Chapter 1073: Chapter 349: Storming the Bastille!

The nobles seemed to have set their sights on a target, pulling their horses to a halt in unison. They circled around a peasant who had come to the city for work, holding sharp rapiers in their hands and wearing mocking smiles.

One of the nobles, directly facing the peasant, asked,

"Hey, you bumpkin, what’s that in your hand?"

"M...my lord..."

The peasant was so frightened he couldn’t speak properly,

"This is the bread I bought..."

"Hey, I think you probably stole that bread, didn’t you?"

From behind, where the peasant could not see, another noble opened his mouth to speak. Just as the peasant turned around, the previous noble raised his rapier. With a swift motion, the blade slashed through the coarse cloth, leaving a long bloody gash on the peasant’s back.

"You damn peasant, don’t you know you should face a noble when you speak to them?"

David felt a surge of anger rising within him. A thought automatically appeared in his mind:

[According to the French law at the time, speaking to a noble required facing them, or it was considered disrespectful, and the noble had the right to punish the peasant.]

But in front of him, four or five nobles had encircled the peasant. No matter how quickly the peasant turned his head, another noble would always take the opportunity to speak and then slash him. The peasant’s screams and pleas for mercy only brought satisfied smiles to the faces of the nobles.

In just a few minutes, the peasant’s entire body was covered in cuts, his blood flowing profusely. His screams gradually diminished, and no one on the street dared to step forward to stop it.

Once the nobles had had their fill of amusement, they rode off, leaving only a bloody corpse on the ground.

Even David, who hailed from Night City, and the gang members were left in shock, their minds full of questions.

What kind of absurd law is this?

Even corporate lackeys and gangsters wouldn’t kill someone in such a bizarre manner.

This was torture, entertainment at someone else’s expense.

"Hey, Jean Valjean."

Just as they were fuming, someone tapped them on the shoulder from behind.

"Hurry up and report in, today’s your first day in the Guards, don’t leave a bad impression." The speaker was a young man. Still fuming, David didn’t follow him immediately but instinctively glanced at the corpse.

Mewtwo’s editor would need to thoroughly understand the user’s thoughts, know what they were thinking, to edit a Mewtwo that majority could immerse themselves in without feeling out of place.

The person seemed to be there explicitly to provide commentary,

"Don’t look, at least two thousand such wretches die like this each year."

How many?!

Two thousand?!

That means every day, at least six people are killed just for the amusement of the nobles, not counting the others. Is this Paris even one-third the size of Night City?

David opened his mouth but didn’t know what to say.

Is this the birthplace of civilization, Europe?

Staggering along, being dragged away, that person continued to chatter.

"These aren’t peaceful days, it’s chaotic. You need to stay vigilant. His Majesty can’t collect taxes, a Third Estate meeting has spawned some kind of National Assembly, and just recently some Declaration of Independence was churned out, but now it seems to be nothing more than waste paper, utterly useless."

What kind of times was 1789 in France?

Across the channel, Great Britain had completed industrialization, but here in France, it was still an agrarian nation, having lost the Anglo-French War disastrously and ending up owing 12 billion francs – nearly as much as today’s US debt of $37 trillion – it’s impossible to repay, not in this lifetime.

And yet, audaciously pretending to be a big shot, supporting the United States’ independence and spending over a billion in doing so.

Is that all?

It’s not over yet.

This year brought a drought, leading to poor harvests and famine.

Among the few officials still doing their jobs, Necker halted domestic grain exports and shifted towards imports, hoping to endure this period, but some were obstructing progress, using the opportunity to hoard grain and drive up prices.

The industrialized British even flooded the French market with cheap goods, causing severe casualties among local people and artisans, driving millions to bankruptcy.

Triple crises in agriculture, economy, and military.

Yet the noble lords still indulged in extravagant and decadent enjoyment.

Though David didn’t understand all this, as they walked, he suddenly saw a group of people lined up before a wall, only being permitted to pass after paying a fee.

Nearby stood a watchtower with armed soldiers on guard.

"What’s that?"

"That’s the tax wall constructed by the tax farmer Lavoisier, you need to pay to pass this wall."

(Yes, that’s the Lavoisier from the chemistry textbooks.)

"But I see walls like this all along the way, at least a dozen."

"Which is why you have to pay all along the way. Actually, I tell you, there are more than fifty of these walls throughout the entire city."

"What?"

Bleeding people dry.

Suddenly, David started to understand what that term meant.

How is it that compared to this place, Night City seems somewhat civilized and progressive?

In the passing square,

He saw an agrarian worker speaking to his employer,

"Our children, when born, will be able to raise their fists!" 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

"This land doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to the noble."

"My sweat irrigates this land, my hands till it,

Tell me, my friend, if this land truly belongs to the noble,

Why have I never seen him plow it?"

"I furrow the earth with my plow, I write life with my plow,"

"The pages of the earth are inscribed with our sweat and pain!"

And in circumstances like that, Louis XVI attempted to levy taxes, to tax the Third Estate commoners.

Even gathering these emerging bourgeois and petty bourgeois to Versailles.

Hey! Let’s have a meeting.

Modern people know what a group of men will talk about when gathered during national turmoil, economic recession.

"You still want to tax us?"