The Period

It was one of the best and worst times in history. It was a time of great intelligence and ignorance, belief and disbelief, good and evil, hope and hopelessness. We had everything to live for, and we had nothing to live for. Everyone was going straight to Heaven and straight to hell. Basically, it was just like the present , with experts of the time insisting on seeing its events only in terms of contrasting extremes. A stern-looking king and a plain-looking queen ruled England. A stern-looking king and a beautiful queen ruled France. In both countries, it seemed obvious to the people managing the royal food supplies that things were stable and nothing would ever change. It was 1775. People in England were as superstitious then as they are now. Mrs. Southcott had just turned twenty-five, and a private in the British army who claimed he could tell the future announced her appearance by saying that London and Westminster would be destroyed. Even the Cock Lane Ghost had only been gone twelve years since last tapping out its messages, as the very unoriginal ghosts of last year tapped out theirs. A group of British subjects in the American colonies had recently sent messages to the King of England, and oddly enough, these earthly messages proved more important than any of the supernatural ones from Cock Lane. France, which was less interested in spiritual matters than England, was headed straight toward disaster, printing lots of paper money and spending all of it. Under the leadership of the clergy, the French government entertained itself with such activities as cutting off a young man's hands, pulling his tongue out with pliers, and burning him alive. The French government did this because the man didn't kneel down in the rain to pay tribute to a group of dirty monks walking by fifty or sixty yards away. While this young man was being put to death, trees were growing in the forests of France and Norway that Fate had decided would one day be used to make the guillotines that would play a terrible role in history. It's likely too that on the crude farms near Paris sat rough, filthy carts, which pigs snuffed around and poultry roosted in, that Death had decided would be used during the Revolution to cart people to the guillotine. Though Fate and Death work constantly, they also work quietly, so no one heard them as they went sneaking around. Instead, if a person even suggested that bad times were on the way, he would be accused of being an atheist and a traitor. England didn't have much law and order to brag about, either. Even in London, armed bandits broke into people's houses and travelers were robbed on the highways every night. Families were warned to lock their furniture away in storehouses before leaving town. The man who was a highway robber at night was a businessman during the day, and when the man he robbed recognized and confronted him, the robber shot him in the head and rode away. Seven robbers once attacked a mail coach, and a policeman shot three of them dead. But he was then shot by the other four when his weapon failed to go off. After that, the robbers were able to rob the coach without being disturbed. Even our fearless leader, the mayor of London, was attacked in front of his whole entourage by a single highway robber. In the London jails, prisoners fought with their guards, and the guards opened fire on the prisoners. Thieves stole necklaces with diamond crosses off the necks of lords at court. Soldiers entered the St. Giles house looking for stolen goods, and the mob opened fire on them, so they fired back, and no one thought any of these events the least bit unusual. During all of this, the executioner was in constant demand, despite being terrible at his job. He would hang a burglar on a Saturday who had only been arrested that Tuesday. He would brand dozens of people's hands at Newgate and then burn controversial pamphlets in front of Westminster Hall. One day he might execute a terrible murderer, and the next day he would execute a poor thief who had stolen a few pennies from a farmer's son. All of these events, and a thousand others like them, happened in and around the year 1775. In this atmosphere, with Death and Fate working quietly, those stern-looking kings and plain and beautiful queens of England and France carried on confidently, ruling by their divine right with a high hand. Through it all, Fate and Death worked without impediment. And so, in 1775, these two royal couples, and many of their citizens whose stories are told in this book, headed toward their destinies.