On this date in 1871 the inhabitants of Gay Paree, still somewhat disoriented from dining on zoo animals during a four month Prussian siege, declared the Commune and instituted a bunch of the fun stuff from the old days of tumbrels and guillotines and Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, including rearranging the calendar to one with months named "Fog" and "Germination" and forgiving a slew of rents, debts, and interest.
As idealistic revolutions by fuzzy-headed academics often do, it ended with somewhere between 10,000 and all of them being killed by the army.
Coincidentally, on this day in 845AD, Viking raiders looted everything in not-so-Gay-at-the-time Paree that wasn't nailed down and raped most of what was left, and kept putting their feet on the little tables in medieval sidewalk cafes until they were paid to go away by the rather inauspiciously named French monarch, Chuck the Bald.
The vikings had so much fun and so enjoyed the mild climate and cute women that they came tourist style for another 100 years until they they decided that the tourist prices were too steep and just took over the nice bits.
ReplyDeleteAfter a little bit of house cleaning and a new sign on the front door, "Normandy" replcing "Neustria", the descendents would start a very successful franchise that would bedevil frenchmen for several hundred years, take over a marginal island off the shore in a spectacularly hostile takeover, and procede to turn that wet little island into the hub of an Empire that would stretch around the world.
In more recent times things have not been so cheerful.
Viking raiders looted everything in not-so-Gay-at-the-time Paree that wasn't nailed down
ReplyDeleteIf you can pry it loose, it wasn't nailed down....