One day in history, King Louis XVI of France received a drawing with a strange mechanical device on it. It was a square wooden table with a height of about 1 meter. There were tall pillars on both sides, and a sharp knife was placed horizontally above the pillars. Louis XVI studied it and personally modified the design drawings. Later, this device, called the "guillotine" by later generations, was officially put into use by the French government. Unexpectedly, just 9 months later, the French Revolution broke out, and King Louis XVI himself became the soul of the machine.

The "Assassin's Creed" series of games has always been one of the representative works of Ubisoft. The biggest feature of this series of games is to integrate real history into the world of the game, allowing the players to interact with many historical figures, witness the wheel of history rolling forward, and even participate in historical events as an indispensable part of it. At the same time, history as the background of the game is not just an inconsequential ornament in Assassin's Creed. It also affects players' thinking about the game and is an important part of the game. It even allows the game to have the ability to feed back to reality and provide data support for the restoration of ancient buildings.

Assassin's Creed: The Revolution is such a game. As a game with the story background of the "French Revolution", one of the most important events in history, Ubisoft has combined the guidance of many historians in more than four years of development to restore the 18th-century Paris France in the game world, allowing people to personally reflect that precious history.

With such efforts, games are no longer just games, but also a way for people to learn history, allowing players to better understand the past of Paris, and this is exactly what we are going to talk about today.

Someone once compared the French Revolution to the greatest fireworks in the world in the 18th century. So today, let us walk into the sparks and combine the game to explore the real history behind "Assassin's Creed: The Revolution".

Store the fire, Louis XIV establishes the Palace of Versailles

Rome was not built in one day, nor did the collapse of the same French order happen in one day.

The French Revolution took place from 1789 to 1799. This period happened to be the "best era, worst era" written by British writer Charles Dickens in the beginning of "The Tale of the Two Cities". This is an era of intertwined contradictions, with mud and sand coexisting, and the old and new. French politics and society were in great changes and turmoil, which eventually led to the occurrence of the French Revolution...

If we talk about the French Revolution, the seeds of distress can be traced back to the reign of King Louis XIV. The French King Louis XIV called himself the "King of the Sun" and reigned for 72 years.One of the longest-reigning monarchs in history, and some people call him the greatest king in French history, but despite this, this emperor was closely related to the outbreak of the French Revolution.

In 1643 AD, with the death of Louis XIV of the Thirteenth, Louis XIV, who was only 5 years old at the time, ascended the throne. Because he was too young at this time, the actual power of France was always in the hands of his biological mother and Cardinal Massalin. At this time, Louis XIV was more like a "surface emperor". This situation was not changed until Massalin's death in 1661.

In 1661, 23-year-old Louis XIV officially became the master of France. The first thing he did after taking power was to start the expansion of the Palace of Versailles.

Perhaps because of the unpleasant experience of being a monarch in childhood, Louis XIV did not leave any good impression of the Royal Palace in Paris, as well as the palaces such as the Louvre and Tuileries. In addition, in order to truly be no longer influenced by others, he gradually came up with the idea of moving the political center out of Paris, and finally used the Palace of Versailles as an ideal place.

The Assassin's Creed: The Revolution once explained the reason why Louis XIV regarded Versailles as the new political center of France. Paris was the former political center, where the nobles and ministers had close networks and power, which was very unfavorable to the young Louis XIV. If the nobles and ministers were brought to life in the Palace of Versailles by establishing a new political center, then these nobles and important officials would not be able to maintain contact with the original old forces, and Louis XIV could also control the every move of these people in this way, thereby achieving true concentration of power.

The Palace of Versailles in the game: Exterior

In fact, the Palace of Versailles originally existed during the period of Louis XIII, but it has always existed as a "hunting palace". It was not until Louis XIV took power that it was a series of renovations and renovations that made the Palace of Versailles gradually become what it appeared in the game. In order to achieve these things, it took nearly ten years to expand the Palace of Versailles, and the capital invested more than one million pounds.

After the completion of the palace, Louis XIV became the eternal master of Versailles. Although there were many French monarchs who lived here later, they were still incomparable to it.

The significance of the existence of Versailles is not just a palace of the emperor, and it is one of the strategies of Louis XIV's concentration of political rights. By moving out of the old palace to the new palace, he turned the nobles who were the incarnation of local power into members of the palace and removed their local power. At the same time, these nobles who came to the palace to live had to pay huge sums of money for the production of banquets and clothing in order to deal with the palace gatherings from morning to night, and had no time to manage the local problems. In this way, Louis XIV builtIt established the first centralized and authoritarian nation-state in French history. This political system was not overthrown until the French Revolution and was also one of the political incentives that caused the French Revolution.

A banquet held in the Palace of Versailles in "Assassin's Creed"

The Palace of Versailles in the game: Inside

In addition to building a palace represented by the Palace of Versailles, Louis XIV also did a major thing on external issues, that is, actively fighting against the outside world. During the 54 years of Louis XIV's rule, France participated in countless foreign wars, big and small, five of which were the most important, namely the War of Legacy from 1667 to 1668, the War of France-Trump War from 1672 to 1678, the War of the Dutch War from 1683 to 1684, the War of the Grand Alliance from 1688 to 1697, and the War of Succession of the Spanish Throne from 1702 to 1713. Although France has benefited a lot after several wars, compared with the interests of the aristocratic class, the war brought more suffering to the ordinary French people.

Then it came in 1715. Louis XIV passed away and his great-grandson Louis XV officially ascended the throne. With Louis XIV's life ended with the end of the strongest era in France. When Louis XIV, who ruled France for 72 years, died, he left behind a treasury that was almost completely deficient. After this era when Voltaire called the "great Louis XIV era", French society changed drastically, which eventually led to the French Revolution in 1789.

One off-topic: Versailles has a very important position in "Assassin's Creed: The Revolution". This is not only the place where Louis XVI ascended the throne in 1776, and the members of the Templars assassinate Charles, and it is also the center point of the struggle between the Templars and the Assassin Organization after the prologue of the French Revolution in the game. In addition, Yano, who was exiled by the Assassin Organization, met Alice again here and returned to Paris under his persuasion.

Louis XVI launched a third-level parliament, and the French Revolution broke out

After experiencing the greatest dynasty in French history, with Louis XVI's succession, the accumulated ills over a century began to gradually be revealed. At the same time, this famous "locksmith King" in history did not have the means and strategies like Louis XIV, which eventually led to the unstoppable decline of the Bourbon dynasty.

Louis XVI was involved in wars several times after taking office as the throne. Due to the successive wars, the treasury after squandering Louis XIV and XVIV could no longer support France's economy, which eventually led to France's fiscal deficit problem. Even though the French economy had reached such a difficult point, the Palace of Versailles was still a very luxurious image. According to legend, Louis XVI only bought a queen for a purchase.A necklace cost up to 6 million francs. On the issue that the French people could no longer live normally, Louis XVI and his queen even made a statement that was comparable to the ancient Chinese "Why not eat meat minced meat" - "Since the people can't afford bread, why don't they eat cake?"

At this time, the contradiction between the French aristocratic class and the ordinary people had reached an uncontrollable level. People were eager to change, and the spark could immediately develop into a prairie fire.

The slums shown in Assassin's Creed

Although the people lived in difficult life, the nobles who lived far away in Versailles obviously did not notice this. In order to save the French economy, Louis XVI decided to convene a third-level parliament that had not been held for nearly a hundred years. What he did not expect was that his move was equivalent to indirectly igniting the hidden spark of the Great Revolution for many years.

The Third-level Conference in Assassin's Creed: The Revolution

On May 5, 1789, King Louis XVI of France held a third-level parliament at the Palace of Versailles in order to seek reform of the tax system. Since then, countless parliaments have been held in the past two months, but the representatives of the three levels have never reached an agreement on national economic issues. After many negotiations have failed, the first and second classes even began to refuse the representatives of the third class to enter the parliamentary venue in order to satisfy their own interests, and class contradictions have further intensified. Finally, in June 1789, as the largest level of the third-class parliament, the people of the third-class issued the "Tennis Court Declaration" and established the revolutionary National Assembly. A few days later, on July 14, the Bastille where the French political prisoners were imprisoned, was about to break out.

The historical Tennis Hall Declaration, the Third Class Establishment of the National Assembly

The chapter "Incarceration" in the game "Assassin's Creed: The Great Revolution" depicts the story of the French people capturing the Bastille on July 14 in reality. Within a few days after the Bastille was captured, domestic politics in France further deteriorated, and the parliament established by the French people launched a protracted struggle with the nobles who supported the monarchy.

In August of the same year, in order to appease the emotions of the third-class people, France promulgated the Declaration of Human Rights. Unfortunately, this superficial reform is actually just a means to deceive the people. The Declaration of Human Rights does not take care of the power of the third-class people without property, and eventually this led to the outbreak of the Versailles Women's Movement (also known as the October Event) in October.

The history of this story is told in detail in the co-star of the Assassin's Creed: The Great Revolution. The aristocratic class that did not value the power of ordinary French people made people very dissatisfied. Finally, on October 5, more than 700 women gathered in the Paris lobby and headed towards the Palace of Versailles. Although the Knights Templar intervened in this operation, with the help of the Assassin Organization, the peopleFinally, the Palace of Versailles was occupied and Louis XVI was forced to return to Paris to put him under house arrest in the Palace of Duille.

At this time, France had embarked on a road that could not be turned back.

The Versailles Women's Parade in the Game

As Louis XVI was placed under house arrest in the Palace of Duille in Paris, the royal family fought for several years. Although the royal family members wanted to escape or re-establish the regime through constitutional monarchy, the Templars in the game intervened in the revolution several times, but when the time came to 1792, the National Assembly, composed of the vast majority of the people, finally announced the decision to abolish the old system and establish the First French Republic through voting. In the second year after the founding of the First French Republic, King Louis XVI was sentenced to death by the National Assembly. Louis XVI became the only emperor in French history to be sentenced to death. It is ironic that the guillotine used when executing the death penalty was designed by himself.

Louis XVI was sentenced to death after the French Revolution

About the French Revolution in History and "Assassin's Creed: The Revolution"

The French Revolution is the greatest and most intense social revolution in European history. Its significance lies in the abolition of the old politics and power institutions and the establishment of a new system. This period is also called the "Year of Dawn" by some people. The power of the "Assassin's Creed" game is that just like the previous "Assassin's Creed" series, he perfectly linked this history to the entangled struggle between the Templars and the Assassin's organization, portraying the struggle in reality as a revolution that allows the new middle class to replace the old aristocratic class to lead the Knights Templars.

Maybe "Assassin's Creed: The Revolution" is not the most outstanding work in the "Assassin's Creed" series, but in a sense, it is possible to combine such complex political and historical stories with games to allow the real French Revolution to happen again in the game, and at the same time, it also makes players as personal experiences an important part of the revolution. It is really amazing that they can integrate real history into the story of the game so meticulously. Is this game fun? I think the answer is self-evident.