Jules-America-1859

Jules-America-1859

fiction
edward w pritchard

see Jules and Henri stories same author last few blogs-April 2010

Jules was now living in America and it was 1859 and he was trying to explain to his 11 year old grand daughter who was very bright about John Brown. Jules was trying to surmise the motivation of the man who was in all the news; and what was the motivation for what had happened at Harper's Ferry and in particularly in Kansas. The grand daughter who was strongly against slavery was having trouble with John Brown and his son's actions in Kansas. In an attempt to smear the abolitionist the local newspaper were full of accounts of John Brown's slaughtering of people in Kansas with swords years earlier.

Jules who was now over 80 and living in America was an old soldier of Napoleon's royal guard in Russia in 1812. Jules didn't know John Brown but was explaining to his grand daughter about his friend Henri's actions against Pirates years before Henri had died in a cannon explosion on his way to Russia.

The Grand daughter was too young to hear all of the details of Henri's brutality that day back in 1795 against the pirates but Henri told enough of the story for the girl to make a judgment about John Brown's having chosen to kill armed men with swords in a brutal fashion.

Following the story about the pirates, Jules told the girl about Henri's death at his side early on the march to Moscow. The grand daughter had asked "why was your friend killed and not you?" That inquiry set Henri who had gotten philosophical in his old age to thinking about fate and mortality.



See the death of Henri to follow.

End