Chapter 7 · 1914 to 1918
Home Fires
The war is at the edge of the map and Paris is the home front: the Law keeps the factories producing and the nation united, the Revolution turns exhaustion, strikes and censorship into a movement.
- Map
- 20 districts
- Newspaper
- The War Bulletin
- Street lighting
- Electric light
The levels
- The Taxis of the Marne1 September 1914
- The Censor's Scissors1 March 1915
- The Munitions Strike14 May 1917
- The Dancer15 July 1917
- The Long Gun23 March 1918
- Armistice Night1 November 1918
- Interlude 7
After the finale of chapter 7: Home FiresBreak the seal
Chapter 7: Home FiresSealed so it does not spoil the story for you.Break the seal
The booklet opens
Prologue
One way “The Bloody Week” can end
The Commune had held out, and Paris remembered that it could govern itself. Forty years on, the workers' districts still voted red and still kept their old flags in the cupboard.
Otherwise
The Commune had been crushed, and Paris had been rebuilt over its dead. Forty years on, the workers' districts still remembered the wall at Père-Lachaise.
In the summer of 1914 the country went to war. The unions that had sworn to strike against it joined the Sacred Union instead, and the city emptied of its young men.
If the interlude ended this way: Raoul drove the gang out of the city.
The motor car had become the getaway, and the police were still a step behind the men who could drive.
Otherwise
The police had learned to wait at the right crossroads, and their Mobile Brigades now drove faster than anyone they chased.
The factions
The Revolution
- Reformist unions
- The union leaders and socialist deputies who joined the Sacred Union and want a seat at the table.
- Shop-floor militants
- Marthe Rivière's stewards and the women of the shell sheds, who are tired of waiting.
- Deserters' networks
- Men who did not go back from leave, forgers of passes and black-market traders.
- Pacifists and satirists
- Cartoonists, a weekly with a duck on its masthead, and speakers back from Switzerland.
The Law
- Government
- Georges Clémard and the ministers back from Bordeaux, governing by decree.
- Army
- General Galliard, military governor of Paris, and the territorials who guard the factories.
- Police and censors
- The provost marshals, the Prefecture and the censorship office.
- Second Bureau
- Counter-espionage: the hunters of spies and defeatists.
- Arms makers
- André Citrange and the owners of the shell factories, and their contracts.
Neutral factions
- The Church
- Shopkeepers
- The press
- The black market
- Allies
- Britain and, from 1917, America: loans and troops for the government.
- Enemy Agents
- Gold from across the front for anyone who will weaken the war effort. Taking it sets the Treason flag.
- The faubourgs
Characters
- Georges Clémard, "the Tiger", wartime premier
- General Galliard, military governor of Paris
- Marthe Rivière, union organiser at a shell factory
- Lena Vos, dancer and suspected double agent
- André Citrange, shell-factory magnate
- Simone, switchboard operator at the Chamber of Deputies
The booklet closes
After the finale of chapter 7: Home FiresSealed so it does not spoil the story for you.Break the seal
Epilogue
If the Revolution won Armistice Night
The war was over and the movement was stronger than it had ever been. The question now was what it would do with the factories.
Otherwise
The war was won and the Republic had held. The question now was whether it could hold the peace.
On the boulevards the electric lamps came on again after four years of blackouts.