Stories
A D0G'S LIFE
The whole city was ablaze. black smoke filling the sky above the burning
churches and the residential quarters which spanned the wide boulevards.
Fires had been burning for such a long time, but of course I measure
time differently from the way you measure it. On many occasions I had
been almost hit by falling masonry and other burning objects. The year
this daily carnage had begun was 1789 and from that date onwards living
in Paris became unbearable.
Prior to 1789 France had been an absolute monarchy and the king, Louis
XVI, had ruled with an iron fist. The aristocracy and the Roman Catholic
Church enjoyed many privileges, which were paid for by the rest of the
French people, who were known as the ‘bourgeoisie’. The church, the
largest land owner in France, levied a harsh tax on the growth of crops,
which resulted in severe poverty, leading to widespread famine and
malnutrition. This caused the spread of disease and the death toll rose
rapidly. The country was in a very poor financial state, with an
unmanageable national debt, mainly because of French participation in a
series of costly wars and the extravagant lifestyle of the aristocracy,
especially the Versailles court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
So, what was my part in this increasingly bitter and dangerous
situation? Well, I suppose I was an adopted member of the aristocracy.
My master was Jacques Necker, the Finance Minister, I was his hunting
dog, a French poodle he had named ‘Mimi’. In those days poodles were
bird flushers and retrievers, retrieving both from land and from water
birds which had been shot by hunting parties. My master would take me
hunting whenever he returned to his country estate a few kilometres from
Paris. Before the revolution I was almost one of the family and life was
good. The fateful year of 1789 changed all that.
There had been a good deal of resentment and unrest before that date.
The ambitious professional and mercantile classes were angry at noble
dominance and privilege In public life. The merchants were familiar with
the way of life enjoyed by their peers in the Netherlands and Great
Britain, and wanted this way of life for themselves. The working classes
looked at their hungry children and then at the fat stomachs of the
nobility and hatred burned within them. There were also large minorities
of the population who practised the Protestant faith and deeply resented
control by the Catholic church of so many different institutions.
The aristocracy generally were believed to be greedy and useless. The
King and his advisers had tried to pacify the bourgeoisie by introducing
various conciliatory measures, none of which worked. Then the King had
my master dismissed for suggesting that the royal family live on a
budget, and subsequently reconstructed the Finance Ministry. My master
was shunned by his former friends, quickly ran out of money, and one day
decided to leave me in a small wooded area by the river Seine ‘for my
own good’. That was when my life changed completely. I had to scavenge
for food, often went hungry and was frequently kicked by people, who
regarded me as a despised aristocrat's dog.
Many Parisians saw Louis XVI's reconstruction of the Finance Ministry as
the signal for conditions to become even worse and open rebellion began.
Mobs formed, and they soon had the support of the French Guard, which
included armed, trained soldiers. On 14th July, 1789, amid pockets of
rioting, anarchy and looting throughout the city, one large mob stormed
the Bastille prison looking for its weapons and ammunition cache. That
was a terrible day in French history. The Prison Governor was beaten,
stabbed and then decapitated. His head was placed on a pike and paraded
around the city. At one point the severed head came off the pike and
fell to the floor. Two other dogs and I ran towards it but were beaten
back and the head was repositioned on the pike. Then, on returning to
the City Hall, the mob accused the Mayor of treachery and he was also
assassinated.
In a doomed attempt at reconciliation my master was recalled to power,
but by this time nobles had begun fleeing the country and insurrection
spread out from Paris like a tidal wave, engulfing the whole of France.
Members of the clergy became marked men, even if they showed sympathy
towards the mobs. Anyone who was seen to be wealthy was beaten up and
their homes set alight. There were a lot of people killed and their
bodies left on the streets. But for me, the worst part was the smell. As
you know, dogs have a keener sense of smell than humans. It wasn't only
the dead bodies that smelt so badly, but also the rotting, uncollected
household waste. Disease spread like a forest fire, greatly increasing
the death toll.
The other dogs and I used to hide in fear of our lives, especially when
we saw mobs running down the street, yelling obscenities and hitting out
at anything and anyone in their frenzied pursuit of violence. Some dogs
were caught, and these poor creatures were quickly killed and then eaten
by the mobs. Life was cheap, and death often seemed to be a preferred
option to the mindless, ceaseless barbarity within Paris during that
awful time.
Despite further attempts at reconciliation by the King and the
aristocracy, the revolution was not to be denied. I remember that in
October 1789 the women of Paris marched on the Palace of Versailles,
angry at the living condition they had to endure whilst the King and his
court held banquets. I was crouched inside a doorway in the palace
courtyard, having hidden under some straw in a large cart, being pulled
by a horse and rider, which was carrying some of the older women. The
women were demanding that the King and his family move back to Paris to
properly address the poverty issue. Five days later the King and his
family did transfer to the Tuilerie palace in the capital, but by now
the revolution had gone too far.
Then the King declared war on Austria in a disastrous attempt to unite
the people of France. Prussia joined Austria a few weeks later. The
Prussian army invaded France, facing little resistance until they were
finally defeated at the Battle of Valmy. However, by this time France
was in turmoil and the monarchy had effectively become a thing of the
past.
On 17th January, 1793 Louis XVI was condemned to death and executed on
the guillotine a few days later. With the revolution in full force a
reign of terror began. A so called ‘Committee of Public Safety’ was
established under a man called Robespierre. Committee members arrested
thousands of people who opposed the revolution in any way and condemned
them to death. They were delivered to the guillotine for public
execution in open wooden carts called ‘Tumbrels’. Victims were loaded
onto these carts and paraded through throngs of jeering men and women to
their deaths. The sound of their screams and the sight of blood running
down the street to the sewers turned my stomach. Dogs could move around
the city without fear during these executions, because the French
citizens seemed to be filled only with a terrible lust for human blood.
After witnessing this appalling spectacle too many times, a pack of us
decided we had had enough and decided to leave the city and head south
towards Spain. The plan was to avoid the more populatcd areas such as
Orleans and Limoges,hunting for food as we travelled. In the Massif
Central we passed through the ancient lava flows and the eroded volcanic
necks of the Auverne. We were not used to living in this wild country
environment, and two of our pack died during this section of the
journey. We then traversed the Causses, underlain mainly by limestone,
in the south-west. Finally, we found one of the few passes through the
Pyrenees into Spain.
Had we stayed in France we would have witnessed the army and its
successful general, Napoleon Bonaparte, gain power. He was then to
become a dictator and later be proclaimed the Emperor of France.
The French Revolution changed dramatically the way of life not only in
France but also in the rest of Europe. It wasn't only a revolt against
the regime of the Bourbon royal family, but also embodied an entirely
new way of looking at human society. Its rallying cry was ‘Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity’, and although it failed to achieve these ideals in
France it spread them throughout Europe. From that time the world's
social order was changed forever.
But we dogs didn't care about the world's social order. Spain was
relatively free from trouble, the people were friendly, and we were no
longer in danger. As soon as I was recognised as a hunting dog I was
taken in by a Spanish family. I was finally able to live what humans
have for so long seen as a contradiction. At last I was able to enjoy a
happy dogs' life.
by Keith Wright