At the end of the 18th century, the total value of France’s foreign trade—including all colonies and the slave trade—was only about one billion livres. The smuggling route running Reims–Ardennes–Austrian Netherlands alone could account for three percent of that. By this estimate, total profits would be around 15 million livres, of which the share accruing to Marquis de Bouillé for “escorting” the smugglers likely reached some 5 million livres.

  With profits so rich, it is no wonder that Marquis de Bouillé not only facilitated the smugglers but even sent troops disguised as bandits to attack National Guard units in two departments, all to keep the roads through the Ardennes open.

  “Damn it—why did neither the National Constituent Assembly nor the Marne Commune ever brief me on intelligence this critical?” André swore inwardly, then thought harder: how to supplant General Bouillé and seize that secret route for his own advantage.

  As for the Constituent Assembly—too far to mind affairs 130 kilometers away. But in the Marne, someone must have known of the Reims route and deliberately kept it from him, plainly with designs of their own. Whether his mentor in Chalons knew—André, mistrustful by habit, refused to guess; what mattered was adjusting the coming campaign.

  In the staff room, André personally handed Penduvas’s Reims brief to Chief of Staff Berthier and sat silently on the sofa, watching how this royalist-leaning Lieutenant Colonel would react.

  As expected, Berthier’s anger showed—aimed at General Bouillé. Raising funds and calming troops by dabbling in smuggling was one thing—many senior commanders had done as much, including Colonel André himself—but striking National Guards under the cover of that was a violation of the basic honor of a French officer.

  “I understand,” the chief of staff said, lifting his eyes from the brief. “Marquis de Bouillé and his German mercenary corps will be the Champagne Composite Regiment’s primary enemy.”

  André smiled and corrected him. “Not yet. Our present object is to strike and destroy the bandits in the Ardennes forest; it does not involve the German corps garrisoned at Metz.”

  In essence, André and Bouillé were of one breed—unscrupulous in pursuit of ends. The difference: André favored political means; the General clung to force. Thus by June next year, when Marquis de Bouillé’s plot to spirit away the royal family was exposed, and all France denounced him, his 40,000-man German corps would crumble in a week and scatter; Bouillé alone would remain in camp, then flee abroad. André, therefore, did not rank Bouillé and his corps as arch-enemies.

  He went on: “Back to Reims. We keep military deterrence foremost, but solve matters politically if possible. So, Chief of Staff, draft a military plan—and stage a full-regimental live attack–defense exercise here.” He rose, went to the wall map, and placed a finger northwest of Reims, about twenty-five kilometers out: Fismes. “Tentative dates: December three to five.”

  Two days later at the officers’ council, Lieutenant Colonel Berthier, on behalf of the colonel and the staff, announced the march on Reims and the operation order under the codename “Joan of Arc.”

  When the briefing ended, André allowed no discussion. He ordered all battalion and company commanders present to obey the plan as drafted.

  Colonel André concluded: effective immediately, the Champagne Composite Regiment would be at readiness level 3.

  The quartermaster would assist commanders in war-readiness inspections; unseal, service, and replenish arms, ammunition, and all marching and combat stores. The gendarmerie would tighten patrols in and around camp, recall all personnel on leave, and cancel all furloughs and home visits. Every soldier was to return to the Versailles camp by 5:00 p.m. on November eighteenth. By the twentieth, all preparations for the expedition were to be complete.

  …

  Yet on the eve of departure, a wedding invitation from Paris forced André to transfer command temporarily to the chief of staff and the officers’ council and, on the nineteenth, leave his regiment and return to the Théatre-Fran?ais district on the Left Bank.

  The ceremony that day, the nineteenth, was for Camille Desmoulins and Lucile Duplessis. After André had gone south to Bordeaux, there had been an engagement party; the wedding had been set for Christmas, but Lucile’s unexpected pregnancy moved it up by a month.

  Frankly, André had never liked Desmoulins in either life. Guileless and candid, yet easily used, the journalist-editor would blithely trumpet the Republic until possessed by it. Too often, goaded and sheltered by plotters (the Duc d’Orléans, Mirabeau, Brissot, Danton, Robespierre), Desmoulins would wave his pen and stir up another killing frenzy of the Revolution.

  As for Lucile Duplessis, André had seen her once—a lively, pretty girl. Yet, as Legendre disclosed, after the engagement she remained intimate with Fréron; rumor added that Robespierre and Pétion were entangled as well. Desmoulins, enticed by a dowry of more than 100,000 livres, chose to look away.

  When the servant, unhurried, read out the long list of wedding guests, André set aside all inner gossip and agreed to attend the afternoon banquet—many of the “plotters” on his list would come in person or by proxy. He added that his schedule likely precluded attending the church ceremony in the morning. The unspoken reason: the former special representative of the Paris Commune’s radicals would be secretly meeting the conservative parliamentary leader, Cazalès.

  Now thirty-two, Cazalès had been a light-cavalry Captain in the Flanders Legion; on retirement he ran in the Estates-General elections for Verdun in Champagne and became a noble deputy in 1789—now the National Constituent Assembly.

  Handsome and polished, he rose quickly in the chamber. The great conservative nobles, fearing the Revolution, would not renounce privilege to stop it nor join it to delay it; they left—into exile or into rural seclusion. Cazalès, however, continued to defend the royal prerogative, to oppose all measures that weakened the crown, and to speak for émigré nobles resisting the Revolution.

  In 1790 the conservatives’ principal voices were Father Maury and Cazalès—the former for the clergy, the latter for the nobility—neither of first rank by birth. Maury was a parish priest; Cazalès, a low-ranking, impoverished Vicomte. Both possessed talent and will. André had heard both in the chamber: Father Maury was long-winded; Cazalès forceful.

  From the pulpit Maury kept the tone of preacher and academician, at times seeming not to understand himself. Bold, quick, protean, he seldom seized the point—least of all one favorable to himself—preferring endless rebuttal and erudite sophistry to sound reasoning. He rarely persuaded and never truly soared.

  Cazalès was the reverse: upright at heart, sharp in thought, frank in manner, fluent and vivid in speech. Faced with a question, he would usually take the ground that favored his side and leave the inflation to Father Maury. Passionate and skillful, he made the most of his gifts. André regretted to a friend that political misjudgment was Cazalès’s great flaw.

  When André, standing in the Assembly’s hall, excoriated ministers for inaction as the Commune’s radical envoy, both Cazalès and Father Maury fell silent. They too despised a cabinet of incompetents and grafters and preferred that the new ministry contain a few hard men.

  On that political understanding, André chose a discreet café near the Invalides to see Deputy Cazalès; Father Maury refused all contact with a “thief of church property”—there was nothing to discuss.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  November nineteenth—Paris in intoxicating autumn. Birds in the sky, dogs in the fields, golden leaves, quiet streets, blue heavens, the scent of coffee in the air. Compared to last year’s famine and riot, Parisians in 1790 savored ease and paid little heed to the Revolution’s course. Weddings and baptisms rose sharply.

  Some 700–800 meters from the café, André alighted from his carriage to walk the quiet parkway, to feel the capital’s final quiet of 1790. Acting valet Second Lieutenant Penduvas jumped down too, and, with the driver, followed at four to five meters.

  With clean water rapidly spreading, the death rate among city poor had fallen steeply since midyear—something André took pride in; his coming had gifted Parisians a season of health. Lamp posts bore no more rotting noble corpses; instead, they were pasted with notices: one lady offered 200 livres for her lost brown-and-white papillon; commercial adverts crowded the rest—opticians, barbers, apothecaries, dentists for fine enamel, itinerant “doctors” without degrees; a young musician from Bonn sought a post tutoring noble children in the capital of fashion; sellers hawked Danish oysters, Dutch cheese, Mediterranean oranges, and various luxuries.

  At the corner, André met Cazalès, also afoot.

  “Do not expect me to salute you,” Cazalès said, chest high like an oak, his eyes on André’s trim Colonel’s uniform. Before retiring, his own rank had been no higher than Captain.

  André chuckled—camp life had made him forget civilian decorum. He smiled an apology, handed his tricolor-cocked hat to Second Lieutenant Penduvas, and invited Cazalès into the café ten meters away.

  The proprietor, forewarned, flipped the sign to “Closed.”

  By the window, Cazalès watched through the pane as André’s aide stood by the carriage, speaking low with a beat constable, scanning the street now and then.

  “Are your men all so dutiful?” he asked.

  “Of course. My presence gives them hope without end,” André replied.

  “By plundering church property to curry favor with your officers?” the conservative prodded.

  André glanced up, smiled, and said nothing. The Church in France was a beaten cur; anyone with means and wits had joined the feast—conservative deputies and ministers included.

  Cazalès, however, had refused that degradation, voicing his anger again and again. Earlier this year, stung by Charles Malo Fran?ois Lameth (brother of Alexandre Lameth), he met him in a gentleman’s duel in the Bois de Boulogne. Lameth fell badly wounded; Cazalès was unscathed.

  Radical papers blared, “A black-hearted noble assassin has struck the People’s defender!” A mob stormed Cazalès’s flat on Rue de Varennes near the Invalides—beds, sheets, curtains, portraits, wardrobes, clocks, gilt plates, ceramics, even the chamber pot—hurled from the windows.

  Emboldened by leaders like Barnave, Duport, and Alexandre Lameth, the “victorious citizens” pressed on, assaulting other conservatives who had witnessed Lameth’s wounding. Nearly 300 conservative deputies resigned their seats and fled home or abroad. The result: conservatives sharply weakened; the Left rose.

  In hindsight, Cazalès thought he had been played—that Lameth had taken the blade on purpose to win Paris’s pity, incite riot, and reach hidden ends. The police and National Guard seemed inert, indulging the mob again and again.

  …

  When the proprietor served two hot chocolates—Saint-Domingue’s specialty—André sipped and said, with meaning: “Enjoy it. By this time next year, such cheap and delicious chocolate may be gone from Paris cafés.”

  Cazalès frowned. He knew André meant the great slave revolt soon to engulf Saint-Domingue—rumors André himself had sown two weeks past. André even backed Deputy Moreau de Saint-Méry, representative of the colonies, in his prediction for the Caribbean.

  That episode had brought the colonial deputies and André into quiet concert; the same Moreau de Saint-Méry urged Cazalès and Father Maury to keep calm and judge clearly while André lashed the ministers.

  To most Parisians, Saint-Domingue and its “coming” slave revolt lay 6,000 kilometers away—nothing to do with France. But Cazalès understood that, if the prediction came true, cheap colonial sugar, coffee, cocoa, indigo—all staples—might vanish from Parisian markets.

  As a Vicomte schooled in Enlightenment thought, he did not fear mobs of sans-culottes; they were fodder, beaten by volleys or canister as in pre-1789 food riots. What made unrest terrible was when men like Desmoulins, Danton, Marat, Mirabeau—even André—lawyers, doctors, men of letters, fallen nobles—led the movement; then it became a revolution that overturned society.

  If the cafés’ “liquid bread” could no longer be served in time, these so-called elites would lose their heads, rush into the streets, brandish pistols, and whip up the uninformed to vent against government. At that stage, gunfire solved nothing, and destruction grew by the day, to an unforeseeable end.

  “What is it you want—another deal, or only chatter?” Cazalès set down his cup. A soldier by nature, he liked straight lines, not the crooked talk of sly lawyers.

  André shook his head, signaled through the window. Second Lieutenant Penduvas brought in a brown portfolio. André took a file from it and passed it across. In the upper-left corner: “Top Secret.” Cazalès paused, then read on—Penduvas’s Reims intelligence, unredacted.

  André drank his chocolate. Under the second lieutenant’s eye, Cazalès read—he knew the rules of handling secret papers.

  …

  At first, his face showed indifference; the further he read, the heavier it grew, until it was dark with pressure. He wanted to dismiss the file as another of André’s contrivances—sowing discord, or…

  But with each vivid name and each anomalous deed of the past year set down in black and white, reason told him it could be true.

  Reims City Hall’s smuggling with Marquis de Bouillé and the merchants—little to do with Cazalès. But the file said the Comte de Lamarque had backed the plan on behalf of the Tuileries, to fund Bouillé’s mercenaries—or even the émigré aristocrats gathering at Coblenz. The marquis, it said, promised either to march on Paris, dissolve the Assembly and the Commune, or to spirit the royal family to the frontier to rally anew.

  The design was good, the hopes fair—but the risk enormous. Cazalès himself would never join it; if exposed, it would be ruinous. The hyenas lurking in Paris would launch another great riot against the royal couple. The Tuileries had to be cut out of this compromised scheme.

  When Penduvas reclaimed the file and left, André tapped the table with a finger to rouse the conservative, then said:

  “The Champagne Composite Regiment moves north in the morning. By the plan, we must re-establish order in Reims by early next month, in execution of the Constituent Assembly’s mandate.”

  He paused. “For my part, a peaceful entry would be best. If…”

  “If I can persuade Reims to avoid useless resistance,” Cazalès broke in, “will that file remain unpublished?”

  André shook his head. “I can delay it one month.”

  Total suppression was impossible. The scheme had run more than a year; how many knew? For now, out of interest or fear, most helped keep the lid on; yet when things ran out of control, the prudent would be the first to throw stones.

  “Give me twelve months.”

  “Half a year at most. After next June, I promise nothing.”

  By the historical clock, in June 1791, the Bourbon house—Louis-Capet—would suffer a political calamity from which the King’s reputation would never recover. That was one reason André chose Reims and the Marne as his base. Another key reason would not ripen until September 1792.

  “Done.”

  André was pleased. They clasped forearms; the pact was struck. Its worth ran farther: for six months, the Assembly’s Left and Right alike would refrain from putting man-made obstacles in Colonel André’s path at distant Reims.

  For André, publishing or not mattered little; the file was a bargaining chip. For Cazalès, it meant much: six months to mitigate the scandal’s harm to the Tuileries—assuming Colonel André cooperated, which he surely would.

  “I shall depart for Reims tomorrow,” said Cazalès. “I guarantee that, if Reims rejects my plan, any action taken by the Champagne Composite Regiment will have the absolute support of the Constituent Assembly, the cabinet, and the Tuileries.”

  André smiled and gestured; the proprietor brought a fine 1777 champagne. He poured for the conservative and raised his glass. “Thank you. Our agreement stands.”

  After draining the glass, Cazalès added, “One more thing: the resignation of the Comte de Tour du Pin has been rejected by the Tuileries twice.”

  Plainly, under the Empress’s goading, Louis XVI had “roused himself” for a few days and even used the royal veto. In truth, the Comte de Tour du Pin was competent—better than many deadweights in the cabinet.

  But their paths diverged. As War Minister he had repeatedly refused funds and provided neither rifles nor guns to the Champagne Composite Regiment, and he had dallied with the fermiers-généraux. André had therefore used the Commune’s prestige to teach him a lesson. Whether afterward the comte resigned into quiet or clung to his portfolio, André did not care.

  So he only said, breezily: “It’s fine. Under the constitution, the King retains a veto. Rest easy—the Commune and I will not press him. There’s no need.”

  Cazalès had meant to go on, but the remark ended his interest. He knew that the man who had resigned as prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court to become deputy chief prosecutor in the Marne still held his anti-Louis radical line. Their cooperation would be confined to Reims andwould expire by next June.

  After that, they would remain adversaries.

  One must admit that, whether conservatives like Cazalès and Father Maury, Constitutionalists like Lafayette, Bailly, and Sieyès, or radicals like Barnave, the Lameth brothers, Duport, and Pétion—and even Robespierre—most in the chamber were of upright character. Yet those who lived richly and earned immortal fame were the double-dealing ,shameless—men like Mirabeau and Talleyrand.