Perhaps the authority of the “City of Kings” weighed upon the reformers of 1789. At year’s end the National Constituent Assembly adopted a proposal submitted by the radical deputy from Reims, Prieur, designating as the seat of the Marne department the small town of Chalons, four kilometers from Reims, with fewer than 5,000 residents—formally Chalons-sur-Marne or Chalons-en-Champagne (there are at least two towns named Chalons in metropolitan France).
At the same time, the Assembly retained Reims as the “City of Coronations,” so that under a separation of church and state—and without disrupting normal Catholic administration—religion would bear less upon the constitutional monarchy. This sowed conflict between the Reims municipal authority and both the Marne department and the Constituent Assembly. From then on, Reims lost both its regional primacy within Champagne and its status as the core city of the new Marne department.
From 1790, Mayor Basile of Reims, together with the local court, banned the Reims Jacobin branch less than two weeks after it formed, on grounds of “illegal incitement to violence,” arresting and expelling those in charge; at the same time Colonel Brice, commander of the Reims National Guard, purged his ranks of leftist radicals and seized controlled weapons from civilians on a large scale; as for the local prosecutor, Hubert, he enforced press controls throughout the city over the Marne Commune’s protests, shutting down and seizing one paper that preached ultra-left doctrines.
Beyond doubt, Reims’s course enjoyed the backing of the Archbishop of Reims, Talleyrand (Talleyrand’s paternal uncle), and conservative leaders in the Assembly such as Cazalès; add to that the heavy losses of the departmental militias under Ardennes bandit raids, and the Marne authorities flinched, unwilling to apply political or military pressure upon Reims.
With revolutionary doctrine, the Rights of Man, and increasingly perfected elections, local governments gained expansive autonomy. As a rule, the frontier forces of France—the nation’s “army of defense”—could hardly march inland to suppress unrest; in law it was nearly impossible. The Constituent Assembly, fearing a royalist counterstroke, forbade frontier troops to cross the line; local governments, fearing loss of power, resisted any out-of-department forces approaching their capitals. Thus even with large-scale banditry, they could rely only on National Guards of uneven quality.
In July 1790, in central France, fewer than thirty armed brigands threw the departments of Loire and Nièvre into an uproar. Lieutenant Colonel Saint-Just rallied allied Guards from surrounding towns—nearly 2,000 men—yet only killed a handful and barely drove the gang out, so it troubled home no more.
Two months later, in the N?mes area of the Gard in southern France, Protestants and Catholics clashed over departmental elections. The two armed camps fought across several towns; the struggle became a vast sectarian massacre, leaving 300 Catholics and twenty Protestants dead.
…
Given slow, uneven communication, local self-interest, and the difficulty of obtaining authorization from Paris, garrisons could not quell disorder effectively. A solitary success—clearing the mutinous camp at Nancy—brought General Marquis de Bouillé nothing but trouble and a tongue-lashing from André in the Constituent Assembly.
As for the semi-independent posture of Reims, it drew real attention only after new elections to the Marne Commune’s General Council. In October 1790, Professor Thuriot was elected departmental chief prosecutor. In November 1790, the Champagne Composite Regiment, under Colonel André—also acting deputy chief prosecutor—was to be shifted from Bordeaux to the Versailles camp southeast of Paris, only about 150 kilometers—three to four days’ march—from Reims.
Yet in André’s military lexicon “celerity is everything” had little place. From Bordeaux to Versailles took over ten days; the move on Reims to restore order was likewise unhurried.
Though he had no staff-college training, he knew the basic rule: minimize one’s own errors. Better to be slow and steady—even to forgo an easy chance—than risk the force. “Military adventure” did not suit a lawyer by trade.
From the day they reached Versailles, he hammered home the Composite Regiment’s daily training, throwing much of the budget into the drifting smoke and cannonades of the drill ground. When Chief of Staff Berthier submitted routes of march, plans for entry into Reims, and battle contingencies, André gave them only a broad glance and set them aside, convening no officers’ council as regulations prescribed.
Sensing Lieutenant Colonel Berthier’s displeasure, André added: “The Reims situation is complicated—chiefly political. Arms are auxiliary—the last resort—and must not be rushed. I am not only commander of the Champagne Composite Regiment, but deputy chief prosecutor of the Marne.”
In other words, he wished to avoid a battle that would shatter this rich land. Reims, Chalons, the whole Marne and Ardennes would be his base. If things could be settled at the table, arms would be the final, reluctant step.
Indeed, until early November 1790, André wavered between a strike and a political solution, until Second Lieutenant Penduvas, tasked with reconnaissance, brought back the truth on the ground and forced a decision.
In his former life, as a contract lawyer with half-Asian blood, André had joined Asian magnates in “washing” funds through Champagne and knew Reims’s history well—there had been a serious, city-wide riot during the Revolution. Meanwhile, the body he had crossed into—a Reims orphan—held memories only up to 1789, when he left for Paris.
Thus, when the Reims political crisis surfaced in 1790, André, like most, assumed the city’s turmoil and hardship sprang from the nobles and the Catholic establishment in control. Yet Chief Javert and André’s old Reims friend, the cleric Marey, dissented—hence Penduvas’s covert survey.
A month later, back at Versailles, Second Lieutenant Penduvas reported: in Reims, shops traded normally, society was orderly, prices stable, the people at ease.
He explained: “Throughout October, a pound (French pound) of bread was 2.5 sous, with no ration cards; pork held at early-1789 levels or slightly lower; local wine (champagne) rose fifteen to twenty percent after last year’s hail and blight, but still within tolerance…
“Employment is good. Few native beggars—most drifted from the Ardennes. Church poor-relief records put total beggars under 120. Wages in Reims are usually ten to fifteen percent under Paris, but with cheaper food and rents, a single worker can just support a family of four… Overall, living standards in Reims slightly exceed Paris.”
In André’s impression, beyond traditional farming and vines, stock-raising—especially cattle—thrived around Reims. Barring an epizootic, meat prices staying normal was no surprise. But there was little local wheat; most flour came from other provinces, especially the ?le-de-France basin southeast. This year, to secure the capital’s supply, basin flour was sent to Paris first; little was sold to the provinces.
Even so, Reims bread was twenty percent cheaper than the Paris ceiling—and freely sold without ration tickets. Astonishing. In 1788–early 1789, bread in Reims had commonly been five to six sous per pound; at crunch times it spiked to ten, and the outskirts sometimes saw beggars starve.
Penduvas soon gave the key: “This is the joint initiative of Mayor Basile and Prosecutor Hubert: two large public granaries stocking flour, maize, and oats—enough to feed 50,000 for eight months. They cut transit taxes on grain, even encouraged Paris Basin merchants to barter grain for champagne and wine.”
It rang familiar to André—measures the Jacobins would apply in Paris three years later with formidable efficiency: iron discipline over grain that helped the capital break sixty anti-Republican departments in half a year—600,000 Parisians over 25,000,000 French.
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Yet here that policy had been pioneered by conservatives in Reims. He dimly recalled Basile—a senior broker at the champagne exchange when André left Reims; and Hubert—an alumnus of Reims law, eight years his senior, once a senior partner at a sizable local firm.
“Beg pardon, Colonel…” Penduvas hesitated, then ventured his judgment. “To my eye, Basile and Hubert—and Colonel Brice of the Guard—are not the ultra-conservatives painted by the Marne Commune and the Assembly. They are safeguarding themselves. Most planters and négociants (end note explained) back City Hall. The costs of the granaries are shared by growers and winemakers.”
Indeed, beyond policy, granaries demand deep pockets. In that other timeline, the Jacobin triumvirs plundered hundreds of noble estates to found Paris’s granaries. In Reims, Basile and Hubert had somehow persuaded businessmen to fund a low-profit, even loss-making public stock—proof of unusual skill and authority.
“Go on, Second Lieutenant,” André said, handing him a flute of champagne, thinking, “Awkward—come as a savior, turn out a wrecker.”
Penduvas drained it and continued: “In fact, the granaries are profitable. On the trading floor I found that Reims buys less from the Paris Basin than from the Loire heartland—wheat and maize from today’s Centre region. Beyond feeding the district, City Hall—together with Marquis de Bouillé—quietly routes part of this grain through the Ardennes to the Austrian Netherlands, turning a profit.”
Since the end of the Hundred Years’ War, French farming and stock-raising had led Europe in output and technique. French agriculture not only fed 25,000,000 but exported to Britain, Switzerland, and Iberia. “Crises” were regional, not national—tax barriers and bad roads being major checks.
In the Austrian (southern) Netherlands—today’s Belgium—both the francophone Catholic south (Wallonia) and the Dutch-speaking, largely Protestant north (Flanders) had robust stock-raising but needed heavy grain imports (wheat, oats, rye, maize). The Dutch United Provinces and Britain were likewise grain importers; the German states were poor in technique and output. Thus the south’s shortfall fell mainly on France—else on unreliable sea trade.
Originally, this profitable trade was a Versailles preserve. After 1789, the Revolution toppled royal privilege; an uprising in the Austrian Netherlands strained Franco-Austrian relations; normal trade faltered; smuggling along the frontier boomed.
A cousin of Marquis de Lafayette, General Marquis de Bouillé had served in the Seven Years’ War, then governed Guadeloupe. In the American War, he seized British Caribbean holdings, gilding his record. When the Revolution broke out, he returned, took Metz, and—by order of the War Minister—built a 30–40,000-man German mercenary corps. The burden of pay crushed him; though the King gave priority funds, wage arrears gaped.
The solution came quickly. A Reims noble on a secret mission persuaded him; he began working with Reims City Hall. Using the granaries as a base, they smuggled grain through the Ardennes to the Netherlands; in return, French merchants brought back West Indian sugar, coffee, indigo, and cheap local meats to Greater Champagne and Paris.
…
The intelligence officer added: “This cross-border smuggling pipeline was devised last 9/—operational by 11/—and has run for a year. By Father Marey’s sources and what I learned on the exchange, this year’s turnover won’t be under 30,000,000 livres.
“Profits split three ways: City Hall of Reims, the smugglers, and Marquis de Bouillé. Two men helped win over the marquis: the Comte de Lamarque, close to the Tuileries, and a hereditary local noble, the Marquis de Demo?—who acceded last year. The Marquis de Demo? is thirty-two, studied in Paris, met the Comte de Lamarque at Versailles, and—”
“Hold,” André cut in, brows knitting. “Strike every mention of the Marquis de Demo?, the Comte de Lamarque, the Tuileries, and related items from your brief.” By regimental practice, intelligence reached both Colonel André and Chief of Staff Berthier before circulation at an officers’ council.
Beyond those sensitive names, a giant’s shadow loomed—Comte de Mirabeau. André was certain the royal flight to the Austro-French frontier was Mirabeau’s plot. To buy time and slow the regiment’s move into Reims, Mirabeau met André’s requests in Bordeaux and Paris by every means.
Alas, the shrewd comte had a pig for a partner. Yesterday, the King swore to the plan; the day after tomorrow, he would say it had changed—fearing that once he fled to Metz, an enraged Assembly would depose him, proclaim Louis XVII, and choose the Duc d’Orléans as Regent.
For now, André did not wish to break with Mirabeau, despite being tripped twice. Hence, the order to purge the brief of “sensitive words,” lest they derail his line.
“Yes, Colonel.” Penduvas did not ask why; he completed what was set for him—something André valued.
By contrast, Suchet, left in staff, was a never-grown-up inquisitive: questioning since the Bordeaux camp; even the mild Berthier had lost his temper more than once in a week, rebuking the young collegian as unfit to be an officer. At last, André himself wondered if this Suchet was truly the future “Fox of Spain.” If not, he would be expelled from the regiment.
Happily, Suchet proved his wits in time. In a sand-table exercise codenamed “Valmy,” he single-handedly used dense contour maps and his own notes to reproduce the village and environs in full relief—fields labeled by crop, bridges by length, width, capacity, and material. Chief Berthier, finding no fault, was delighted and admitted to André he had misjudged him.
Back in the present, Penduvas obeyed the colonel’s order, striking the Marquis de Demo?'s line with a special marker. Unlike university-trained Suchet, Penduvas—born to herds and fields—had only two years in a church school and later free night classes while he labored in Paris. Since the mounted police days André had marked the robust, taciturn soldier. In half a year, he had proved loyal, tireless, and—on the Reims mission—keen in observation, sound in judgment, and excellent at gathering and processing intelligence. André felt vindicated.
Javert—now promoted chief—and the distant friend, Father Charles de Marey, praised Second Lieutenant Penduvas’s quick wits and daring in letters and speech. When Penduvas finished the edit, he received a new appointment: effective immediately, Second Lieutenant Penduvas of the gendarmerie would recruit and form a Military Intelligence Office. For cover it would be housed under the gendarmerie, but in substance answer directly to Colonel André.
Its remit was plain: analysis, clandestine human intelligence, and covert action. Penduvas would be the first director; its buildup would run eight to twelve months.
In one to two years it would leave the gendarmerie and stand outside the regiment’s chain, responsible only to André—answering no one else for budget, headcount, or operations.
The future office would comprise four main divisions: General Administration, Operations, Intelligence, and External Liaison.
- General Administration: logistics, communications, security, personnel, finance, medical services, training and education, data processing, and regional branches—normally under the director personally;
- Operations: counterintelligence, internal and external HUMINT, covert action and cover, assessment, planning and design—the head may report directly to André;
- Intelligence: management and analysis, ordnance and technology monitoring, collection requirements and evaluation;
- External Liaison: commercial exchanges, press control, public-opinion guidance, and a politico-military liaison office.
This “empty frame” was André’s “great idea,” borrowed from memory—modeled on the future American CIA and Britain’s MI5 (domestic) and SIS, trimmed and tweaked (e.g., a public-opinion section).
Officially, it would exist only to collect political, military, and economic intelligence for André’s decisions. It would also secretly monitor officers and key family members (no arrest or interrogation without André’s warrant); reach into internal and external affairs; and, in future, perhaps conduct ungentlemanly actions—subversion, assassination, bombings, kidnappings.
For now, it was a shell—no one but Penduvas. André granted up to ten
“Besides Captain Chassé of the gendarmerie, Chief Javert will aid you as needed—from collection and personnel to technical support,” André said. “Focus collection on Reims and Chalons—and the Ardennes. In Paris, before next June, do not overreach: support Chief Javert. In Reims, Father Charles de Marey will assist. Beyond Javert’s nominees, you may recruit across the Composite Regiment’s companies—except the gendarmerie and Judge Advocate.”
“…As for funds, I have placed 1,000,000 livres on deposit with United Commercial Bank in Paris—at your disposal. Expenditures under 10,000 need not be reported; apply for more if needed. My designated accountant or auditor will review vouchers quarterly.”
Finally, André emphasized: “I have granted you full authority over personnel and projects; the single condition is that by next September I must see an office sound and tight in structure, swift and accurate in collection, and decisive and efficient in execution.”
When Second Lieutenant Penduvas withdrew, André took from his drawer the old notebook, turned to the latest page, and wrote an entry: “Military Intelligence Office = Penduvas; 1790-11-13.”
Founding an intelligence organ had long been his conviction. In this special age, no one knew better than André the primacy of intelligence and organization. He had had ideas, but wanted people and money. Now he had all three.
To face the coming frenzy, he would spend from his own purse—sums equal to a year of the regiment’s budget—to forge this ultra-secret office.
To check its future overgrowth, André would bolster the gendarmerie as needed. All internal arrests, dragnets, interrogations—force in general—must be led by the gendarmerie, with the intelligence office in support; adjudication would fall to the Judge Advocate.
In some measure, he deliberately left overlaps between the two. In his design, when ready, a third pillar—a Commission of Integrity—would join them.
Note:
Négociants: are Champagne-region merchant houses that buy grapes or base wine, handle blending and production, and market the finished bottles through regional and international trade networks.