Every school has its own peculiar piece of history that the students learn and then seal in their hearts, because it is that peculiarity that makes this school their own. At Hogwarts, they learn of the feud between Slytherin and Gryffindor and the history of rivalry that then sprung up between these two houses. At Durmstrang, they learn martial magic and of Harfang Munter who believed that witches and wizards must learn how to wield their wands as weapons – they memorize lists of those from their school who fought the tyranny of the Ottoman empire in the south and in the north, of those who fought Russia.
Beauxbatons too, has its own peculiar history, but their greatest peculiarity lies not in the history of its founding, but in the 18th century, as France fell into turmoil over the French revolution.
Of course, we have amusing stories of those such as Vincent Duc de Trefle-Picques, the Duc who escaped the worst of the Terror by pretending he had already lost his head. And it is a fine and amusing tale, most popularly told and re-told outside France. But there is more to Beauxbatons than frivolous tales of French aristos who escaped the guillotine by the use of magic, for that was a time of great upheaval in magical France too, though few outside France hold this history close to their hearts.
At the time – and this is true not only of France, but all of Europe – the magical world had an aristocracy of its own. These were old and ancient families who could trace their bloodlines all the way back to the dawn of the Roman empire and beyond. They had money, they had power, they controlled the Conseil and the Parlement, but most importantly of all, their libraries were stocked with books upon books of rare and potent spells, potions and other obscure magical information and all these books were kept, as far as muggleborns were concerned, locked behind closed doors.
To us now, in the twenty-first century, it seems inconceivable that this should be a source of trouble. Those books, after all, were their own and therefore, theirs to choose to show.
But those were troubled days, and in the wake of the signing of the Statute of Secrecy, the old families banded together and began to pull old lies out of the murky past and began to circulate them. Muggleborns were weak. They had no true magic, only a weakened bastard mockery of magic. They cast spells from books that none had read and then mockingly demanded that these muggleborns too cast those same spells.
And they could not.
Oh the problem went much deeper. Wealth bought things besides power and invulnerability from the law. Wealth bought them tutors who would then teach their children the ways of the magical world and the basics of spellcasting from a young and tender age. Wealth bought classics in Greek and Latin – the languages of magic, taught to children at Beauxbatons. Wealth bought these languages prestige and muggleborns, who for all their lives had spoken French and that too, French in its myriad dialects, found themselves struggling to navigate the magical world – found that indeed, their magic was not as powerful as it could be. How could it, when they were allowed to know only that which they learnt, or had managed to learn, at school?
Is it any wonder, then, that revolutionary fervour came to Beauxbatons?
On the eleventh of July, while their elders marched on the Parisian homes of the ancient families, at Beauxbatons, Sang-Impurs and Sang-Mêlés and even some Sang-Purs stormed the office of the Headmaster and shut down the school. Professors and students who resisted were treated as enemies and fighting broke out across the school. La battaille des Bourbes, as it would later come to be known, lasted for ten hours and three classrooms were damaged before the fighting died down.
The fifth and sixth year students then took the library and began to redistribute the books to Sang-Impurs and Sang-Mêlés, encouraging them to magically make copies of these books for themselves to keep.
The students of Beauxbatons, helped by the school’s wood nymphs, successfully transformed the delicate chateau into a fortified area and defended it against attack from the hastily put-together gendarmerie, refusing to stand down until the Conseil and Parlement both agreed to create a public archive of all the magical books in France and the Headmaster of Beauxbatons agreed to change the curriculum to include a special course to help muggleborn students better assimilate into wizarding society. The Conseil and Parlement and the Headmaster of Beauxbatons furthermore, they demanded, should recognize the use of spells both in pure French and the regional French dialects, before they agreed to go back to school.
Pressured by the students on one side and the growing violence of discontented Sang-Impurs and Sang-Mêlés and poorer Sang-Purs from the rural parts of France, the Conseil hastily agreed to all the demands of the students and revolutionaries and on the 1st of August, 1789, all of wizarding France gathered on the lawns of Beauxbatons to listen to the heads of the Conseil read the Déclaration des droits des Sorciers which declared, among many other things, the right for all witches and wizards to have equal access to information about magic. The students of Beauxbatons released the Headmaster and the children of the ancient families they had been holding captive, and the rest of wizarding France set about making sure that the rights of the Déclaration were actually observed.
This is not to say that these reforms and rights were recognized instantaneously. There were those who resisted and it was a long time before the new French Ministry, based on the principles of absolute equality, could be established and the old Parlement disbanded. Old prejudices take long to fade, and sometimes, do not fully heal and disappear.
Whether or not it brought change immediately is irrelevant. Over time, Beauxbatons came to be proud of its participation in this historical moment. Without the students, who had held captive, in addition to the professors, the sons and daughters of those ancient families, the muggleborn movement might never have been successful at all and there would have been no French Ministry, or indeed, the Déclaration des droits des Sorciers – the only declaration of its kind, in the wizarding world. To have been part of this, of having shaped the future of their nation – that was something every student of Beauxbatons could be proud of.
It grew from there. Those students who sought to discriminate against others because their blood was less pure were then shunned. Not only did they betray their country, but they showed that they did not care in particular for the esprit of Beauxbatons – learning for all. From a young age then, these wizards and witches were taught to see those from other backgrounds as their equals and not their inferiors. In time, muggleborns came to be valued as much as their pureblood and half-blood counterparts. Unlike at Hogwarts, they could walk the corridors of their school without ever being called Sang-Impurs, unless they chose to name themselves so in honour of their predecessors. Unlike at Durmstrang, they were welcomed with open arms.
And on every 1st of August, they would assemble on the lawns of Beauxbatons, looking at the Monuments des Sang-Impurs and some even go so far as to sing, under their breaths, the original version of La Marseillaise. The original one that had been sung both at Beauxbatons and at Paris. The one sung when the Sang-Impurs marched and showed the ancient families that blood had nothing to do with magical power.
(For the anon who wanted to know about the treatment of muggleborns at Beauxbatons. Based on my theory of language, magic and exclusion.)
