Fortunately, by chance André read in an internal Jacobin Club circular that Second Lieutenant Davout had been imprisoned on a false charge. He immediately wrote to the Comte de Tour du Pin, hoping to intercede for Davout. As one of the most capable and loyal future marshals under Napoleon, Davout inspired André’s admiration—and his willingness to help. Meanwhile, many troopers of the Champagne Cavalry Regiment and members of the étain National Guard lodged protests with the National Convention. Once the Minister of War’s anger cooled, he soon ordered Davout’s release.

  Restored to duty, Davout walked the 50 km back to the garrison at étain. But after the pay mutiny, a shunned Second Lieutenant Davout found it hard to fit in again. Most officers of the Champagne Cavalry Regiment were staunch nobles of the royalist party, sworn only to Louis XVI and unwilling to accept the Revolution’s basic rights. In mid-July, on the Fête de la Fédération itself, many of the most extreme refused to wear the tricolour cockade of the new French kingdom and instead pinned the Bourbon fleur-de-lis to their chests.

  Three paths lay before Davout: first, remain in the Champagne cavalry and endure cold shoulders; second, ask the regimental commander for a long leave of at least half a year and lie low at home in La Vieille; third, accept the generous invitation of the unfamiliar Colonel André and join the other Champagne regiment—the Champagne Composite Regiment—whose officers were mostly commoners and whose rank and file largely came from the Gironde.

  He did not hesitate. He chose the third course—partly from gratitude for Colonel André’s efforts to secure his release, and partly because the Champagne Composite Regiment was willing, under conditions, to take in expelled troopers of the original Champagne cavalry. The condition was strict obedience to the Composite’s iron discipline—above all, no agitation in the ranks.

  In late October, Davout set out from étain with comrades: Charles Morand, a nineteen-year-old corporal; Charles-étienne Gudin, an eighteen-year-old sergeant; and his thirty-two-year-old brother-in-law and veteran, Louis Friant, plus twelve others. They headed south for the Versailles barracks, 200 km away, to report to Colonel André of the Champagne Composite Regiment.

  At the same time, after twenty-one days on the road, the Champagne Composite Regiment reached its new temporary quarters—the Versailles barracks—at dusk on 29 October. This vast camp, with complete living and training amenities, dated to Louis XIV’s time; once the principal post of the royal guards at Versailles, it had since mostly fallen idle, used only for National Guard drills.

  Waiting at the gate to receive Colonel André, Lieutenant Colonel Berthier and Captain Senarmont were told by the orderly, Second Lieutenant Suchet: “The colonel, escorted by Lieutenant Augereau, went straight into Paris two hours ago to handle an urgent fiscal matter. Under the regiment’s rules, the chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Berthier, will act as regimental commander until Colonel André returns. Routine business shall be decided collegially by the officers’ council—Lieutenant Colonel Berthier, Major Moncey (infantry), Captain Hoche (cavalry), Captain Senarmont (artillery), Captain Chassé (gendarmerie), Captain Petiet (quartermaster), and others.”

  “What happened?” Senarmont drew Hoche aside and asked under his breath. Of them all, Captain Hoche was closest to André—confidence within confidence.

  Hoche smiled and, seeing the circle of curious faces, said, “Nothing to do with us—there’s been a problem inside Paris, and the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court is needed. Last night a pack of reckless hotheads crept into the tax-farmers’ enclave on the ?le Saint-Louis, broke up their private guards, and left several tax-farmers dead or wounded.”

  One answer spawned several fresh questions. Hoche shook his head quickly: “That’s all I know. The rest must wait for Colonel André. In any case, I’m sure the colonel had nothing to do with what those rioters did.”

  “What if he did?” Senarmont muttered inwardly. “Manipulating opinion and striking at opponents—the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court has done that more than once. Bordeaux was like that; Paris all the more so. Still, we soldiers live to obey orders.”

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  As for the tax-farmers, none of the officers spared them any sympathy. Even the newcomer, Lieutenant Colonel Berthier, had no love for the leeches clinging to France’s body.

  In fact, the officers’ guesses were baseless. Until he reached the edge of Paris, André did not know why the city’s poor had seemed to swallow gunpowder and rise up to lynch the tax-farmers on the ?le Saint-Louis. Deputy Chief Javert met him at the gate and, once André resumed his role as the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court, briefed him on the whole affair.

  In September, after the Constituent Assembly approved the creation of the Special Fiscal Court, the Finance Committee—on the recommendation of deputies Prieur, Robespierre, Pétion, Buzot, and others—chose the hot-blooded thirty-four-year-old lawyer Billaud-Varenne, a member of the Paris Commune’s General Council, as a fiscal judge.

  Eager to make his mark, Judge Billaud-Varenne acted before the prosecutor returned to Paris. He ordered the arrest of several major tax-farmers led by Paulze, demanding they disgorge illicit gains and pay fines totalling 50 million livres.

  That was a hornets’ nest. Even at the height of his power in Bordeaux, Prosecutor André had never arrested tax-farmers or seized their companies without a criminal offence in hand and support from the Bordeaux judiciary. Here, by contrast, Judge Billaud-Varenne’s “evidence” was mostly conjecture—unfit for court. In legal eyes, it was a classic “crime presumed from suspicion.”

  Soon, under a joint lobbying effort by Lavoisier, Condorcet, and other members of the French Academy of Sciences, the Tuileries and the cabinet voiced strong displeasure at the Special Fiscal Court’s illegality. Even within the Constituent Assembly and the Paris Commune, many thought the judge’s move heavy-handed and a violation of the Revolution’s basic rights, and they protested.

  Weeks later, under mounting pressure, Judge Billaud-Varenne allowed Paulze and others to post bail, saying he would await Prosecutor André’s return to file formal charges. But privately he refused to accept defeat—and he did not want André, newly back in Paris, to seize the “spoils” of his war on the tax-farmers.

  At a Cordeliers Club gathering, Billaud-Varenne, carried away, took Hébert’s advice: let the “mad cleric” Jacques Roux lead a crowd of sans-culottes to storm the tax-farmers’ villas on the ?le Saint-Louis and frighten those timid men of money into kneeling to accept the judge’s decision under mortal threat.

  On paper the plan looked clever. If it went smoothly, it would leave the tax-farmers petrified. But Hébert had malice in mind. In last night’s attack, the original aim was merely to beat or kill a few private guards posted on the perimeter as a warning and punishment. Instead, the mob lost control, spilled into the houses, cut down several tax-farmers who failed to flee, and, worst of all, left Paulze, Lavoisier’s father-in-law, gravely wounded.

  “Stupidity—utter stupidity!” After hearing the full story, André could not help cursing. How could a lawyer famed for shrewdness keep blundering—stooping, as a judge, to consort with unprincipled political madmen—only to push himself to the very eye of the storm and become everyone’s target?

  “How far has the truth spread? Can the Prefecture of Police suppress this?” Weighing the costs, André asked Javert. He might have wished to wash his hands of it, but the scandal threatened the very legitimacy of the Special Fiscal Court—and his own reputation as its prosecutor.

  The deputy chief shook his head. “I doubt it. The Paris National Guard arrested the mad cleric and his followers; they’re all in the Bastille at the Fort de Vincennes. General Lafayette has barred the Prefecture from intervening and says they’ll go before the criminal assize. And this morning Hébert ran a full account of the raid in The Friend of the People, hinting that the Special Fiscal Court—and Judge Billaud-Varenne—backed this ‘righteous act’ by the Parisian people.”

  “Hébert!” André spat the name through clenched teeth. He regretted not removing that incendiary sooner.

  There was no doubt: the villa affair put the Special Fiscal Court in a defensive crouch among Paris high society. The Tuileries and the cabinet were moving to force the Constituent Assembly and the Palais de Justice to abolish this “breeding-ground of agitation and lynch law”—in Queen Marie’s phrase.

  Among ordinary Parisians, by contrast, support was overwhelming; many cheered the killing of a few shameless tax-farmers. But that meant little—after all, they did not hold the guns. Since General Lafayette’s reorganization of the National Guard six months earlier, Paris had been unlikely to see any large-scale riot.

  On the court itself, the Assembly’s stance was plainly split: conservatives and radicals clashed in debate, while centrists like Mirabeau, Talleyrand, and Sieyès kept their own counsel. Much the same at the Palais de Justice: though André’s former linchpin, Justice Vinault, had retired to Sedan, Judge Duranthon of the former Bordeaux Parlement, thanks to André’s careful maneuvering, had won a seat on the Court’s Council of Magistrates.