Where & When
For the first time, we return to a previous setting for a full-length story: Paris. As with The Reign of Terror, it’s built around a real-world historical event, so we can state the date precisely: it takes place between the 20th and 24th of August 1572.
Setting
The story is set in the lead-up to the most notorious event in the French Wars of Religion, which spanned much of the second half of the 16th century. Protestantism had first gained a foothold in France in the 1520s, and four decades later had grown to the point that it posed a perceived threat to the established Catholic majority, being backed by many nobles as well as common people (mainly in the south). The resulting tension came to a head in 1562, when a Catholic military force killed around 50 Protestant worshippers at Vassy (“Wassy”, in the French spelling). This is the massacre that Anne says she survived in the TV story.
Over the decade between that event and the time of the story, there had been no fewer than three outbreaks of civil war, each ending with a treaty that failed to hold for long, the most recent being the Peace of St Germain-en-Lye in 1570. In an effort to prevent a fourth war from breaking out, King Charles IX of France arranged a marriage between his sister and the Protestant King Henry of Navarre.
The TARDIS arrives in Paris on Wednesday 20th August, two days after the wedding. (A spoken line in the story implies it’s the day after the marriage, but the precise date is stated later on, so we know that can’t be right). Allowing for some speculation, the presence of a few fictional characters, and some necessary adaptations for television, most of what follows in the serial is a reasonably accurate account of events.
The time travellers leave in the early hours of Sunday 24th – Saint Bartholomew’s Day – just as the massacre of the Huguenots begins. It will continue for three days, probably claiming thousands of lives, before spreading to the rest of the country, kicking off the Fourth War of Religion, which lasts until July of the following year. That peace treaty lasts seven months before the Fifth War kicks off, and so it continues on and off until 1598. Further persecution in the following century would result in the all-but-total elimination of Protestantism in the country.
We can also look further afield to see how the map of Europe looked at the time. Spain was the major Catholic power of the day and engaged in its own fight against Protestant rebels in the Netherlands – as the TV story mentions, de Coligny was hoping to persuade the king to invade the Netherlands and unite the warring French religious factions in the resulting patriotic fervour. The Holy Roman Empire, which stretches from the Danish border to just south of Florence, is similarly divided, but not (yet) in open conflict. England, under Queen Elizabeth I, is probably the strongest Protestant nation of the day, but Scotland, Norway-Denmark, and Sweden have also converted.
We should also mention Navarre, since that is where the effective leader of the Huguenots, and the man whose marriage sparked off the massacre, came from. This had once been a significant kingdom in what is now northern Spain, but had lost almost all its territory earlier in the century. By 1572, it was a tiny rump state (about 1,300 km² or 500 square miles) just north of the Pyrenees. It had converted to Protestantism in 1560.
Some of this could be relevant if time travellers appear to come from a particular European nation – as happens to Steven in the story. Americans could well be harder to place if they don’t offer up a cover story; France and Spain have colonies in North America at the time, but we’re well before the English establish the Plymouth colony.
Specifically, of course, the story is set in Paris. The city is smaller than it will be two centuries later, at the time of The Reign of Terror, but it is still one of the larger cities in Europe at the time. At least five locations are key to the story, which we can place with various degrees of accuracy.
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| A - Rue de Béthisy B - Assassination attempt C - The Louvre D - Porte St Martin |
The TARDIS lands in the Rue de Béthisy, a short and narrow medieval street just north of the Seine. This no longer exists, having been demolished in 1854 to make way for what is now the junction of the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue de Pont Neuf. In the story, this is the location of the inn where the TARDIS materialises, and where Steven encounters the Huguenots, initiating much of the plot. Although it’s described as a ‘tavern’, the inn probably does offer rooms, since it has a stable attached for travellers’ horses… but Steven is unable to afford one if it does.
Although it’s not immediately obvious from the TV story, the house at which de Coligny is staying is on the same street. Named the Hôtel de Ponthieu, it was far grander than the fictional inn, and, while “hôtel” in this context means “townhouse”, it actually became a hotel later on, before being demolished and replaced by other buildings, even before the street itself disappeared. Since the street was very short, it can only be a few doors down from the inn.
Since Preslin is a fictional character, we can’t be so precise as to where his house might be. However, we are told that it’s near the Porte St Martin. Today, this is the site of a triumphal arch, but in 1572, it was one of the gates in the northern section of the fortified city wall – the fact that it was possible to close these was likely a factor in the Massacre, since the Huguenots had no way of escaping. At any rate, this places the apothecary shop in the outer section of the city, an area where houses were able to have gardens to the rear, rather than being crammed together as they were in the city centre.
No clues are given as to the location of the abbot’s lodging. It’s probably to the north of the Seine, since there’s no indication anyone has to cross a bridge to get to it, but equally it must be at least a few streets away from the other buildings in the story or the Rue de Béthisy wouldn’t be a good place for Anne to be hiding.
The time travellers never visit it, but the Louvre is also a main location in the televised story. Most of the structure we see today had yet to be built in 1572, but the Lescot Wing, and another that has now vanished, were already there, having been built in the 1550s before the Wars of Religion had halted the plans to extend it further. At the time, this was the site of the French court and primary residence of the king, although construction of its replacement, the Tuileries Palace, had already been started on the western side.
We can also mention the location where de Coligny is shot on the way home from the Louvre. The story indicates it’s on the Rue de Fossés St Germaine (since renamed as the Rue de l’Ancienne Comédie) and, from historical records, we know that it happened at the junction of that street with the Rue des Poulies.
The story contains an unusually large number of real-world historical figures. On the Protestant side, we have Gaspard de Coligny, the Admiral of France and one of the most senior Huguenot leaders. A former war hero, he had been Admiral of France for twenty years, having obtained the post under Charles’ father, King Henri II, before he converted to Protestantism. The title had few military duties, being largely responsible for the maintenance of the fleet rather than actually commanding it. At the time of the story, he is 53.
Invited to Paris for the royal wedding, he had left his pregnant wife, Jacqueline, at his family castle just south of Paris, together with his three children from a previous marriage. Shortly after the TARDIS leaves, he is murdered and defenestrated together with Nicholas Muss. (Nicholas is a real person, being the Admiral's Dutch interpreter). Jacqueline survived the resulting conflict, and adopted Muss’s young son, although she was exiled from France and forced to convert to Catholicism.
The other major Huguenot figure in the story is Charles de Teligny, a diplomat and key representative of the Protestant faction at the royal court. He is 37 at the time of the story and, while it isn’t mentioned, is de Coligny’s son-in-law. He was another early victim of the Massacre, being murdered in the Louvre. His wife, Louise, survived, adopted Muss’s two daughters, and later married a Protestant ruler in the Netherlands… who was then murdered a year later. So, still not a happy story.
Leading the Catholic faction on the council, we have Gaspard de Saulx, referred to in the story by his title of sieur de Tavannes. Another former war hero and general, he holds the position of Marshal of France, essentially an honorific recognising his military successes rather than a job with any particular duties. A staunch Catholic and opponent of the Huguenots, he is shown protesting when he realises how far the Massacre is going to go in killing women and children; this is something he later claimed in his memoirs, but it’s hard to know whether that was true or merely regret after the fact. He is 63 years old at the time of the story, with five adult children; his wife is at his family chateau near Dijon.
The King is Charles IX, who is only 22 years old. He is depicted as relatively weak in the story and dominated by his mother, which may well be accurate. He is the one who arranged the marriage of his sister with Henry of Navarre in an attempt to end the Wars of Religion but, when this spectacularly fails with the Massacre, he will become more hardline. There is a Queen, the 18-year-old Elisabeth of Austria, but they have no children, leaving the king’s only brother, Henri, as the presumptive heir to the throne. (This will lead to problems over the next few years, and ultimately, the extinction of the House of Valois.)
The Queen Mother is not named in the story, but she is Catherine de’ Medici, the effective power behind the throne since the death of her husband in 1559. She is 53 and another staunch Catholic. Historians disagree as to whether she played as key a role in the instigation of the Massacre as the TV story shows, but it’s certainly possible.
The Abbot of Amboise is fictional, although Amboise is a real enough place, and had been the location of the royal court until as recently as 1563. We are told he is the right-hand man of the Cardinal of Lorraine, France’s most senior churchman at the time and a member of a family that had a longstanding rivalry with de Coligny.
Scenario
The story as broadcast does not have the makings of a good RPG scenario, regardless of any merits it may have on its own terms. Essentially, the Doctor disappears for no clear reason, and Steven spends the rest of the story trying to meet up with him again and to help his new friends among the Huguenots. He completely fails at the latter, with all but one of the “good guy” NPCs being murdered after the TARDIS leaves.
This might work in a grim game where players consider it a win just for their PCs to be alive at the end of the scenario, but not in most others. And, with PCs generally being fairly competent, there’s a pretty good chance that they will change things (at least in the short term) if they try to. Of course, if a time travel or historical game does allow history to be changed, then the problem disappears… but that’s rare.
However, this does not mean that we can’t use the story at all. We could, for example, take the plot and move it elsewhere. Granted, the story hews reasonably close to real-world history, but here its likely lack of familiarity is a bonus; we can copy the Wars of Religion to a fictional setting, with some suitable tweaks here and there, and most players probably wouldn’t notice.
Pick your setting, replace the Catholics with whatever the local authority is, and pick some minority they’re persecuting to take the place of the Huguenots. In a fantasy game, for instance, we could use half-orcs or tieflings as the victims in a human city or have one side be elves and the other dwarves. Alternatively, we could just make it an imaginary, rather than a real, religion. A science fiction or cyberpunk setting might work better with a political movement or a rising underclass. They can’t be too disadvantaged, because de Coligny and Teligny are at least theoretically influential at court, but something like newly discovered psionics might fit the bill.
In any of these situations, the PCs might still fail to protect the analogues of de Coligny and his allies, but at least they won’t have to be railroaded into it because success becomes an option. An option that will probably be followed by the need to find a longer-term solution, but a viable one, nonetheless.
Here, the Abbot of Amboise could resemble the PCs’ patron, or some other recurring NPC that they have dealt with before. Or perhaps they have been told to look out for someone with a distinctive appearance as a contact or ally, and he coincidentally happens to look similar. In a fantasy game, he could literally be a Doppelganger, while in a horror game, he could be the person they think he is, only possessed by a malevolent spirit. Either way, the point is to misdirect the PCs into thinking they have found an ally when they haven’t. Ideally, the PCs should get a chance to deal with him, especially if he’s something supernatural, rather than having Tavannes’ guards casually kill him off-screen.
Alternatively, we can use the setting to tell a slightly different time travel story. The assumption here is that the PCs know that they can’t prevent the Massacre, in much the same way that they can’t kill Stalin before he rises to power, but they have some other objective that can be achieved. We move the plot away from the ‘Sea Beggar’ elements of the original and focus on something else.
At least two possibilities present themselves. Anne is one, since saving her doesn’t have any obvious effect on history at all – and, indeed, Steven believes that he has done so when the story ends, even if his reasoning is a bit of a stretch. The assumption here would be that she’s important for some other reason. Perhaps the PCs have been hired by relatives to get her out of the city, or to get a message to her, and subsequently find they have to protect her as well. In a Time Agency game, perhaps she’s the ancestor of somebody important who needs to be preserved.
For that matter, if the PCs first encounter her in the way that Steven does, so long as we keep the focus on her and don’t present the ‘Sea Beggar’ elements then, if the PCs are ‘low level’, the fact that they can’t do anything to help the larger situation might not seem so frustrating. On the downside, it’s cutting out quite a chunk of the original, even ignoring the fact that much of that consists of court intrigue taking place when the protagonists aren’t even there.
Preslin is another possible way in, although he’s a minor element of the TV story. We’re told that he is an early pioneer of Germ Theory, something that is plausible for the 16th century, but rare enough that it would certainly make him stand out. (It’s also implied that he might have access to a microscope, which is less so, as they don’t appear for another 30 years or so). In itself, that might not excite many PCs, but if we add a few more anachronistic features, we suddenly have someone that a Time Agency might be interested in investigating. If we move him centre stage, perhaps as a way of getting the PCs into Paris in the first place, he could be either a villain in the style of The Monk, or somebody entirely more benign that needs to be rescued from the oncoming disaster.
Rules
The setting is tech level 4 in GURPS, 3 in Doctors & Daleks, and 2 in Traveller. While cavalry soldiers would still have worn breastplates, many infantry and guardsmen of the era would have been entirely unarmoured, and those who were not still wore less of it than they would have in earlier times. The best that one would have encountered was an open-fronted steel helmet and ‘jack’ armour over the torso, the latter consisting of a sleeveless leather tunic with pieces of metal sewn into the lining. This is ‘light armour’ in D&D and can be treated as the equivalent of studded leather.
Guardsmen and wealthier civilians would have been armed with swords, which are still the most common hand-to-hand weapon. Halberds and pikes are also in use, albeit with the latter of limited use in the confines of city streets. Firearms include both muskets and black-powder pistols, although the flintlock mechanism we now most commonly associate with such weapons is relatively rare. In fact, the ‘true’ flintlock has yet to be invented, even if the 16th-century ‘snaplock’ version is similar enough not to make any difference in most rules systems. And, while it may be uncommon and expensive, it is ideal as an assassin’s weapon, so it’s almost certainly what Bondot is using when he shoots de Coligny.
Pistols can be either snaplock or use the more complicated and prone-to-malfunction (but cheaper) wheellock mechanism. The standard musket of the day, however, would be matchlock, requiring a fuse to be lit before firing (it’s this that makes it less effective for assassination, since, in many situations, it can be obvious from a distance, and give away the gunman’s position). It fires an approximately .80 calibre ball, has an effective range of 100 yards/metres, and requires a rest of some kind to steady it when firing, due to the weight. A lighter, shorter, version known as a ‘caliver’ also exists, with a calibre of roughly .60.
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