V: Otter
The ridiculous journey of Thomas Muir.
Good morning. Today is quintidi, the 25th of Thermidor, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate la loutre, the most adorable marine mammal on the planet.
The French Revolution's story is usually glossed as a huge backfire, with Napoleon's ensuing rampage putting a button on 19th century Europe's opinion of "see? bad idea" that still lingers over the affair. And while a great many messy and murderous outcomes are hard to ignore, there's also the enduring push for the idea of innate human rights that the American and French revolutions kickstarted, and which eventually bore fruit – to a lesser or greater extent in different regions – in the banner year of LVI (1848).
The shock to monarchs that a major power could topple a king so thoroughly led to a seemingly comical backlash against even the most (in retrospect) polite requests for reform. That's my take, anyway, on what happened to poor Thomas Muir, who was sent all the way around the world as punishment in the final decade of the 18th century for the sin of advocating for basic voting rights and representation in Parliament.
