"Woe to the Nobles, Woe to the Kings, the queens, and their ill-gotten brood? God has abandoned us. He has seen the sins of our leaders and left us to rot upon this earth!"
The robed priest, standing upon a pedestal of rotten oak, that was degraded from years of abuse. Dozens of people, both men and women, surrounded the raised dais where the priest preached his seditious speech.
Squawking gulls circled the growing crowd, looking to swipe any foodstuffs left unguarded; they would not find any. No food could be found within the city; only the meager rations of bread brought by the king's men fed the inhabitants of the city.
"Famine!" cried the priest, "We starve to feed the pompous... Arseholes, holed away in their palaces of gold!"
A murmur spread through the crowd, now grown by a hundred souls or more. Priest so rarely used such vulgar language that it came as a shock to hear.
From some hidden pocket deep within the folds of his robe, the speaker produced a small, half-eaten ration of bread. Now, he had the undivided attention of the people, for bad harvests left all hungry.
With a Fist closed around the bread, he raised the stale loaf above his head, "While we good people starve on this meager loaf." With a clench, the bread crumbles, falling across the cobbled floor of the marketplace. "Nobles, fattened with greed, feast on pork and beef, devour white bread and fruits. Drunk from the wine WE the people made for them, the shout, 'More, more, more.'
Now, the crowd swelled beyond the courtyard's capacity began to disintegrate into a mob of anger. Fathers, tired of watching their children fade from starvation, looked for any weapons they could gather. Mothers, sick of packing sawdust into bread to stretch the day's supper, fashioned bandages for the men. Three hundred strong, now the mob, armed with legs ripped from tables, for knives fit only for eating, sought an outlet for their violence.
'Crack' rang a shot.
Like a stilled ocean on the sea, all the crowd fell silent, for who besides the Kingsmen had guns?
As a pack of wolves would descend on a wounded deer, a hundred men in white uniforms marched through the crowd, muskets used as bludgeons on those unfortunates who had not moved fast enough. From the saddle on his great beast of a horse sat a large man, wearing the dark blue long coat over his white fatigues that signified his station. His flintlock pistol still smoked from the discharge a moment ago. A long cavalryman's saber, long as a man's chest, hilt modified for two-handed use, or for the hand of one giant-like man, was sheathed in its leather house at his waist.
Well disciplined, the hundred men formed a perfect defensive square at the center of the courtyard, the spot where the suddenly missing priest had been. In sync, from some order wordlessly given from the giant at the center of their formation, a hundred muskets took aim at the congregation. A row of shooters took a knee to allow those behind them to aim as well. In this fashion, not a single musket would be blocked from shooting into the crowd if ordered.
The giant (whose cavalier's hat sat queerly on his head, much too small for a man who was twice the size of its intended wearer) silently surveyed the crowd from the back of his horse.
"Disperse, this gathering has been declared illegal. Disperse before we charge the lot of you with treason against his majesty," the giant spoke in an unnaturally deep voice. "Disperse, this gathering has been declared illegal." He repeated.
As if frozen in fear or even by the stubbornness of a select few, the crowd did not disperse. Despite the overcrowded nature of the courtyard, the gathered mass was early silent.
A single glass bottle, filled with murky water barely safe to wash with, flew through the air. With a crash, the single bottle smashed onto the face of the Cavalier. He didn't react, not even as the shards of glass that embedded themselves into the skin above his left brow drew a steady stream of blood over his left eye. Years of experience kept the soldiers from reacting to the assault on their officer without orders. Some younger soldiers, new to the garrison, looked uncertainly to the officers who gave no orders even as the tension between the two groups thickened immeasurably.
"Disper..." The Giant doesn't finish repeating his previous orders as a thick table leg stuck not to him but his beast of a horse. The Warhorse bread to fight and die on a battlefield should not have reacted. Inexplicably, it reared up, knocking its rider from the saddle, with a painful thud, the giant crashed into the cobbled ground. He didn't rise again; blood pooled around him as his life drained through a crack on the back of his head.
Shocked by the sudden, unfortunate loss, the Kingsmen lost cohesion because no second-in-command was present. Using the moment, angered, starving city dwellers hurled rocks or any available projectiles at the square. Moments passed as the mob once again swelled in size and temperament. None had dared to close within range of the square lest they be skewered by the deadly steel bayonets of the muskets.
Shouts of treason spewed from the lips across the now riotous mob, "Death to the Monarchy." spoke some, "Liberty to the people," Screamed more.
"Fire." A scream sounded from an unknown source.
Like a magician's parlor trick, a wall of smoke surrounded the square of soldiers. In a single instant, dozens lay dead, others groaned in pain, sprawling on the ground as they bled from the holes through which the small lead balls entered them.
No members of the mob dispersed from the sudden volley. Carried by a now fever-pitched mood, the crowd, braving the sixteen inches of steel that was the wall of bayonets, the crazed mob crashed into the Kingsmen.