working on a speech that he delivered on July 24. A few days before it he reported to Lucile that ”I dined at Robespierre’s today and talked ever so much about Rouleau (nickname for Lucile), Rouleau, my poor Rouleau.” Lucile returned from the countryside on August 8. Four days later, after the Insurrection of August 10, Camille was made secretary by the new Minister of Justice Danton. After a week, the three went to live at Hôtel de Bourvallais, just a six minute walking distance away from the Duplay house, and where, in Lucile’s own words, ”we spent three months quite cheerfully.”

The trial of the king started around the same time Camille and Lucile returned to their original apartment. Robespierre and Camille once again fought side by side for the same goals — this time for death and against an appeal to the people. In number 2 of his journal La Defenseur de la Constitution, Robespierre inserted a speech Camille had made on the latter of these two questions. In his memoirs, Théodore de Lameth claimed to during this period have gone home to Camille to try to get him to change his mind on the matter. Lucile would have however firmly shut him down — ”she told me eloquently all the extravagances that her age and the exaltation of her sex can produce, deifying Robespierre in the praise she gave him.”

On March 26 1793, Desmoulins and Robespierre were both elected for the so called Commission of Public Safety, alongside 23 others. The commission, consisting of both fervent montagnards and girondins, was however off to a rocky start, and already on April 6 it was put to death and replaced by the Committee of Public Safety, which neither Desmoulins nor Robespierre was on.

On May 17 1793, Desmoulins announced the release of his new pampleth l’Histoire des Brissotins to the Jacobins. We know that Robespierre had had a hand in the creation of this pampleth through a note inserted in Camille’s Lettre de Camille Desmoulins au général Dillon released a few months later:

The true origin of the rigor of the Committee towards you, would it be in a very long note, which was printed following l’Histoire des Brissotins, which Robespierre made me cut out?

The Jacobins published l’Histoire des Brissotins on May 19, and a week later, Robespierre, who for a long time had refused to do so, openly called for an insurrection against ”the corrupt deputies” of the National Convention at the Jacobins, a wish he then repeated three days later. Two days after that, the Insurrection of May 31 took place, and on June 2 the Convention voted for the arrest of 29 Girondins. I think it could be argued it was Desmoulins and Robespierre who together had delivered the principal deathblow to this ”faction.”

Nine days after the murder of Marat, July 22 1793, the Jacobin Club tasked Desmoulins, Robespierre, Lepeletier and Dufourny with writing an adress to the French people regarding it. Said adress was printed and read aloud at the club four days later, obviously deploring of the event and praising the murdered. Just one day after that, July 27, Robespierre was elected as member of the Committee of Public Safety. Camille on the other hand remained restless, and on November 1, he wrote to ”his old friend” to ask to be sent on a mission to Aisne.

I point out to our dear Robespierre that there is no impediment by law to me going to my department. Choudieu and Ricord, who are in theirs, Barras, and so many others, prove that the decree of which Billaud-Varennes spoke yesterday either does not exist or is not being executed. So I always recommend to him, as Lejeune's assistant, the historian Lucceius, reminding him of the custom of the senate of Rome, which never failed, when one of its members wanted to spend a week in Greece or Sicily, to see his father, to deliver to him, honoris curá, letters of credence, and the title of commissioner, or of legatus, which did not prevent him, on the way, from deserving well of the republic, and from gaining the vasarium. His old friend, Camille Desmoulins. To citizen Robespierre, member of the Committee of Public Safety.

As can be seen, Desmoulins adresses Robespierre in third person here, just like Robespierre had done to him two years earlier. These letters are the only examples of these two using third person that I’m aware of, almost making you suspect it was a conscious choice they made of adressing the other like that. Desmoulins did however not obtain any mission, but remained in Paris, as did Robespierre.

On December 5 1793 was released the first number of Desmoulins’ new journal Le Vieux Cordelier. According to what he wrote in said number, it was after having heard Robespierre and Danton speak at the Jacobins on December 3 that he decided to pick up his pen again — ”I leave my office and my armchair, where I had all the leisure to follow, in detail, this new system of our enemies, of which Robespierre only presented the outline, his occupations at the Committee of Public Safety not allowing him to embrace it in its entirety like me.”

 Like with l’Histoire des Brissotins, Camille had let Robespierre proofread and give his approval of the number before it got sent to the publisher. He did the same thing again for the second number, released on December 9, that concerned itself with the topic of dechristianization, denouncing Anacharsis Cloots and Anaxagoras Chaumette for their role in it. These thoughts were shared by Robespierre, who had spoken for liberty of cults on both November 21 and 28 and December 5 and December 6, and would go on to get Cloots expelled from the Jacobins when the latter passed through its scrutiny test on December 12. Two days later, the turn had come to Camille to go through the very same examination. He was at first questioned on his friendship with the general Arthur Dillon and for having stated that the Girondins ”died as republicans” the day they were condemned. After Desmoulins had justified himself, stating among other things that ”a well marked fatality willed that, among the sixty [sic] people who signed my wedding contract, I only have two friends left — Danton and Robespierre. All the others have emigrated or been guillotined,” Robespierre took to the floor and, after reproaching Camille for having been on friendly terms with Mirabeau, Dillon, Lamarlière and the Lameth brothers, made sure his friend passed the test. To ensure it, he first recited from heart a long poem Camille had written in 1787, the verses of which ”struck me so hard back then, that they have been ingraved in my memory,” and then said the following:

The manner in which Camille expressed himself at a time when some great patriots of today trembled, perhaps even cringed, before the tyrant; these are character traits that must be taken into account when judging a man. It is true that no one better than he justifies the proverb of the peoples living on the banks of the Guadalquivir and the Tagus: so and so was brave on such a day. Camille, stricken with thoughts of death, constantly sees the guillotine before his eyes; he imagines that because several of his friends have perished by the last torture, the same fate awaits him. Here is the character of Desmoulins: easy to let himself be warned, he quickly believes in the signs of patriotism that he perceives; but is he undeceived? His love for public affairs makes him tear the veil; he drags in the mud the cheats he had placed under the canopy; it is thus that he treated Mirabeau, the Lameths, and the Brissotins in recent times. The Girondin faction wanted to attract Camille to their party; Sillery was charged with this role. The famous Pamela appeared before Desmoulins, accompanied with an enchanting voice the sounds of a melodious lute; Camille, insensitive to the sting, faithful to his wife, faithful to republican principles, disdained the attractions of this new Circe, of this second Herodiade. Desmoulins, the first of all, mounted at the Palais Royal on the unsteady boards of a tottering table, preached patriotism, pistol in hand; he rendered great services to the Revolution. His energetic and easy pen can still serve it usefully, but it is necessary that, more circumspect in the choice of his friends, he must break any pact with impiety, that is to say, with the aristocracy; on these conditions, I request the admission of Camille Desmoulins.

The next part in the reblog.

[whencyclopedia]

Dolia: The Containers That Made Rome an Empire of Wine

The ancient Roman love for wine is well-known, but how was all that wine stored? In “Dolia,” Caroline Cheung puts dolia, the largest ceramic storage vessel made in the ancient world and capable of holding a thousand liters of wine, at the center of the ancient Roman wine trade for the first time. Best suited for scholars and students, this book explores the lifespan of dolia and the people who made, used, and paid for these massive vessels through a range of archaeological and literary evidence.

Caroline Cheung, an assistant professor of Classics at Princeton University, seeks to fill a rather large gap in the scholarship of the ancient Roman wine trade by centering the storage vessels themselves, the dolia (sing. dolium). Historically, these supermassive ceramic vessels, capable of holding well over a thousand liters each, have been understudied and overlooked. Combining various archaeological and literary evidence, Cheung argues that dolia formed the backbone for the Roman wine trade and that their development was the key factor in satisfying the Roman thirst for wine from the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE. She pays particular attention to the many people involved in every step of the dolia industry and how dolia can function as a lens into the intersections of wealth, social mobility, and labor. The book focuses on three case-study sites in west-central Italy: Cosa, Pompeii, and Rome with its port Ostia.

Cheung organizes her book thematically to draw out each step in the life of a dolium. After the introduction, Chapter Two traces the development of the dolia industry from the 2nd century BCE to the height of the Roman Empire. Chapters Three to Six detail the various uses of dolia on farms and villas, as part of a complex trade system in the Mediterranean, and cities. Chapters Seven and Eight then turn to how dolia were maintained, repaired, and eventually reused and abandoned. Cheung concludes in Chapter Nine with reflections on studying dolia and their legacy today.

Cheung does a masterful job of marshaling a truly staggering amount of archaeological and literary evidence to make this book possible. From the largest dolium-tanker shipwrecks to the smallest epigraphic stamps and tax records, Cheung excels at drawing out the particular importance of each piece of evidence. Some of the most interesting moments in the book are when she slows down to focus on a specific site or detail amidst the wealth of information she provides, such as in Chapter Four, when she draws out the story of the Sestius and Piranus families as examples of how wealthy families could take advantage of different stages in a dolia-based wine trade to accrue wealth and influence. A slate of images and figures also complements her prose well, including full-color plates of many images in the book.

At times, however, Cheung seems to struggle with her two competing priorities of exploring the life of a dolium from production to abandonment and examining the ramifications of dolia on the Roman wine trade and Roman imperialism more broadly. Her prose sometimes switches quite abruptly between the two, leaving the reader to try to pull together disparate threads of the narrative. In focusing mainly on west-central Italy, with only a brief foray into southern France and Spain, Cheung’s narrative can feel quite restricted, leaving out as it does the rest of the Mediterranean world, let alone the rest of the Roman Empire. Some discussion of what we do know about dolia outside of the book's case study areas would have been worthwhile to help provide a fuller picture of the role of dolia across the Mediterranean. As the first step in synthesizing much of this material, this book is a very needed addition in illuminating the crucial role dolia played in the Roman wine trade.

Cheung is one of the few scholars working on dolia currently, and perhaps the only one synthesizing the material on such a broad level, and her mastery of the material shows in this book. In centering dolia in the narrative of the Roman wine trade, Cheung takes a completely different tact to previous studies of this topic with great results. She argues persuasively why dolia deserve to be seen front and center in future scholarship. This book demonstrates the value of studying the logistics of the Roman wine trade just as much as the Romans’ love of wine itself.

Continue reading...

[mrstellmeafuckingsecret]

wallytrix……

OKAY so i was gonna answer this last night but then it was 2am and i was studying and then school and then i took a nap but like whatevr I LOVE U oka so

tw brief mention of sh, dubcon and france. also like incest 🙀

ill make another post about this but since cygnus was only thirteen when bellatrix was born, i hc walburga raised her and adored her. andromeda came two years later and she raised her for a bit too, but she's only had the capacity to love one person at a time. bellatrix is four/fiveish when cygnus and druella graduate and she moves to france with them (narcissa's born after they've moved), but walburga checks in biweekly and bellatrix already calls her mum ,, and then when she's seven-ish, walburga's visits become less and less often till because she's pregnant, and after sirius is born she never visits except for occasions. (she coddles bellatrix a little more, but she has a new center of attention and it's awful.)

oh and for like the first eight-ish years of bellatrix's life she'd been in this tug of war between walburga and her parents, and then walburga just suddenly let go after raising bellatrix &her parents aren't as sweet as walburga and walburga always spoils bellatrix when she's there simply because she wants bellatrix to be fussy and bring her up when walburga's not there but like for bellatrix she misses her 24/7 and she's never been normal about her obsessions, ever. !! *

anyway so bellatrix's crush/obsession starts young, probably around that age, but she doesn't know it's that yet. she knows when she comes back after her first year at hogwarts (cygnus and druella moved to england) and she catches walburga changing and then she,,, keeps stalking her. and peaks in her shower. and she sticks to walburga every time sirius isn't in the room (rare) and goes back to sit in her lap and wants her to kiss her everywhere like she did when she was a baby but like she doesnt,,, "bella you're too old to be sitting in my lap" "bellatrix you're being childish" "bella you're not a baby anymore" , and it hurts but also like she kinda saw this coming. so she just tries to be very grown up and that also doesn't work. but yk what does work !? whenevr cygnus is dicky she goes to walburga and she 1. sets him in his place 2. comforts her and treats her gently so like fourteen yo bellatrix is slitting her wrists hoping walburga would kiss them better. and then she cuts other parts but walburga won't kiss them better ☹️

also little selfcest (?) moment when bella's like thirteen she's starting to realize how much she looks like walburga so she's constantly jerking off in front of the mirror 😟

. * even when bellatrix is older and walburga's let go, druella wants walburga to know bellatrix isnt hers and makes sure bellatrix is showing off every visit ("what book are you reading again? the OWL level one?" "i think you're mixing your japanese with mandarin, sweetheart, don't you know walburga doesn't speak japanese?") so druella knows what she lost and it's a way to get walburga's attention for bellatrix but walburga never pays any mind and bellatrix is strugglinggg.

anyway. sirius runs away and the only person happier than regulus is bellatrix . walburga's not exactly right after that, but she does prize bellatrix around like her own daughter and bellatrix can smell her underwear can sleep in her bed and shit and ermm walburga has a drinking problem and bellatrix takes advantage of that ,. it's very "ill make you feel so good" "i love you so much" kind of dubcon where she doesn't want to fully acknowledge what she's doing is wrong. anyway so they fuck a couple times &walburga is usually under the influence of something but she's. very dependent on bellatrix. and then regulus dies and she's completely sucked into her, then orion does and she's lonely and scared and needs bellatrix - but bellatrix's found a new obession (voldick!!!)

[posttexasstressdisorder]

CNN 6/15/2025

ScienceUnearthed• 6 min read

Reopening a 688-year-old murder case reveals a tangled web of adultery and extortion in medieval England

By Mindy Weisberger, CNN

Updated: 8:47 AM EDT, Sat June 14, 2025

Source: CNN

The sun was setting on a busy London street on a May evening in 1337 when a group of men approached a priest named John Forde. They surrounded him in front of a church near Old St. Paul’s Cathedral, stabbed him in the neck and stomach, and then fled.

Witnesses identified his killers, but just one assailant went to prison. And the woman who might have ordered the brazen and shocking hit — Ela Fitzpayne, a wealthy and powerful aristocrat — was never brought to justice, according to historical records describing the case.

Nearly 700 years later, new details have come to light about the events leading up to the brutal crime and the noblewoman who was likely behind it. Her criminal dealings included theft and extortion as well as the murder of Forde — who was also her former lover.

Forde (his name also appeared in records as “John de Forde”) could have been part of a crime gang led by Fitzpayne, according to a recently discovered document. The group robbed a nearby French-controlled priory, taking advantage of England’s deteriorating relationship with France to extort the church, researchers reported in a study published June 6 in the journal Criminal Law Forum.

But the wayward priest may have then betrayed Fitzpayne to his religious superiors. The Archbishop of Canterbury penned a letter in 1332 that the new report also linked to Forde’s murder. In the letter, the archbishop denounced Fitzpayne and accused her of committing serial adultery “with knights and others, single and married, and even with clerics in holy orders.”

The archbishop’s letter named one of Fitzpayne’s many paramours: Forde, who was rector of a parish church in a village on the Fitzpayne family’s estate in Dorset. In the wake of this damning accusation, the church assigned Fitzpayne humiliating public penance. Years later, she exacted her revenge by having Forde assassinated, according to lead study author Dr. Manuel Eisner, a professor at the UK’s University of Cambridge and director of its Institute of Criminology.

This 688-year-old murder “provides us with further evidence about the entanglement of the clergy in secular affairs — and the very active role of women in managing their affairs and their relationships,” Dr. Hannah Skoda, an associate professor of medieval history in St. John’s College at the UK’s Oxford University, told CNN in an email.

“In this case, events dragged on for a very long time, with grudges being held, vengeance sought and emotions running high,” said Skoda, who was not involved in the research.

The new clues about Forde’s murder provide a window into the dynamics of medieval revenge killings, and how staging them in prestigious public spaces may have been a display of power, according to Eisner.

Map of murder

Eisner is a cocreator and project leader of Medieval Murder Maps, an interactive digital resource that collects cases of homicide and other sudden or suspicious deaths in 14th century London, Oxford and York. Launched by Cambridge in 2018, the project translates reports from coroners’ rolls — records written by medieval coroners in Latin noting the details and motives of crimes, based on the deliberation of a local jury. Jurors would listen to witnesses, examine evidence and then name a suspect.

In the case of Forde’s murder, the coroner’s roll stated that Fitzpayne and Forde had quarreled, and that she persuaded four men — her brother, two servants and a chaplain — to kill him. On that fateful evening, as the chaplain approached Forde in the street and distracted him with conversation, his accomplices struck. Fitzpayne’s brother slit his throat, and the servants stabbed Forde in the belly. Only one of the assailants, a servant named Hugh Colne, was charged in the case and imprisoned at Newgate in 1342.

“I was initially fascinated by the text in the coroner’s record,” Eisner told CNN in an email, describing the events as “a dream-like scene that we can see through hundreds of years.” The report left Eisner wanting to learn more.

“One would love to know what the members of the investigative jury discussed,” he said. “One wonders about how and why ‘Ela’ convinces four men to kill a priest, and what the nature of this old quarrel between her and John Forde might have been. That’s what led me to examine this further.”

‘Thirst for revenge’

Eisner tracked down the archbishop’s letter in a 2013 dissertation by medieval historian and author Helen Matthews. The archbishop’s accusation assigned severe punishments and public penance to Fitzpayne, such as donating large sums of money to the poor, abstaining from wearing gold or precious gems, and walking in her bare feet down the length of Salisbury Cathedral toward the altar, carrying a wax candle that weighed about four pounds. She was ordered to perform this so-called walk of shame every fall for seven years.

Though she seemingly defied the archbishop and never performed the penance, the humiliation “may have triggered her thirst for revenge,” the study authors wrote.

The second clue that Eisner unearthed was a decade older than the letter: a 1322 investigation of Forde and Fitzpayne by a royal commission, following a complaint filed by a French Benedictine priory near the Fitzpayne castle. The report was translated and published in 1897 but had not yet been connected to Forde’s murder at that point.

According to the 1322 indictment, Fitzpayne’s crew — which included Forde and her husband, Sir Robert, a knight of the realm — smashed gates and buildings at the priory and stole roughly 200 sheep and lambs, 30 pigs and 18 oxen, driving them back to the castle and holding them for ransom. Eisner said he was astonished to find that Fitzpayne, her husband and Forde were mentioned in a case of cattle rustling during a time of rising political tensions with France.

“That moment was quite exciting,” he said. “I would never have expected to see these three as members of a group involved in low-level warfare against a French Priory.”

‘Violence experts’

During this time in British history, city dwellers were no strangers to violence. In Oxford alone, homicide rates during the late medieval period were about 60 to 75 deaths per 100,000 people, a rate about 50 times higher than what is currently seen in English cities. One Oxford record describes “scholars on a rampage with bows, swords, bucklers, slings and stones.” Another mentions an altercation that began as an argument in a tavern, then escalated to a mass street brawl involving blades and battle-axes.

But even though medieval England was a violent period, “this absolutely does NOT mean that people did not care about violence,” Skoda said. “In a legal context, in a political context, and in communities more widely, people were really concerned and distressed about high levels of violence.”

The Medieval Murder Maps project “provides fascinating insights into the ways in which people carried out violence, but also into the ways in which people worried about it,” Skoda said. “They reported, investigated and prosecuted, and really relied on law.”

Fitzpayne’s tangled web of adultery, extortion and assassination also reveals that despite social constraints, some women in late medieval London still had agency — especially where murder was concerned.

“Ela was not the only woman who would recruit men to kill, to help her protect her reputation,” Eisner said. “We see a violent event that arises from a world where members of the upper classes were violence experts, willing and able to kill as a way to maintain power.”

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[jamisonwritestf2trash]

minific anon jumpscare! ft. dadspy :3

----------<3

Scout's used to people insulting him for not having a dad growing up. In fact, he used to insult himself for not having a father. And he insulted his father for running away. And then he started to think that maybe his father hadn't run away. He had died. And Scout decided, a dead dad is better than a dad who ran away. He didn't realize how wrong he could be.

There's only one photo of his father that he knows of. It's in his mother's locket, and she only lets Scout see it on his father's birthday.

His father was about 23 in the picture, and he has black (or dark brown, maybe?), smoothed back hair. He has piercing blue eyes, and a slight, warm smile on his face, staring at the camera. Scout was barely a year old when that photo was taken, Ma had said. It's weird to think that Scout had known his father for a little while. He just can't remember his voice.

It doesn't matter to him, anyway. He learned to survive without a father, after all. And so far, he's done a damn good job at it. Until now, at least. The stupid BLU scout had gotten an advantage on him during a physical fight, grabbing their dropped scattergun and firing into Scout's torso, blasting him backwards and off a small ledge. He'd somehow survived getting shot, but the fall had broken his ankle and likely his nose, judging by the blood starting to drip down his face from it. He'd crawled under cover to hide from BLU team. He'd heard them cap the first point, which meant that most of RED team must've retreated so Medic could heal them so they can defend the next point.

And they'd forgotten about him. Or, assumed he was dead. Or figured he was busy fighting. Groaning, Scout sits upright and starts to try and treat his injuries, but his hands are too shaky to hold the medkit right.

"Scout!" Someone's voice whisper-yells from a bush, and he looks up to see the outline of Spy in the treeline nearby. "Come quickly, there's nobody nearby. Bring that medkit."

Scout nods, and drags himself towards the treeline, where Spy puts an invis watch around his non-injured wrist and turns him invisible as well, and drags him further into the trees for more cover.

"Do you want to tell me what happened or sulk in defeat?" Spy asks, somewhat mockingly.

"BLU scout." Scout mutters, wiping his nose. "We got in a fistfight an' they got their gun and shot me."

"A miracle you're still alive. Give me that." Spy grabs the medkit and starts to treat Scout's wounds with surprising precision.

Silence falls between the two for a few minutes. Spy finishes with treating Scout's wounds, and helps him stand, slinging his arm around his shoulders and starting to walk.

"Hey, uh, Spy."

"What, Scout?" Spy looks at him, annoyed.

"...Thanks." Scout mumbles. Surprise lights in Spy's eyes for a moment before he looks away with a huff.

"But of course." Spy narrows his eyes. "Your mother would not want her son returning home in a box."

"Yeah." Scout laughs slightly. "She'd kill me again. And Miss Pauling, too, probably."

"Hm." Spy stops for a second, checking for any signs of BLU before continuing.

"Hey, Spy, do you have any family?" Scout asks. "Like, back in France?"

Spy doesn't say anything. He just stops dead in his tracks.

"Uh... Spy? I get it if ya can't answer, but... why'd you stop?" Scout asks, slightly nervous.

"I don't have family in France." Spy answers flatly.

"Oh... um, did they move to America with you?"

"No. They died in the second world war." Spy narrows his eyes. "But I did have family here. But I... left them."

"Well, why'd ya do that?" Scout frowns. Spy doesn't answer, just continues walking. Scout lets the question hang in the air, instead decided to look at Spy's face. He rarely ever was this close to Spy, as the latter usually was annoyed by Scout and avoided him, and Scout never got to study Spy's face that well. He had drawn all of the other mercs except for Spy so far.

Spy has piercing blue eyes and fairly sharp cheekbones, and his chin sticks out a little bit. His nose is pointed downward slightly.

"I feel like I've seen you before somewhere, dude." Scout breaks the silence. "You remind me of someone."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Spy frowns, suddenly defensive. "We've never met until we took this job."

"I dunno. You just look familiar. Like, um, your facial features, I mean." Scout shrugs, and Spy just rolls his eyes, continuing back to the base.

RED ending up being able to defend the last point, thanks to Sniper's quick thinking and eliminating the enemy medic and making quick work of the rest of the team using his SMG.

Scout couldn't shake off the strange feeling of familiarity from Spy. He's seen that face somewhere before. But where? And why was it bothering him this much? Sighing, he rolls over on his bed and reaches for his Bonk!, only to knock something off the nightstand.

His ma's locket. She'd sent it in the mail a few months back, and he hadn't gotten it open yet. But it seems to have popped open since he dropped it on the floor accidentally. Scout grabs it and looks at the photo inside.

His blood runs cold.

There's only one way to be sure.

Running down the hall, Scout makes his way towards the room, pushing the door open as silently as possible and sneaking into the room. He reaches for it, only for Spy's hand to grab his wrist in an icy grip.

"What the hell are you doing in here?" Spy snaps, pushing Scout backwards. "And how on earth did you get in without me noticing you opening the door?"

"Doesn't matter! I gotta know somethin'!" Scout holds the locket out. Spy raises his eyebrows.

"About jewerly? You'd be better off asking Miss Pauling---" Spy starts.

"The photo." Scout drops the locket in Spy's hand, and the Frenchman looks at it. And his face falls.

"Where... Where did you get this?" Spy demands.

"It's my Ma's. You look like him." Scout stares at Spy.

"Well... I suppose we do--" Spy hands the locket back. "But I can assure you that is not me."

"Prove it." Scout stares at Spy. "Take your mask off."

"What?"

"Take it off." Scout stares evenly at Spy. "Right. Now."

"I'd rather die." Spy scoffs, and motions for Scout to leave. Scout rolls his eyes before lunging at Spy, grabbing the mask and starts pulling at it. Spy lets out a shout of surprise before starting to fight back, but Scout pulls the mask off. But before he can look, Spy kicks him in the gut and stumbles away, putting a hand over his face to hide it, turning his back to Scout. Scout stands slowly, looking at the mask in his hand, and then at Spy.

"Look at me." Scout whispers. "Look at me, Spy."

"And if I don't?" Spy asks, his voice slightly muffled by his hand.

"I-- I'll burn the mask!" Scout says, surprised by his own words, but he holds true to his words, pulling the lighter Pyro had given him from his pocket, and flicks the lid off. The sound causes Spy to stiffen, and after another moment of hesitation, he lowers his hand and turns to face Scout.

He looks just like the photo, just older and a defeated look on his face.

"Are you happy now, Scout? Is this really what you wanted?" Spy asks, holding his hand out for the mask.

Scout's lower jaw trembles, and he stares in shock. Taking a step back.

"You... You fucking snake." Scout whispers. Spy blinks, surprised. "You're my father--- You fucking SNAKE!" Scout's sudden yelling surprises Spy. He doesn't say a word for a few seconds. Silence fills the void between then.

"You ain't even gonna defend yourself?" Scout scoffs. "I went.... 26 fuckin' years thinking that you were dead, but here you are... fucking alive and well, rich as ever. Was I just--- just not a good enough son for ya, is that what it is?" Scout walks closer to Spy, poking his chest. "Was Ma not good enough for ya?!"

"Your mother is a wonderful woman---" Spy starts.

"Then why'd you break her fucking heart?!" Scout yells. "Huh?! Was she not good enough for you?! Was she just another one of your stupid--- stupid little accessories that you got bored of and threw away?!"

"No--- Scout, let me explain---" Spy pushes Scout away. Scout doesn't want to listen to him. His vision goes red and he punches Spy. In the face. It's a strong enough punch that it knocks the Frenchman to the floor. Spy looks up at Scout, stunned.

"Jeremy..." Spy whispers. Scout doesn't listen. He lights the mask on fire and runs.

------------</3

part 2??? tomorrow Or today depending in my mood :)

Oooooooooh, angsty!!!! Welcome back, anon! I've also toyed around with the idea of Scout feeling not good enough.

[knowledge-paradox]

Been thinking about Dante's life In italy.

He's technically born in america sure, but gets immediately sent away from his real family and gets raised by what he'll have to consider his family: an older woman who will punish him if he makes any mistake and his husband who would yell at Matteo and beat his bloody back with a wooden ruler if he even tried to call him anything other than ‘mentor’.

He had to live a strict life and was forced to study literature instead of living his dream and fall into the world of art(which he will pursue later as his mentor finally understood that he could take advantage of his works).

Then he meets Matteo and for two years he's free from everything. Dante gets sent away from his hometown Genoa and they both study in Venice, managing to have enough money to buy a house together.

Then he gets arrested for the crime of sodomy, and his mentor is the one to save him from prison.

And then, he's back under his surveillance, until 1777 in which his mentor decides to go to France (he's a french man) and forced Dante to move away, giving him a too small boutique to start working on his paintings.

Then his mentor dies, Dante finds his letters, and his reality is completely shattered. shattered by hope.

[microcosme11]

Germaine de Staël is creeped out by General Bonaparte

I saw him for the first time at Paris. I could not find words to reply to him, when he came to me to say, that he had sought my father at Coppet, and that he regretted having passed into Switzerland without seeing him. But, when I was a little recovered from the confusion of admiration, a strongly marked sentiment of fear succeeded. Bonaparte, at that time, had no power; he was even believed to be not a little threatened by the captious suspicions of the Directory; so that the fear which he inspired was caused only by the singular effect of his person upon nearly all who approached him. I had seen men highly worthy of esteem; I had likewise seen monsters of ferocity: there was nothing in the effect which Bonaparte produced on me that could bring back to my recollection either the one or the other. I soon perceived, in the different opportunities which I had of meeting him during his stay in Paris, that his character could not be defined by the words which we commonly use; he was neither good, nor violent, nor gentle, nor cruel, after the manner of individuals of whom we have any knowledge. Such a being had no fellow, and therefore could neither feel nor excite sympathy: he was more or less than man. His cast of character, his understanding, his language, were stamped with the impress of an unknown nature;—an additional advantage, as we have elsewhere observed, for the subjugation of Frenchmen.

Far from recovering my confidence by seeing Bonaparte more frequently, he constantly intimidated me more and more. I had a confused feeling that no emotion of the heart could act upon him. He regards a human being as an action or a thing, not as a fellow creature. He does not hate more than he loves; for him nothing exists but himself; all other creatures are cyphers. The force of his will consists in the impossibility of disturbing the calculations of his egotism; he is an able chess-player, and the human race is the opponent to whom he proposes to give check mate. His successes depend as much on the qualities in which he is deficient as on the talents which he possesses. Neither pity, nor allurement, nor religion, nor attachment to any idea whatsoever, could turn him aside from his principal direction. He is for his self-interest what the just man should be for virtue; if the end were good, his perseverance would be noble.

Every time that I heard him speak, I was struck with his superiority; yet it had no similitude to that of men instructed and cultivated by study or society, such as those of whom France and England can furnish examples. But his discourse indicated a fine perception of circumstances, such as the sportsman has of the game which he pursues. Sometimes he related the political and military events of his life in a very interesting manner; he had even somewhat of Italian imagination in narratives which allowed of gaiety. Yet nothing could triumph over my invincible aversion for what I perceived in him. I felt in his soul a cold sharp-edged sword, which froze the wound that it inflicted; I perceived in his understanding a profound irony, from which nothing great or beautiful, not even his own glory could escape; for he despised the nation whose suffrages he wished, and no spark of enthusiasm was mingled with his desire of astonishing the human race.

It was in the interval between the return of Bonaparte and his departure for Egypt, that is to say, about the end of 1797, that I saw him several times at Paris; and never could I dissipate the difficulty of breathing which I experienced in his presence. I was one day at table between him and the Abbé Sieyès;—a singular situation, if I had been able to foresee what afterwards happened. I examined the figure of Bonaparte with attention; but whenever he discovered that my looks were fixed upon him, he had the art of taking away all expression from his eyes, as if they had been turned into marble. His countenance was then immovable, except a vague smile which his lip assumed at random, to mislead anyone who might wish to observe the external signs of what was passing within.

The Abbé Sieyès conversed during dinner unaffectedly and fluently, as suited a mind of his degree of strength. He expressed himself concerning my father with a sincere esteem. “He is the only man,” said he, “who has ever united the most perfect precision in the calculations of a great financier to the imagination of a poet.” This eulogium pleased me, because it characterized him. Bonaparte, who heard it, also said some obliging things concerning my father and me, but like a man who takes no interest in individuals whom he cannot make use of in the accomplishment of his own ends.

His figure, at that time thin and pale, was rather agreeable; he has since grown fat, which does not become him; for we can scarcely tolerate a character which inflicts so many sufferings on others, if we do not believe it to be a torment to the person himself. As his stature is short, and his waist very long, he appeared to much more advantage on horseback than on foot. In every respect it is war, and only war, which suits him. His manners in society are constrained, without timidity; he has an air of vulgarity when he is at his ease, and of disdain when he is not: disdain suits him best, and accordingly he indulges in it without scruple.

By a natural vocation to the regal office, he already addressed trifling questions to all who were presented to him. Are you married? was his question to one of the guests. How many children have you? he said to another. How long is it since you arrived? When do you set out? and other interrogations of a similar kind, which establish the superiority of him who puts them over those who submit to be thus questioned. He already took delight in the art of embarrassing, by saying disagreeable things; an art which he has since reduced into a system, as he has every other mode of subjugating men by degrading them. At this epoch, however, he had a desire to please, for he confined to his own thoughts the project of overturning the Directory, and substituting himself in its stead; but in spite of this desire, one would have said that, unlike the prophet, he cursed involuntarily, though he intended to bless.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité: Exploring the French Revolution (link)

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Auguste Maillard (French, 1864-1944) Emília de Rovira i Preses, 1928 Arenys de Mar, Catalunya, España According to tradition, Emília Rovira died in 1892, at the age of 32, due to love sickness. It is known for certain that the young woman partied with a young Cuban, Rafael Martínez Ortiz, when he was studying in Barcelona and was often in Arenys, where he had family. But Emilia's parents, who were upper class, did not consent to the union. Rafael left for Cuba, from where he wrote her letters, which never reached the girl because the family intercepted them. Rafael Martínez made a fortune and held important political positions in Cuba. In 1926, taking advantage of a trip to Europe, he moved to Arenys, where he learned of the girl's tragic end. Moved, he had this tomb built to bury Emilia's remains, but the family also opposed it. So the tomb was empty for many years, until, in the year 2000, thanks to the interest of some residents of the village, it was possible to move it, from the family columbarium and finally the remains of the young rest in his grave. The tomb, owned by the City Council, is made of black granite and was made in Paris and bears the signature of Thoin. The bust of Emilia, made in 1928 from a cameo photograph, is the work of an outstanding French sculptor, Auguste Maillard (1864-1944), author of numerous commemorative monuments in France.

[fatehbaz]

The rise of the European empires [...] required new forms of social organization, not least the exploitation of millions of people whose labor powered the growth of European expansion [...]. These workers suffered various forms of coercion ranging from outright slavery through to indentured or convict labor, as well as military conscription, land theft, and poverty. [...] [W]ide-ranging case studies [examining the period from 1600 to 1850] [...] show the variety of working conditions and environments found in the early modern period and the many ways workers found to subvert and escape from them. [...] A web of regulation and laws were constructed to control these workers [...]. This system of control was continually contested by the workers themselves [...]

---

Timothy Coates [...] focuses on three locations in the Portuguese empire and the workers who fled from them. The first was the sugar plantations of São Tomé in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The slaves who ran away to form free communities in the interior of the island were an important reason why sugar production eventually shifted to Brazil. Secondly, Coates describes working conditions in the trading posts around the Indian Ocean and the communities of runaways which formed in the Bay of Bengal. The final section focuses on convicts and sinners in Portugal itself, where many managed to escape from forced labor in salt mines.

Johan Heinsen examines convict labor in the Danish colony of Saint Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Denmark awarded the Danish West Indies and Guinea Company the right to transport prisoners to the colony in 1672. The chapter illustrates the social dynamics of the short-lived colony by recounting the story of two convicts who hatched the escape plan, recruited others to the group, including two soldiers, and planned to steal a boat and escape from the island. The plan was discovered and the two convicts sentenced to death. One was forced to execute the other in order to save his own life. The two soldiers involved were also punished but managed to talk their way out of the fate of the convicts. Detailed court records are used to show both the collective nature of the plot and the methods the authorities used to divide and defeat the detainees.

---

James F. Dator reveals how workers in seventeenth-century St. Kitts Island took advantage of conflict between France and Britain to advance their own interests and plan collective escapes. The two rival powers had divided the island between them, but workers, indigenous people, and slaves cooperated across the borders, developing their own knowledge of geography, boundaries, and imperial rivalries [...].

Nicole Ulrich writes about the distinct traditions of mass desertions that evolved in the Dutch East India Company colony in South Africa. Court records reveal that soldiers, sailors, slaves, convicts, and servants all took part in individual and collective desertion attempts. [...] Mattias von Rossum also writes about the Dutch East India Company [...]. He [...] provides an overview of labor practices of the company [...] and the methods the company used to control and punish workers [...].

---

In the early nineteenth century, a total of 73,000 British convicts were sentenced to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). There, the majority were rented out as laborers to private employers, and all were subjected to surveillance and detailed record keeping. These records allow Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Michael Quinlan to provide a detailed statistical analysis of desertion rates in different parts of the colonial economy [...].

When Britain abolished the international slave trade, new forms of indentured labor were created in order to provide British capitalism with the labor it required. Anita Rupprecht investigates the very specific culture of resistance that developed on the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands between 1808 and 1828. More than 1,300 Africans were rescued from slavery and sent to Tortola, where officials had to decide how to deal with them. Many were put to work in various forms of indentured labor on the island, and this led to resistance and rebellion. Rupprecht uncovers details about these protests from the documents of a royal commission that investigated [...].

---

All text above by: Mark Dunick. "Review of Rediker, Marcus; Chakraborty, Titas; Rossum, Matthias van, eds. A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism 1600-1850". H-Socialisms, H-Net Reviews. April 2024. Published at: h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=58852 [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[thoughtlessarse]

Far-right populists are significantly more likely to spread fake news on social media than politicians from mainstream or far-left parties, according to a study which argues that amplifying misinformation is now part and parcel of radical right strategy. “Radical right populists are using misinformation as a tool to destabilise democracies and gain political advantage,” said Petter Törnberg of the University of Amsterdam, a co-author of the study with Juliana Chueri of the Dutch capital’s Free University. “The findings underscore the urgent need for policymakers, researchers, and the public to understand and address the intertwined dynamics of misinformation and radical right populism,” Törnberg added. The research draws on every tweet posted between 2017 and 2022 by every member of parliament with a Twitter (now X) account in 26 countries: 17 EU members including Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, but also the UK, US and Australia. It then compared that dataset – 32m tweets from 8,198 MPs – with international political science databases containing detailed information on the parties involved, such as their position on the left-right spectrum and their degree of populism. Finally, the researchers scraped factchecking and fake news-tracking services to build a dataset of 646,058 URLs, each with an associated “factuality rating” based on the reliability of its source – and compared that data with the 18m URLs shared by the MPs. By crunching all the different datasets together, the researchers were able to create what they described as an aggregate “factuality score” for each politician and each party, based on the links that MPs had shared on Twitter. The data showed conclusively that far-right populism was “the strongest determinant for the propensity to spread misinformation”, they concluded, with MPs from centre-right, centre-left and far-left populist parties “not linked” to the practice.

continue reading

It's the only way they can win, i.e. by telling lies.

[aedislumen]

Prieur on the implementation of the decimal scale in the metric system

The key point, in which Prieur's proposal, aimed to reform the French metric system, differentiates itself from the others, lies in the detailed implementation of the decimal scale for all kind of measures. This is why I thought appropriate to share the following excerpt, taken directly from his work. Its content might sound obvious for many of us, but it's important to remember that, in the 18th century, the scale commonly used in France was the duodecimal one. Prieur was among the scholars of the time to have relised the great advantages that the decimal subdivision would have brought in the fields of calculation and arithmetic, by making the former more straightforward in general and the latter more accessible to everyone, especially to those, who didn't receive an education. Below, under the cut, I also added the transcribed version by Isabelle Dutailly of Prieur's measures conversion table between the standards used during the Ancien Régime in Paris and the new ones, he proposed to use. It gives a general idea about both the tremendous amount of units present just in the capital and how close Prieur's subdivision of measures is compared to our current one.

"[...]Our pied national will be divided into ten pouches, each pouche in ten lignes, each ligne in ten points or primes, so that it will be possible to write each subspecies [of measure] as decimals of the main unit. This method of division is the most proper that we can accept, since it is in accordance with the rules of our numeration and, if it were applied to all the various kind of measures, the study of arithmetic would become much easier and, as a result, more widely practiced. Someone might say that diving by twelve would be convenient when considering the 1/3, 1/4 and their submultiples: this is undeniable. It is also certain that the duodecimal scale could have been used instead of the decimal one for our numeration, but such a change would currently be impractical . On the other hand, the decimal system reveals itself to be convenient for people, who do not know how to write, since it would allow them to represent each ten through their fingers, therefore each hand would be equal to one half of ten, making the count of five parts easier. The introduction of the decimals in all the measures is beneficial in making calculation easier, in that more complex multiplications and divisions are converted to operations similar to those of whole numbers; in that the reduction of each subspecies, from one to another, happens through the simple shift of the decimal point and finally, in that it would allow to increase or decrease the precision of an operation according to our needs. In the majority of cases relative to calculations of our length measurements, there is no need for this operation to go beyond the thousandth, and often the hundredth too, of the main unit."

— Claude-Antoine Prieur, Mémoire sur la nécessité et les moyens de rendre uniformes, dans le royaume, toutes les mesures d'étendue et de pesanteur (1790), p.15-16.

Note: Emphases in italics are mine, moreover I didn't translate the units into English, because their corresponding value in said language wouldn't match with the French one, so I believed it wasn't wise.

"Table of comparison between the old units of weights and length used in the city of Paris and the new national ones, which are supposed to replace the former"

Source for the original table.Source for the transcribed version.

[collaredkittyboy]

Alright it's time for me to post abt my personal life for strangers to scroll by without reading

In light of recent events in the US me and my boyfriend gave decided it would be safer to move. So we're going to try to move to France next year

I'm gonna start saving as much money as possible, and we've both started studying French. Luckily I have an advantage, studied it in school for a few years and practiced off and on since graduating. But due to this I've locked in and I'm studying harder, I'll know enough to survive by the time we get there.

We just have to worry abt getting and apartment and jobs and a visa, but it's doable

So that's where I'm at •_•