Brian Oberlies’s Reviews > Ninety-Three > Status Update

A final description of the Vendee as chaotic, leaderless, but bountiful for change

The conflict in the Vendee boils down to a difference in vision and creed, between local ideas and universal ideas, between local community and nation, between peasants and patriots

The story shifts back to the royalist. Vendee, who are experts at living within and under the forests, ruthlessly ambushing republican battalions and villages

The Vendee is equally chaotic to the hierarchy and structure of the republic but rather more emotional, empathetic, honorable and proud

The convention meets again, Marat wants to strengthen the decree that issues those contributing to the release or escape of royalists so he is going to the Committee of Public Safety

The convention continues to be described but this time by the individuals contributing to the bipartisan chaos. Everything feels ephemeral as deaths are forecasted before they’ve happened.

Amidst the chaos, progress is made, but not without drama, violence, anger and animosity among the participants

Both sides of the Convention are described - a chaotic lineup of individuals who play their own part in the revolution and its politics

Thomas Paine, an American, was named?

The inception and meeting place of the Convention is described, from rags down at the Riding School to the riches of the formal palace theatre

A grandiose yet dismal and lugubrious setting

Cimourdain enters the conversation and he is granted commission over managing a younger republican commander Gauvain

Cimourdain is clearly ill at ease with this name but it is not known why

We are introduced to Robespierre, Danton and Marat, three characteristically unique republic as meeting to discuss certain papers…their fate already known

The three are at each others throats, debating the biggest threat to the revolution. Marat has eyes and ears everywhere, and all three have their secrets and skeletons but know each other’s

Tellmarch sees the distant smoke and follows it, uncovering the gruesome aftermath of the slaughter of Herve-en-Pail. Two peasant survivors emerge, and they find the murdered vivandiere beside the barely-living peasant mother.

The novel shifts toward a stark description of chaotic revolutionary Paris, where law is haphazardly enforced by the populous yet crime and horrors persist