Maragana Girl P.S. 02

In spite of the devastation, residents did not go hungry that winter, because the entire harvest was kept in new warehouses that had been constructed outside the city walls in 1754. As for building materials, that was not a problem either because there were huge piles of bricks, stone, and lumber that were being collected for a planned expansion of the city wall. As the smoke cleared from the ruined city, the Grand Duke announced that his subjects were free to take building materials for their own needs and that the wall project would have to be postponed. The only condition he set was that residents could not rebuild inside the old walled city because it needed to be cleared of debris.

The Danubians always thought that the Ancients had protected them in 1755. Their capitol lay in ruins, but they had plenty of food and construction materials to build a new and better city outside the old one. There was no starvation and the Grand Duke's generosity with the building materials assured that most people were back in houses before the weather really got cold. How lucky that the fire took place precisely at the moment all those supplies had been collected!

There was another "stroke of fortune" during the fire. The nation's archives were being temporarily stored in the Temple of the Ancients, instead of their usual location near the main city cathedral. The Grand Duke recently had ordered all religious artifacts to be taken there as well, over the objections of the Clergy, who were offended at the thought of the Temple being used as a warehouse. Both the Temple and the cathedral survived the fire intact, but the wooden archive buildings were leveled. How lucky those buildings were empty and all those documents and artifacts weren't lost! Or was it really luck?

While the residents were occupied with building their new houses, teams of Austrian architects laid out a new capitol and a grid-style street system for the area inside the Old City Wall. Those Viennese certainly knew what they were doing: they had a new city plan ready within days of arriving. The Grand Duke and his planners seemed to know exactly where to put the new buildings and could visualize what the city would look like once it was reconstructed. By 1756 the new streets already were being laid out.

By 1790 the new Danube City was completed. Wide boulevards and graceful stone government buildings had replaced the narrow streets and ramshackle wooden residences of the old city. There was no mention of building a new city wall, but most of the old one was kept intact to separate the government ministries from the businesses and residences outside. The new city was much more comfortable and spread out than the old one. Everyone agreed that the fire, and the way the Grand Duke handled it, had been a Gift from the Ancients.

----------

The more Maritza thought about it, the more she realized everything that happened during 1755 indicated the destruction of Danube City was deliberate. The miraculously low number of casualties, the fact that there just happened to be huge piles of building materials collected outside the city walls, the fact that the Grand Duke already had ordered the construction of several warehouses for grain on the other side of the Rika Chorna River, the preservation of the archives, and the timing of the fire were all suspect.

Maritza spent four months in Vienna instead of her planned two weeks, carefully sorting through correspondence and city plans. What she found was not reassuring, because apart from more sets of blueprints she found several letters from the Grand Duke written in 1754 and early 1755. One letter was an attempt to force the architects to lower their fees, and another asked how much stone would be needed for two planned ministry buildings. Then she found the following passage, in the Grand Duke's handwriting, in a letter addressed to an Austrian friend in 1754:

This city is a pit of sickness and darkness, an offense to the Ancients and to the Creator. I trust that this is the last Christmas I must look out upon the unsightly rooftops and smoky fog that smother our people. I long for the day this foul landscape is swept from my vision, that I may look out from my window and see beauty and harmony, not chaos and despair. May the Ancients make this the last winter I behold this obscene labyrinth of rotting wood and garbage.

There was a final detail that convinced Maritza that the wall-construction plan was a ruse. She had found multiple blueprints of Danube City that predated the fire by two years, but no one in either Vienna or Danube City ever had seen a blueprint of the touted expansion of the city walls. She concluded that such a plan never existed.

By the time she returned to Danubia, there no longer was any doubt in Maritza's mind. The Grand Duke wanted old Danube City destroyed and swept from his sight, but had to ensure that his subjects were available to build him the new city that he wanted. He spent two years planning the project, making sure he could rid himself of the old city, but keep his subjects healthy and content enough to build its successor. Hence the careful collection of food and building supplies, the fire at precisely the moment most residents were absent, the well-planned evacuation of those who remained, and the "generosity" that won him the hearts of the city's displaced population.

The Great Fire of 1755 was no accident. It had been carefully planned and deliberately set, for no other reason than the Grand Duke did not like the way his city appeared.

----------

Master-Historian Maritza Ortskt-Dukovna presented her findings in a packed auditorium at the National University in Danube City. As she expected, her audience was shocked and outraged, because she was calling into question the nation's understanding of one of the most significant events of its history. To defile the name of the Grand Duke, considered the most visionary member of the Royal Family since King Vladik...how dare she, even if she was the Prime Minister's wife?

To her shocked audience Maritza simply replied:

"This is what I found, and this is how my training as a historian forced me to interpret it. I am as troubled by it as anyone else sitting in this room. I challenge you to prove me wrong. If you can prove me wrong, it would set my heart at ease, because I didn't want to believe it myself. But, as I stated, these are my findings, and this is how I am forced to interpret them."

Unfortunately for the reputation of the Grand Duke, none of Maritza's fellow historians was able to find any evidence contradicting what she discovered during her four-month stay in Vienna. Documents from the Danube City archives, interpreted through the new information coming out of Vienna, seemed to support her theory that the fire of 1755 had been deliberately set. Within two years most historians in Danubia reluctantly accepted the new interpretation of the Great Fire of 1755.

Once her theory became accepted as fact, Maritza quipped: "We can't be too hard on the Grand Duke. After-all, his deception did give us a nicer city."