Flintlocks & Fireballs

Democracy Hangs By A Thread!

Correspondent: Mssr A. Duval

The fate of Liberty teeters on a tightrope over an abyss of self-interest, aristocratic corruption and spineless concession on the part of the National Assembly. This pack of politicians stuffed with bankers, tax-collectors and ivory-tower intellectuals magnanimously decides what we, the people, should want and need. In their infinite and infallible wisdom, one week ago they signed a treaty snatching away many of the hard-won rights we earned by blood from the bishops and the dukes. This surrender bill will restore the estates of the upper crust, guarantee special ministerial positions for the church, guarantee positions on the judiciary for nobility and clergy, confirm Suul’s position as a lapdog of the “Holy Mother” in Tyre with a special investiture ceremony for the Assembly President, and finally it will release the aristos kept securely under lock and key in the capital.

The embattled representatives trying to fight for justice and liberty on our behalf were defeated by a slim majority of three, with intellectuals, factory-owners and bankers pushing through the surrender bill at the behest of a shrewish tief child, beguiling and confusing those not already corrupted with their forked tongue, a so-called ‘expert witness’ doing the talking for the wordless President Savat. Who knows what inducements or sorceries may have caused them to take such leave of their senses?

In three nights’ time, the genteel leeches will be spared from their just punishment and released from the city’s prisons. The Assembly attempted such an act of concession before, removing the noble prisoners of the Gran Batard, but brave forces of the Alessant Militia were able to intercept them and render them a just trial before the people and carried out their well-earned sentences quickly and mercifully with the aid of Mme Guillotine’s new device.

The aristos’ release signals the first act of the surrender bill, a return to the old regime and the oppressions it brought upon us all. Will we accept the treachery of the financiers and the intellectuals? Or will we act?