Now, France Can't Go Bankrupt Even If It Wanted To
1778 5 28, .
Ragged wretches lay sprawled in the streets. They had been beggars with nothing to their names even before Europe's economy plunged into crisis. They bought bread once every few days with the few sous they begged for, grateful just to be alive, terrified of starvation.
*Scrape*
And beside those sprawled beggars, another beggar wielding a shovel was digging along the roadside ditch.
"Hey, old man, move aside. Gotta dig the canal."
"What? Can't hear you."
"You deaf? Digging the canal."
"Why bother wasting your energy? You think anyone's gonna give you bread for that?"
*Shrrk*
"They did."
"Who?"
"His Majesty."
"Where?"
"Quit yapping. If you're so curious, stop lying around and head to the Seine. They'll tell you everything there. Pay you a day's wage, give you bread, even let you wash up after. Don't waste your life—start digging!"
"Oh, thanks. Around the Seine, right?"
The beggars followed the shovel-wielding beggar's tip and headed to the Seine. There, tens of thousands of bricks were stacked in rectangles, and thousands of shovels and pickaxes lay piled up.
"Line up! Line up! Everyone can get some! Line up!"
The crowd was so massive that one loud-voiced beggar was directing traffic.
"Skin and bones, eh? Think you can work properly like that? Go to the tent over there, grab a loaf of bread first. Once you're done eating, head to the brickyard. You're on brick transport duty."
"Ahh... I can feel His Majesty's grace."
"Cut the nonsense and move. Can't you see the line behind you?"
Offering bread, jobs, and wages to the starving sent public sentiment toward Louis XVI soaring beyond the heavens.
"Why's everyone dressed so weird here? Shouldn't you dress neatly for a job interview?"
A few young men felt out of place in the screening line. They didn't know exactly what was going on. They'd just heard the rumor that "His Majesty is giving out bread, money, and jobs" and come running.
But the screening line was filled only with ragged vagrants. A few young men were dressed neatly like them, glancing around uneasily.
The youth swallowed his growing unease and entered the screening tent. But the examiner said something beyond his imagination.
"What's this? Why are you dressed so well?"
"Uh, I'm unemployed too..."
"Then go to a factory or the docks. This project's only for vagrants and beggars. Tsk, a fine young man like you—didn't anyone tell you?"
"No..."
This project was another of Louis XVI's public works initiatives. The goal was to absorb beggars and vagrants, wiping out the slums.
Realizing something was off, the examiner stepped outside and shouted.
"Canal construction is only for beggars and vagrants! No decently dressed folks allowed—don't hog the line, go home!"
As the examiner proclaimed the vagrant-priority hiring rule, murmurs of discontent and cheers mixed from the crowd.
"We could do the work better."
Most of the young men slunk home in disappointment.
"Hmm, so if we wear rags, we can join?"
A few quick-witted young men roamed the Paris suburbs, swapping their clothes for beggars' rags.
"Two sous should buy it, right?"
Some even bought beggars' rags outright for a few sous.
Having acquired the rags, they changed and returned to the recruitment site by the Seine. Of course, the officials weren't fools.
"Hmm? Face looks familiar... and those muscles—bet you eat well."
"Haha, folks around Saint-Germain are generous."
"Then you can handle hard labor. Off to the suburban construction team."
The examiners weeded out the young men and fake beggars like them, assigning them to the real grueling work.
The youths found the examiners' attitudes suspicious but followed the guides anyway. A job was a job, suspicions be damned.
The muscular young men—built in chest and arms—followed to the far outskirts of Paris.
Anxious, they glanced around, but all they saw were vagrants digging canals along both sides of the main road.
Perhaps due to the vagrants' low skill, the canals grew shallower the farther out from Paris.
"Figures. Beggars always half-ass it."
A clean-faced youth in rags muttered to himself. Another chimed in.
"Enthusiasm fades eventually. Beggars are lazy, so it burned out quick. Dug a bit, didn't feel right, so next section shallow... still not right, even shallower..."
"Beggars gonna beggar."
Chatting idly, the youths reached the Paris outskirts' edge. Beyond the city walls, before a field thick with golden wheat, lay a vast site.
One corner had a temporary forge hammering out iron rods. Nearby, a laborer in shorts mixed gray powder and something sticky with a rod.
But the wide site was empty.
"Get to work."
"Pardon?"
"Work. You came to work, right?"
The guide dumped them on the site like trash and headed back to the screening tent.
"At least tell us what we're supposed to be doing..."
"Sigh, no brains. Figures, vagrants are all the same."
The guide pointed vaguely.
"Connect that thing there to that, mix in what's coming out, mash it all together like so, and you get that good stuff for farming."
"Pardon?"
"Told you. Figure it out."
The guide gave his vague notice and left. The stranded youths stared at each other in confusion.
"What the hell are we supposed to do? I've got eight years on construction sites, never heard instructions like that."
"First time for me too. No clue what or how."
"Ask the guy mixing that gray-white powder first. Smiths look busy..."
They loitered near the man stirring the gray-white powder—cement—and mustered courage when he stretched for a break.
"Hello. We're the new guys. What are we building here?"
The cement stirrer looked at them and said,
"No idea."
"Pardon?"
"Just stirring as ordered. No instructions on what we're building. Smiths over there same. The construction supervisor's supposed to direct, but he chugged some beers and passed out in the break room."
"Ahaha..."
The youths peeked at the break room the man pointed to. A middle-aged man with an armband snored away.
The dozen or so youths lay in the shade under a tree, using roots as pillows for a nap.
*
1778 6 1, .
4 25.
"Operation launches at dawn."
"Yes, sire."
I rode my pure white royal stallion to the police station. They were disabled veterans.
18th-century honor was intensely two-faced. "Honorable death" was a phrase because they were generous toward death. But injuries? Different story.
They acknowledged you'd fought for the nation, but that was that. Limbless, unable to work properly—that was the view.
At home, called parasites by family; outside, useless trash.
"Sire, the mounted police are ready."
"Good. Civilian intros handled by desk staff."
"Understood."
If you had something like PTSD? Labeled a coward who knew no honor. Lucky to survive, or skilled but unable to shake the shock—all honor stripped. Branded a battlefield deserter.
Denied the honor drilled into them from birth.
"The sky's lightening to blue."
"Spring mornings are like that."
Thinking of how my childhood "crazy" label felt, I could imagine the disabled veterans' treatment.
"Inspector Paul, you've served France loyally since the Seven Years' War."
"My honor."
The inspector was a PTSD sufferer too. But not branded a coward. Shrapnel took his thumb and index finger. Honorable discharge.
Couldn't pull a trigger anymore. Still, he gripped a pistol left-handed, ready to fight.
But he'd said he discharged fearing he'd be called a coward.
"Indeed. How are the Paris folk? No different from Nouvelle France?"
"Exactly, sire. Though you make some unreasonable requests..."
"Ignore absurd petitions."
"How can police do that? I'm the staff of the people. A tool serving the blind masses."
I'm no psychologist, but I know overcoming PTSD is a matter of will. Not the patient's—their surroundings'.
"Inspector Paul. Sun's rising. Know this? Staring at the sun blinds you."
"Even my grandma knew that."
"Right. But most French don't."
Lots lived in warm blindness.
"I got brevet-promoted to major. Commoners hit a captain ceiling even as officers."
"No beating around the bush—you mean nobles don't get metaphors?"
"Precisely, sire."
We laughed under the pale dawn sky.
"Can't see the sun now. It's fully up."
"Sire, what does the sun symbolize?"
"Nothing at all."
Truly, nothing.