Beware Madame La Guillotine - Promo Video

I was back in the recording studio yesterday to complete the voice-over for Charlotte Corday, tour guide of the Time Traveler Tours prototype app tour played by yours truly.  When the Uber Mensch showed up to take me out to lunch, we thought we'd whip up a quick video to share with you a bit of the goings on. 

Take a look!  Let us know what you think!

Time Traveler Tours Progress Report, I

Many of you have emailed to ask,

"Sarah, when is Beware Madame la Guillotine! going to be ready?" 

So, I thought it might be time to send out a progress report...

For those of you who don't already know, Beware Madame la Guillotine! is the prototype app tour for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch to be produced by the Time Traveler Tours. And it will be ready SOON! 

Beta testing to begin late Aug/early Sept 2010. 

If you'd like to be a Beta tester,

CLICK HERE 

to send us your contact information. Remember:  You'll need to own an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch and you'll need to be in Paris.

BUT, AHH!, THERE'S STILL SO MUCH MORE TO DO!

That's me today in the Time Traveler Tours office, editing the audio for the male-voice over when everyone else is outside enjoying US Independence day! 

What do you think of our new banner and Home Page?  Take a look and send us a comment!

Beware Madame La Guillotine - Pilot Tour!

On Thursday, April 1, 2010, as part of their study of the French Revolution, the 8^th grade class at the International School of Paris took a walking tour of the era with Charlotte Corday. Charlotte is known for having assassinated Jean-Paul Marat, radical journalist and proponent of the Reign of Terror. She blamed Marat for destroying the true revolution. She felt that his death would bring an end to the fear and bloodshed tearing her country apart.

She decided to do it herself.

Her tour, Beware Madame La Guillotine, prototype itinerary of the Time Traveler Tours, recounts her journey to end Marat’s life, and her own. She narrates the last four days of her life, from July 11, 1793, when she left her Norman home, until her execution on July 17th.

ISP students followed her movements, from the Palais Royal, birthplace of the French Revolution and where she bought her weapon; to Marat’s home near the revolutionary hot spot, Le Café Procope, where she stabbed him through the heart as he soaked in the bath; to the Conciergerie, where she was imprisoned, tried, and labeled an “enemy of the revolution”. Charlotte was guillotined at the Place de la Revolution (now the Place de la Concorde) six months after Louis XVI and two months before Marie-Antoinette.

“Very compelling [to view the Revolution] from the perspective of the characters” who lived it, reports one ISP 8^th grader. “I liked how we learn more specifically [about the Revolution]. And get to know the places that related to Charlotte,” said another.

Overall the students liked the experience: “Cool trip.” “Interesting and fun.” “GOOD JOB! And well done!”

Images by Julia Luu, Intern, ISP External Affairs.

Time Traveler Tours go to Bologna

On March 22, 2010, at the acclaimed Bologna Childrens' Book Fair in Italy, Sarah read from the prototype historical itinerary of the Time Traveler Tours, Beware Madame La Guillotine, to rave reviews:

On the evening of 13 July 1793, I found Marat thus, in the bath at his apartment around the corner from his press. It was my third visit to his house that day. The first two times – once in the early morning, then at mid-day – I had been turned away by Simone. This time, however, I succeeded in gaining entry. I climbed the steps to Marat’s door, one heavy foot at a time, and plucked up the courage to knock yet again. I was confronted once more by a scowling and suspicious Simone, but before she could dismiss me a third time, I offered her, with a slightly trembling hand, a letter addressed to Monsieur Marat.  I had written the letter myself, in the heat of the afternoon after my second failed attempt to cross his threshold. The letter stated that I had come to name names; that I was prepared to give him information regarding the missing Girondin “Enemies of the Revolution” that he sought. 

Who would suspect a 24-year old girl?

Simone took the letter and shut the door with a slam, leaving me alone on that drab, inhospitable landing. I could have turned around right there and then. But Marat was just on the other side of that door. I took a long, deep breath, and held it. Would I again be turned away? If so, so be it. Or would I meet the monster Marat at last?

I met my enemy in a small, square room with a brick-tiled floor. A map of France hung upon worn wall-paper. His tub was the shape of a sabot, an old wooden shoe. A board lying across it served as a writing table so that Marat could work on his articles and conduct his interviews even while soaking. To keep warm, he sat upon a linen sheet, the dry ends covering his bare shoulders. A second sheet draped across the tub and writing table offered him a bit of privacy from his visitors.

Marat was strange and unpleasant, thin and feverish.  His head was wrapped in a filthy, vinegar-soaked handkerchief.  On his skin were open lesions that reeked of decaying, rotten flesh.  My eyes began to tear, struggling so against the fumes of death and medicine that I did not at first notice Marat motioning me to take the chair placed beside his bath. I sat as requested, my head turned toward the window, searching the still, hot summer air for what little breeze might chance to come my way.  And in the gloom of evening’s waning light, Marat took great pleasure in scribbling down one by one, his head bent over his writing table, the names of each of my beloved Girondin friends. 

Once finished he raised his head, his blood-shot eyes met mine for the first time. He proclaimed viciously, hate dripping from his lips, “We’ll soon have them all guillotined in Paris!” 

At that moment I knew I had justly come.  I pulled out my knife and stabbed Marat right through the heart.

One blow was all it took. I felt the knife penetrate flesh, bone, muscle. It was shocking how easy it was. 

Marat died almost instantly. 

Image:  Baudry, Paul-Jacques-Aimé. Charlotte Corday. 1860. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes.

Les Sans-culottes

Isn't this a great picture? Just this week, I received permission to use it in the prototype itinerary of the Time Traveler Tours, Beware Madame La Guillotine.

It is a hand-colored copper engraving by Braun & Schneider, Munich, c. 1880, that comes to me from the Collection KulturBuro Schodel, www.german-hosiery-museum.de. It pictures les citoyens sans-culottes of the French Revolution.

Who were the "sans-culottes"? This excerpt from Beware Madame La Guillotine explains all:

The term “sans-culottes” first appeared in the French lexicon in 1790 during the French Revolution. Initially, it described the poorer members of the Third Estate* who wore full-length trousers (pantaloons) rather than the knee-length culottes fashionable among the bourgeoisie and nobility. The expression quickly came to refer to the radical revolutionaries, both rich and poor, who styled themselves “citoyens sans-culottes”.

In addition to long trousers, the sans-culottes were also often seen wearing a conical red cap, known as the “Phrygian Cap” or cap of liberty. The same cap was worn in ancient times by both the Greeks and later the Romans. For them, as for the French revolutionaries, the Phrygian Cap symbolized freedom from tyranny.

During the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars, the term sans-culottes referred as well to the ill-clad and ill-equipped volunteers of the Revolutionary Army.

****

As for news on the likelihood of obtaining photos from the RMN (see Phrases & Expression: Sabotage), I managed to get through to the Paris reps who've bounced my case to their affiliate in New York. I'm hoping very much that this means progress! Cross your fingers for me.

****
*The Third Estate was that portion of the French population (approximately 96%) that was neither part of the Church nor to the Aristocracy in France of the Ancien Régime. For more on the Third Estate and the French Revolution, click here.



Phrases & Expressions: Sabotage

Did you know that the word sabotage originates from French? The story goes like this:

Back in the early 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution took off in France, laborers dropped their shovels and pick axes and left their ancestral fields for work in the growing numbers of factories and coal mines. They sought a better life; they hoped for a better economic future for their families.

But work was hard and conditions were unbearable. People were pushed to phyical extremes on bellies that remained empty day after day after day. They soon lost hope.

In those days, poor French laborers wore a type of wooden shoe or clog called a sabot. And when their hunger became unendurable and their hope forgotten they rose up as one to strike.

They used their wooden sabots to jam the machines of the factories all over France. With their sabots they stopped all means of production. They sabotaged the captains of industry.

Today, the strike (la grève) remains a powerful part of Fench culture, a way for workers to force their employers to sit up and take notice.

And it all started with a wooden shoe.

Welcome to the new website of the Time Traveler Tours!

I’ve moved my blog, FrancoFiles Fun Facts, to this location and I will be blogging here from now on.  In addition to comment boxes, which I always enjoy reading and responding to, I offer you following interactive features on this website:

• A Forum where you can ask questions, leave your own fun facts about French history and culture, or tell us about your experience using the Time Traveler Tours - I welcome your positive testimonials as well as your suggestions and critical feedback;
• A Discussion Room where you can hold conversations with me and other visitors to the Time Traveler Tours website; and
• A Picture Gallery (to come) of time travelers and their testimonials - please send them in!

I look forward to hearing from you!

Sarah B. Towle

Founder & Creative Director

Time Traveler Tours, LLC



The October March of Women, 1789

" In the wee hours of October 6, 1789, a mob of peasant women broke into the Palace of Versailles. They had been encamped outside the chateau since the previous evening, awaiting an audience with my King, Louis XVI (16^th), and his Queen, Marie Antoinette.

The women had come from Paris and they were starving. Their children and their aged, as well, were starving. A terrible storm had wiped out France’s wheat crop that summer. Now the common folk had no bread, their main – and sometimes only – source of food. I followed them from Paris as they struggled to make the 20 kilometer journey on foot, afraid for my King, afraid of the power of the mob. As the women marched, their numbers grew. All along the route, I observed as more women dropped their washing and their brooms and left their children to join the fray. They arrived at Versailles in the thousands, demanding that King Louis and Marie Antoinette save them from their misery. Their hunger had driven them to madness. Waiting through the night for a response from the King had transformed their desperation to fury.

Before dawn, they stormed the Palace through a servants’ entrance. I pushed in amongst them, hoping to reach the King first, to warn him or hide him, I knew not what. But the scene was one of total mayhem. Frantic women rushed in all directions. They ran down gilded corridors, flew up marble staircases, burst through passageways reserved for servants. 'If they refuse to come out', was heard the mob’s collective cry, 'we’ll drag them out!' They searched for the King and Queen, their rage now whipped to a savage frenzy. They killed anyone who got in their way.
Before dawn, the King and Queen were found with their two children and the King’s sister, Madame Elizabeth, huddled like mice before a gang of hungry cats, still in their bedclothes in the King’s private apartments. They were forced to dress quickly and pressed into waiting carriages bound for Paris, driven there by the mob so that they might bear witness to the misery of their subjects.
They would never see Versailles again.

Some among the women accompanied the king and queen with the severed heads of royal guards held high upon pikes, like tattered, bloody flags. Others stayed behind and shouting, Down with the Monarchy! Down with the King!, they hurried about the chateau, smashing statuary and precious antiques, pilfering what could be carried, seizing foodstuffs from the immense Versailles kitchen: fresh pheasant and duck, salted pork, baskets of vegetables, and bread still baking in the ovens for that morning’s royal meal.

I do not recall the moment I became conscious that I was powerless to save my King. But I do remember being gripped with the urgent imperative to save the King’s Garden. In a flash I knew, without thinking, that I, Antoine Laurent de Jussieu – the fourth member of my family to bear the title, Botanist-in-Chief to the King – was obliged to confront the mob to save the legacy of two centuries of adventurers and natural scientists, even if it meant my death.
The mob’s force was not diminished by its destruction of the chateau interior. The women’s anger only expanded with their ferocity, like a volcano whose vigor has been pent up for too long. And indeed, it did not take long for them to spill out into the Royal Gardens, intent on further rampage.
I was waiting for them. The botanists, master-gardeners, and under-gardeners of the Palace of Versailles were all waiting for them. We faced the mob armed only with the tools of our labors: shovels, spades, sickles and shears meant for pruning dead or dying leaves and branches from flowers and trees. We assembled to defend with our lives our life’s work: the plants and trees which for two hundred years had travelled to us from the far corners of the earth, and which we had so tenderly coaxed to adapt and thrive in the French soil and climate.
A woman with wrath in her eyes stepped out of the crowd. 'Move aside,' she bellowed. 'These gardens belong to the people, now.'
'Madam,' I said, taking a step forward as well. 'These gardens have always belonged to the people. They provide beauty for our pleasure as well as nourishment and medicine for our health. For 120 years, the products of the Versailles gardens have graced the King’s table and cured his ills. Destroy them and you destroy the means by which we may now help you to feed and care for your hungry children.'
An eerie hush fell upon the crowd. All that could be heard was the whisper of the pre-dawn winds through the trees and bushes of the vast gardens of Versailles. I gripped my ax; my heart raced as blood rushed to my pounding temples. It was the longest moment of my life. Finally, I heard hope rise from deep within the crowd. I heard the words that I knew would save the gardens, the words that would allow me to breathe again. I heard the words that would mean salvation for the botanical wonders of the Versailles Palace.
'Long Live the King’s Garden!' someone shouted. 'Long Live the Garden of Plants!' cried another, changing the name of the garden to make it acceptable to the people. And then it grew, little by little until it was a resounding chorus: 'Vive le Jardin des Plantes! Long Live the Garden of Plants!'

And all at once, the chant shifted again. 'To Paris!' the women cried. And as they retreated, the gardens were flooded with the first light of a new dawn. The inheritance of two centuries of the blood and sweat of French plant hunters, botanists, and gardeners was saved, and it glowed in gratitude to those of us who had defended it."

*****
Excerpted from the Time Traveler Paris Tours: Long Live the King's Garden, by Sarah B. Towle (copyright 2009), expected launch date: March 2010.

Images:
Versailles, the Chateau, exterior facade, views from southwest, Google Earth, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Triumph of the Parisian Army and the People, from http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/230/.

Portrait of Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, nephew of the de Jussieu brothers, Galerie des naturalistes de J. Pizzetta, Ed. Hennuyer, 1893, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.