1939912059 (R) (44 page)

The Duke of Andelot, Book 7

My dearest Reader,

The amount of research that went into this book was staggering, but I will confess I loved every single moment of it! I was incredibly fortunate to have done most of the research in France itself. I figured history books and the internet could only make me grasp so much.

Imagine my surprise to find how very little physical evidence actually remains of the French Revolution. Between riots and the tearing down of statues and buildings in the name of change and Napoleon (and those after him) redesigning the city, there were only a few glimmers of what Paris might have actually been like back in 1792. Even the Bastille, which is well known in history as being the first heart beat of the revolution, was taken down by the people, stone by stone, leaving nothing behind. Those stones were reused for other buildings or were kept as mementos by people. So I basically had to re-imagine everything and did so through historical sketches and various pictures that I held up while standing where buildings and events had once been.

Aside from visiting the
Conciergerie
, which was used as a prison during the revolution and still hosts a good number of artifacts from that time, digging through old archives is what ultimately gave me the glimpse I was looking for. While I had known quite a bit about Marquis de Sade, as I had studied his writing back in college, I was astounded to find just how involved he had been in the greatest political change to ever seize France. Setting aside his twisted taste for certain sexual tendencies that made the world shudder and his mother-in-law hunt him down on a regular basis to ensure he stayed in prison, when the Bastille was stormed, it marked the ultimate freedom Sade had been waiting for.

Although he was no longer in the Bastille when it had been taken by the people, the royal decree that kept Sade a prisoner without trial due to his mother-in-law having a stronghold with the king, was struck down the moment Paris was taken by the new rise of power. Sade was incredibly clever in handling the fact that he was a titled man and simply denounced his name and played along with the masses.

While we have a tendency to think of Sade as being a sadistic, pornographic son of a bitch who raped women, when it came to his dealings with the public and politics, he proved to be a lot more democratic and merciful than most of the men in power during that time. Which, of course, got me to thinking about the sort of man he really was. The very same mother-in-law who had ensured he stayed behind bars without trial was ironically placed before him and the bench to be guillotined. Surprisingly, he voted against her death. So how sadistic was he really? I decided to shove him between the pages of my book and give the bastard a chance.

In the end, the purpose of this book was to capture the grit and the angst of the time. So many people suffered and most of them were innocent to the charges. While France still celebrates the events that created the country it is today, the brutal reality is that thousands of people were butchered on the streets and in prison without ever seeing trial. The freedom people thought they were getting was a farce, because the hunt went well beyond Catholic priests and the elite known as royalty. Most of the people were actually everyday people like us. It was the Salem Witch Trials on crack. Everyone was guilty until they were dead.

That said, this book is dedicated to those whose innocent voices were silenced by the revolution. They are the people we will never know about. It is their stories and their trials that captured my mind and my heart. Thank you for reading this book and allowing me to travel back in time.

With love,

Delilah Marvelle

Table of Contents