(Nope, this thread is not yet dead....)
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The Horse Who Came In From The Cold
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the story by Edgar Allan Poe. For other uses, see The Horse Who Came In From the Cold (disambiguation).
The Horse Who Came In From the Cold is a
short Story by
Edgar Allen Poe, published in 1842. Today it is considered as the first example of the
Alternate History literary genre.
In the story, the year is 1812 and the narrator finds himself on a snowy night at a
roadhouse at the western border of
Georgia where he and the fellow patrons are enjoying a nightcap while discussing the latest news. Suddenly they hear a commotion in the in's courtyard. when they went to look, they find a horse, saddled and loaded with provisions, but without a rider. However from one of the stirrups hangs a flask of
brandy, stabbed with a dagger, so it is dripping. Attached to the flask is a note "Pour l'amour de Dieu et pour la prosperité du Louisiane, aidez-moi!". The narrator, having studied
French translates the text as "By God's love and for the benefit of Louisiana, help me".
The other patrons of the roadhouse want to help, but find it safer to wait for the morning. The narrator however figures that the brandy of the flask has left a trail, sets his hunting dog on the trace of the liquor and goes out on his own. After half an hour of walking, he finds a dying French soldier who implores him to take a letter to an address in
Saint Louis. After patching the man up so that he will survive at least until the next morning when the patrons of the roadhouse will arrive, the narrator sets out on the Frenchman's horse and after some adventures delivers the letter. After the recipient reads the letter, he hands the narrator another letter and asks him to deliver this one to the
Continental Congress at present underway in
Philadelphia, which again, after some adventures, the narrator does.
Over the course of the story, we learn that apparently all this plays out in an
alternate timeline where the
Louisiana Purchase never happened. Instead, in 1889, just after the
French Revolution took place,
Louis XVI sent his wife
Marie Antoinette to New Orleans to be out of harm's way until the 'unrests' would calm down. Soon she was followed by almost the complete French nobility, running from
Robespierre's
Reign of Terror and escaping the
Guillotine. This somehow butterflies away the rise of
Napoleon and as a result in 1812, there are two Frances: a revolutionary republic on the continent and a royalist 'New France' in America, ruled by an ageing and increasingly infirm Queen Marie Antoinette. Also, in this timeline,
Washington D.C. was never built and the congress still resides in Philadelphia.
In the end the narrator learns that the letter he and the unnamed French soldier risked their lives to deliver contains a message from a group of Louisiana 'nobles' laying the groundwork to establish a republic modeled after the American example when the old queen Marie Antoinette dies - which would probably happen this same winter. The letter he has to deliver to Philadelphia contains an offer by the soon-to-be
Louisiana republic to join the
United States. The story ends in 'the present' (1842) in which the US, as
OTL, has annexed
Louisiana and the situation in Europa resembles the historically accurate one as well.
In the last chapter it is revealed that the narrative might just be a
tall tale that the narrator tells his grandchildren on a freezing winter night, "not unlike that one thirty years ago".
[1] and at least one of the grandchildren flat-out refuses to believe "Grandfather's fantasies"
[2]. Nevertheless, the short story itself is today regarded as an example of
Alternative History. Although there have been some other literary works of that genre before Poe
(examples needed) the short story is often cited as the first example of alternative history in the English language or even the first printed example of alternate history worldwide.
See Also:
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(Okay, that's it for now. Let's see if anyone else can continue this thread. No need to go into so much detail as I did here, though. just a few lines and a new challenge will be enough. )
Next up:
Magnum '44