On Christmas Eve, André at last seemed to remember that the Archbishop of Reims—felled by an “accidental stroke” and lying insensible—was in the church hospital. He drove over to pay a call, spoke with showy regret at Bishop de Talleyrand’s misfortune, and insisted the physicians rouse the archbishop for even an hour, if it could be managed.

  Thereafter, the man who had become Reims’s de facto ruler—military and civil—told the priests that he would, on behalf of the Reims authorities and the Marne, write to the National Constituent Assembly’s Committee on Religious Affairs to request an early appointment of a new Archbishop of Reims. As for the Roman Curia, long beaten down by the Habsburgs into a toothless tiger, André had no intention of paying it heed.

  Naturally, Paris could not take André’s posture at face value. He knew perfectly well that a new archbishop would not be installed anytime soon. Inside the Assembly, the recently passed Decree on the Clerical Oath had already sparked internecine strife; the Religious Committee was beset daily by indignant clerical deputies. The chaos would not abate—rather, it would worsen. When Rome and the Pope at the Vatican finally broke their silence to denounce both the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the Decree on the Clerical Oath, the crisis reached its height, triggering the sans-culottes’ brutal persecution of non-juring clergy in Paris.

  Thus, while the episcopal seat in Reims stood vacant, and even the vicar—set to serve —lay sick in bed, effective power passed to several priests of the city’s churches. Two days later, André, with scant ceremony, recommended—out of course—his orphanage friend, the cleric Marey (fifth grade), to serve as curé of Reims Cathedral. Such appointments properly belonged to the Religious Committee. But André first bartered terms, guaranteeing that the clergy of Reims would duly accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and carry out the Decree on the Clerical Oath. Within two weeks, Paris agreed to André’s nomination.

  …

  Northeast of Reims lay Bacourt, a small French town of scarcely over a thousand souls. Like neighboring villages, it lived chiefly by vineyards, with some stock-raising besides. Beyond Reims, fifteen kilometers distant, Bacourt’s people seldom traveled; contact with the wider world was little. Though the town sat on a road to the Ardennes border, it had but a single inn.

  A month earlier, a French force—formed mainly of men from Bordeaux and Versailles—had moved to a point southeast of Bacourt. There, an old seventeenth-century Baroque chateau, once held by the Catholic Church of Reims, together with every structure within a radius of five–eight kilometers—houses, windmills, mills, forests, hills, meadows, streams, and ponds—was taken over for military use.

  Soon soldiers drove boundary stakes and set up conspicuous warning boards. An officer, Captain Petiet, informed townsfolk that the tract—ringed by ditches, walls, wire, redoubts, and barriers—was henceforth a military exclusion zone not to be trespassed.

  At first the townspeople were uneasy at the strangers’ arrival. But the regiment—under the colors of the Champagne Composite Regiment—kept good discipline; there were no outrages. Compensation, notably, was punctually paid. For the next three–five years, the army would remit thirty thousand livres annually in land compensation; each Bacourt household would receive a little over one hundred livres a year—some three–five months of a family’s earnings.

  In exchange, residents were strictly forbidden to enter the restricted zone without leave to graze, gather firewood, fish, or idle about—else they would bear the consequences. The quartermaster also told the mayor the camp would outsource certain services to locals—laundry and cooking, cleaning, camp repairs, and the like.

  According to Colonel André, the Champagne Composite Regiment might be raised next year to the Champagne Composite Brigade and would garrison this camp for two–three years—perhaps longer.

  On the fifth day after Christmas Eve, with the New Year of 1791 at hand, André, business in Reims at last in order, came for the first time to the newly fitted Bacourt camp. Here Colonel André meant to ring in 1791 with 1,500 officers and men.

  Captain Chassé and Second Lieutenant Penduvas of the gendarmerie, and Ouvrard, André’s receiver of church assets, remained in Reims. Two days earlier, however, the chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Berthier, had requested a fortnight’s leave; when it was granted, he left camp for Paris.

  “At a guess, the summons of the Comtesse de Provence,” André had joked at first. Soon, a report from Paris made him furious. It seemed Berthier had accepted a secret instruction at the Luxembourg Palace—from Louis XVI—to assist the King’s aunts in leaving France for Italy.

  Among the regiment’s officers—Colonel André included—nearly all were staunch republicans or inclined that way. Even Major Senarmont of the artillery and Second Lieutenant Davout—nobly born, perhaps of lower degree—were so. Alone, the chief of staff, Berthier, clung to Royalist Party loyalties to the Bourbons. André, for his part, cared little about noble versus common birth—provided no one preached extremism in his camp or engaged in radical agitation.

  But that his own chief of staff had taken direct orders from Louis XVI (though the fact was not yet proved) André could not tolerate. Were he not mindful of displeasing General Lafayette—who had recommended Berthier—André would have thrown the double-dealing staff officer out of the regiment at once.

  Swallowing his anger, André turned again to building the camp. After a little over twenty days’ labor, the neglected chateau bloomed anew. A classic Baroque ensemble—grand massing and imposing lines—stood amid gardens, pools, woods, and lawns. This would serve as the command center and emblem of authority for the Champagne Composite Regiment (or, soon, Brigade).

  At the regular officers’ meeting, André approved Captain Petiet’s comprehensive plan for Bacourt. A tract west of the camp, near the town, would hold the garrison hospital and the dependents’ quarter; artillery posts and drill-grounds and ranges would lie largely in the hills to the east; the cavalry would mass at the south end, able to reach Reims within thirty minutes of an order; the numerous infantry would disperse to the northeast and southeast sectors alongside the engineers.

  In the central precinct centered on the chateau would stand the headquarters of the regiment (or brigade), the staff, and intelligence; and nearby, the gendarmerie, the provost and military court, and the quartermaster and ordnance depots. By André’s order, a separate three-story pavilion north of the chateau would be refitted as a regimental officers’ school. In peacetime, every promotion in rank within the Champagne Composite Regiment (or future Brigade) would require completion of the school’s coursework for that grade and passage of comprehensive examinations—written, oral, and, where applicable, practical.

  Under instructions from the Assembly and General Lafayette, once the Champagne Composite Regiment entered Reims, it was to be expanded to brigade strength within six months. As before, every franc of future brigade expenses—arsenal and pay included—would be raised locally under André’s authority in the Reims district. Church property in Reims was rich; with the slightest stroke of Ouvrard’s pen, André could cover the brigade’s budget for a year.

  Just before adjourning, Colonel André announced a rule: from this day, when the colonel was absent from camp, the chief of staff, Berthier, would no longer act as deputy regimental commander; Major Moncey would assume that duty, while the officers’ council would continue to take collective decisions on camp affairs.

  André had spoken privately with Moncey beforehand. The others were plainly taken aback at first, but no one questioned the order, and André offered no explanation. When the meeting broke up, Hoche hesitated at the door, then decided to wait for the colonel on the ground floor.

  “Walk with me in the back garden,” André said coolly, giving Hoche a single glance and moving on at once, leaving the captain to follow.

  Unlike the chateau’s main block, the back garden was wholly for leisure—open and indulgent. A small but finely wrought country garden, its clipped round lawns and natural-feeling groves played off each other; a pond and fountain murmured with running water. Statues of great figures stood like tutelary spirits, companions of the estate through two centuries of weather.

  Hoche—André’s earliest Paris friend and first subordinate—was loyal, brave, and keen to learn. He was also warm-hearted; that feeling was both a virtue and a flaw. From his manner in the meeting, it was clear he found André’s handling of Lieutenant Colonel Berthier unjust, and he felt for his compatriot from Versailles.

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  Before a bronze statue greened by age, André stopped, and two paces back the cavalry captain halted as well. The statue was of the iron cardinal, the first Duc de Richelieu—the political strongman who laid two centuries of French hegemony. André’s gaze remained reverent: a thunderous statesman, cold and pitiless, yet masterful in strategy and far-sighted—Machiavellianism made method, and pushed to its limit. If André were to rank France’s statesmen, Richelieu would be in the top three—above Napoleon and Louis XIV, for in André’s view those two merely continued Richelieu’s continental design.

  After a time, André spoke, unhurried. “My friend, do you know why the National Constituent Assembly would tolerate a prosecutor—high-handed and armed with command authority—returning to his home ground to set up in Reims a regime bordering on a personal dictatorship?”

  Hoche started, then caught on. “Because you bring in revenues for the state, consistently and without hesitation, and you carry out the Assembly’s decisions to the letter; because, in the scale of France, both Reims and the Champagne Composite Regiment are weak—hardly worth reckoning; and because…”

  “And because I oppose Louis XVI and the Bourbons, openly and without deviation,” André smiled. “In a France riven by faction—where politicians pull each other down—such deep political division will not vanish through majority votes or a rousing speech. It will sharpen into an irreconcilable breach and end in the sword. There is nothing more important than staying politically correct. Mark that.”

  He glanced at the uneasy Hoche. “If you do not understand, so be it. Few in France do—five at most, besides me. Do as before: support my decisions without reserve. Marching and fighting—I may be a layman. In the play of politics and the use of law, my foresight is the equal of the Duc de Richelieu.”

  Hoche lowered his head and listened in silence; at the end, he nodded. He still worried. If the colonel revered Richelieu, would he not imitate the iron cardinal’s cold severity—blood and terror to make all opponents tremble?

  André sighed and spoke plainly to his trusted aide. “Be at ease, kind soul. I will give Lieutenant Colonel Berthier a chance to explain. If he is unfit to serve as chief of staff, at worst, I shall expel him from Bacourt and send him back to the Versailles National Guard.”

  Having soothed Hoche, André turned to the Ardennes. Though he had posted the cavalry toward Reims, the present target remained the several hundred mounted bandits roving the Ardennes. On Christmas Eve, they had struck at smugglers moving among Reims, Charleville-Mézières (capital of the Ardennes), and Brussels—a reprisal for City Hall’s surrender without a fight. Fortunately the bandits wanted goods and money, not lives, and there was little harm to the smugglers’ persons. No one made much of the affair.

  Mayor Basile and Prosecutor Hubert were stunned when they learned of it. After reporting to the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor, they resolved to send a Reims City Hall envoy to protest to the bandits’ supposed patron, the Marquis de Bouillé. André knew it was useless—merely an invitation to contempt. He ordered Captain Hoche’s cavalry to turn closer attention to the forest brigands fifty kilometers off.

  “I have sent out three reconnaissance parties in succession, and still we cannot find their lairs,” Hoche admitted. The Ardennes woods lay in Ardennes territory; without an invitation from the Ardennes Commune, the Champagne Composite Regiment could not enter, much less operate openly. Reconnaissance had to be clandestine, without local guides—lest quarrels break out between the two provinces.

  “Damnable autonomy,” André muttered. There was little he could do. Under the constitution, France’s eighty-three departments were autonomous in local administration, with public order entrusted to each department’s National Guard. From its formation, the Champagne Composite Regiment belonged to the Paris National Guard; it entered Reims at the warm invitation of the Marne Commune, whose own guards had been routed by a handful of bandits. In the Ardennes, where the brigands troubled the local people little, the Commune saw no reason to welcome a battle-hardened regiment into its jurisdiction.

  André had therefore set the intelligence officers, in concert with Paris, to bait the brigands into Reims; and Second Lieutenant Penduvas—helped by Father Marey—had planted a capable agent inside the band. But this was only a beginning; it would take a month or two for the plan to ripen. It was deep winter; half the Composite Regiment were southerners and not yet hardened to cold-weather campaigning.

  In the end, André had one more question for Hoche—whether he was seeing Joséphine, wife of the Vicomte de Beauharnais—for Chief Inspector Javert’s report from Paris had hinted as much. He held his tongue, however; it was the man’s private life, and he would not rouse suspicion in his most loyal subordinate. Besides, Joséphine was merely a society beauty—lovely and well-placed.

  …

  In a corner of the camp, a private named Bertrand stood on a ladder, stringing wire onto the posts around the quartermaster’s warehouse. At first light, Captain Petiet had set Bertrand and two others to this construction job. Near midday, the others slackened, lying on the grass in the winter sun, trading idle chatter. Only Bertrand worked on, swinging the heavy sledge with one hand, and with the other—thick in asbestos gloves—hauling at the wire.

  “Hey, you hear? In the next town over, a Black sergeant is commanding the local National Guard. They say he’s a white nobleman’s bastard,” one bored companion offered—the gossip he had caught while helping the quartermaster shop in town. The name escaped him.

  “What was his surname? Odd one—sounded like what we call a slave.”

  “Dumas,” came a familiar voice.

  The two soldiers on the ground looked up in a hurry. Colonel André.

  They scrambled to their feet, slapping grass from their tunics, drew in their bellies, set their chests, and saluted, faces solemn. “Respectfully reporting to the colonel, sir!”

  “At ease,” André returned the salute with a smile, then called up to the man on the ladder: “Don’t move—hold that post tight!” Even so, the ladder wobbled, and the soldier fell—luckily onto his backside; the winter uniform was thick, and he was not hurt.

  André laughed aloud. Behind him, Second Lieutenant Suchet stepped in and hauled the man up.

  “You enlisted at Versailles, didn’t you? What’s your name?” André asked, affable as ever before the ranks.

  The young private was thrilled. He flung off the gloves and all but leapt as he answered: “Reporting to the colonel, sir—my name is Henri-Gratien Bertrand—from Chateauroux in the central provinces, eighteen years old. I enlisted at Versailles and now serve in Captain Petiet’s transport and engineers company.”

  André nodded, satisfied. The voice rang, the answer was ordered and clear—no fluster. Rare in a private before the commander. His workmanship, too, was careful and tireless.

  A good impression—and a lucky day for Private Bertrand.

  “Second Lieutenant Suchet, when does the next NCO course begin?” André asked off-hand. The NCO school, by plan, would occupy a row of huts near the cavalry lines on the south side.

  “The fourth day after New Year—Friday next,” Suchet replied. In camp, he served as the colonel’s aide-de-camp.

  “Add his name—Bertrand—to the list,” André said, pointing to the lucky man.

  When the officers had gone, the two mates came over, green with envy, knocked Bertrand flat, and the three rolled about in mock battle, their oaths and laughter ringing together.

  …

  On January 1, 1791, New Year’s Day, André brought two important gifts to the whole garrison at Bacourt.

  The first was football—the world’s foremost sport in later times.

  By the early twelfth century, England had matches of a sort. When the master of ceremonies tossed a blown ox bladder aloft, “football” began. Sides surged together—shouting, kicking, grappling—and whichever side could drive the ball into the other’s market square won. Plainly, this was no true football but a barbarous English rugby. Though rugby likewise prizes teamwork and fierce contest, its lack of elegance made it ill-suited to French taste.

  In a former life André had been a fair-weather supporter of Paris Saint-Germain; even so, he knew modern football’s standards well enough. Under his own instruction, the modern game and its codified rules came a century early—and then some—at the Bacourt camp in Reims. It leavened the tedium of garrison life with fun and trained cooperation and perseverance.

  Before long, matches were held on every patch of grass. Within marked rectangles, sides attacked and defended to the later standard—ten outfield players and one goalkeeper, eleven a side…

  The second gift was cigarettes—ever controversial.

  The French Cigarette Company, proposed by André and founded in Bordeaux, had worked on developing rolled tobacco. At first, like cigars, every cigarette was handmade. Engineers in Bordeaux then spent months building a semi-manual, semi-mechanical assembly line. Dried tobacco was machine-cut into fine shreds; certain essences or aromatics were misted on; then workers hand-rolled the paper—about 120 mm in length and roughly 10 mm in diameter—into tubes around the fill.

  Unlike pipe tobacco, a paper cigarette needed only a light at one end and a draw at the other—convenient and quick. Cheaper than dear cigars, it still cost something. For easier lighting André later paid from his own pocket to have the Academy of Sciences develop a white-phosphorus match—never altogether safe to transport or use.

  At first, costs were high: a five-livre packet confined the novelty to the well-to-do; handwork choked supply—only two or three chests a month reached the Versailles camp to give the officers a taste. Once the line was running, costs fell sharply and output multiplied—by several times, then tenfold, then a hundredfold.

  Cigarettes’ effects, like spirits, were compelling. Their sharp stimulus helped restore vigor and sharpen men up. On campaign, a smoke could ease a soldier’s stress, clear his head, focus attention, palliate anxiety, and blunt hunger. As for nausea, dizziness, headache, and the long train of chronic harms—those were not André’s concern. Once war began, battle casualties would drown the sins of tobacco.

  Notes:

  curé

  non-juring clergy