VIVE LA IXE

Vive la Ixe

Summary:

Five times Enjolras died for his country, and five times Grantaire died for Enjolras.

Notes:

Based on the prompt "5 revolutions Les Amis fought (and died?) for." One of these isn't actually a rebellion/revolution, but as you go farther back in time those are harder to find, so yeah. Also there will be historical notes on eac event at the end.

WARNING: Historical events of varying controversy? Like the last one is Tiananmen Square, which I know is within living memory and something of a contested issue. I've tried to write in a way that will not unnecessarily offend people, but well, you never know.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

1389 - Battle of Kosovo

The Turks are coming and they go to meet them. Gavrilović is a peasant son who doesn't know why he should be there, but does not care just enough not to know why he shouldn't.

He meets the leader of his contingent, Isaijović, and knows why he's there.

They are slaughtered.

Isaijović, and it seems his fellows, inspire them to stand to the last man. Let us die facing our foes! Make them bleed while we can! If we give our lives for a year of our land's freedom it is worth it!

(Gavrilović gives his life not for a people, but for one person.)

-

1618 - Bohemian Revolt

Albrecht is a Protestant less in honour of God, and more in defiance of Vienna. Graner is Protestant is honour of Albrecht. They fight, but not for God. The fight gets bigger and bigger, and maybe some of these foreign nations believe in God, maybe they don't. Albrecht barely knows what nation they're even fighting in. Sometimes he speaks a few words of Czech, just to taunt Albrecht; Bohemia is theirs as much as ours, isn't it? (Perhaps theirs isn't the right term, given he only knows those words because they're what he remembers his mother muttering to him for the few years of his life she lived).

The war swells and Albrecht believes it will lead Bohemia to glory. Graner wonders if he knows what he's asking for.

(They die almost a decade later, not fighting, but caught by surprise and screaming as their village burns. No, Albrecht didn't know at all.)

-

1804 - Castle Hill

Eoghan speaks of the beauty of Ireland, the rich green fields that will be prosperous once more when the English no longer starve the people. Eoghan speaks of the poverty brought on by oppression, which drove men to the crimes for which they were sent to the ends of the Earth; that the English seek to punish them for their own crimes. Eoghan speaks of home.

Garbhan couldn't give less of a fuck about home, but he loves Eoghan and would do anything to go somewhere slightly more green than this sunburnt hellhole.

(The blood that runs is anything but green).

-

1916 - Basmachi Movement

Really, Eset doomed his cause being given the name of another leader of a failed rebellion. Kunkul finds it ironic he's been motivated to take up arms against the Russians in defiance of the Russians ordering them to fight, but nobody else seems to find it funny.

"Our people will be great. Our people will be free," Eset says, "And our fellow peoples will rise up with us. Help will come and the Russians will not own us forever!"

He doesn't seem to realise, fear of their fellow peoples rising up is half the reason help isn't coming.

It was the Tsar they fought at first and now the Soviets, and honestly no-one can tell the difference.

(As the Russians close in and they prepare for the final battle, Eset still assures them: they are one group of people and the Kazakhs will fight on. But there is no guarantee they'll ever win.)

-

1989 - Tiananmen Square

The fight begins after the death of one man, one man who had tried to give the people some freedom. Qiang eulogises Hu, and Kun listens politely, if not attentively. Qiang goes on about how this is about more than one man; that they shall liberate China. For Kun it's still about one man, though not Hu. The people must choose our path, not the government.

The government makes choices too, and it chooses tanks. In the midst of chaos and confusion, Qiang tells them to stand their ground. We may die here, but we will not be forgotten.

(Kun prays Qiang will never be forgotten.)

Notes:

Notes:
-Kosovo: battle between Serbian and Ottoman forces as the Ottomans were conquering the Balkans; both armies were slaughtered; Turks did eventually conquer Serbia, but the damage on their army inflicted did delay it several years.
-Bohemia: uprising against Habsburg/Catholic rule that began with the Defenestration of Prague; Bohemia at this point had a mix of German and Czech population, the Germans occupying a higher standing in society; eventually led to the Thirty Years War, where many atrocities occurred.
-Castle Hill: convict uprising in Australia by Irish convicts who escaped a farm and planned on stealing ships to make their way back to Ireland.
-Basmachi: rebellion across Central Asia which began in response to the Tsarist government rescinding the Muslim exception from conscription during WWI; initially a fight against Tsarist authority, then one against Soviet; had mixed successes but struggle faded over the 20's as the Sovietisation of Central Asia occurred.
-Tiananmen: major protest in China in favour of democracy; began after the death of Hu Yaobang, a reformer in the government who lost his position as General Secretary after protests in '86, which he was viewed as being soft on; crushed by military intervention, and information about it censored in China.