On this basis, once he had taken full control of both the military and civil authority in Reims, André no longer hesitated to provoke Marquis de Bouillé openly. Relying on the support of the Paris National Assembly and the Marne Commune, he pushed step by step, squeezing the German Legion that dominated the north-east out of the entire Greater Champagne region. When the Ardennes (bandit) guerrillas were finally encircled and annihilated, André immediately ordered that the “protection fees” (profit shares) due to Marquis de Bouillé and the German Legion for safeguarding the smuggling routes be withheld.

  The true backbone of any mercenary corps had never been strict discipline, but full and punctual pay. The moment the mercenaries failed to receive their seasonal wages, signs of disobedience spread rapidly through the camps. Cunning Saxon soldiers began to coordinate among themselves, urging junior officers to stand in the parade ground and raise their arms in protest; everyone shouted in unison, demanding that their superiors immediately pay the arrears in wages.

  Even with a will as firm as rock, Bouillé was powerless in the face of this. To prevent a repeat of the Nancy mutiny within the city of Metz, the General ordered the loyal troops under his command to lift their encirclement of the rebellious camp. He himself, without any bodyguards, entered the parade ground alone and, in front of the assembled troops, solemnly promised that he would resolve all wage arrears for officers and men within two weeks…

  A few days before Easter, a plenipotentiary envoy representing Marquis de Bouillé arrived secretly in Reims and requested a private audience with André. Only after Bouillé agreed to abandon his support for the Ardennes guerrillas, to cease his hostility towards André and the current regime in Reims, and to continue guaranteeing the security of the smuggling routes, did the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor of the Marne order Reims City Hall to return the smuggling profit shares belonging to the German Legion. In addition, André signed an amnesty decree and discreetly handed over the prisoners Father Michel and Conot (the second son of Comte de Saizia) to Marquis de Bouillé’s envoy in secret.

  “So it ends just like that?” Father Marey asked André. Hundreds and thousands of lives, hatreds as deep as life and death, a situation drawn taut like a sword about to be unsheathed—could all of it really vanish into thin air in a few words exchanged between those at the top?

  André burst into hearty laughter and replied, “How could it possibly be that simple? Marquis de Bouillé and I are merely buying time. We are both waiting for a great event that will change the history of France.”

  “What great event?” the priest pressed him, curiosity piqued.

  “Heh. As The God-Favoured, I have decided not to tell you too much of the inside story.” André smiled with studied mystery. If he had not been certain that “that great event” would occur, he would never have dared to gamble against Bouillé. Almost everything he was doing in Reims was planned around that event.

  …

  After the prisoners in the Abbey of Domminé (which served as a prison) were gradually released, the heavy stone pressing on Mayor Basile’s heart finally came to rest on the ground. The citywide manhunt triggered by the attempted assassination of the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor of the Marne two weeks earlier had left Basile physically and mentally exhausted, yet helpless. For a time he even considered resigning and getting far away from Reims.

  Fortunately, under the Reverend Mother’s persuasion, André began to show much more restraint outwardly and did not continue to widen the scope of his reprisals. The political storm soon calmed, along with the successful eradication of the Ardennes bandits.

  Early that morning, officials at City Hall were surprised to discover that Mayor Basile—who had been visibly worried and heavy-hearted for weeks—suddenly seemed in high spirits. From alighting from his carriage to walking into his office, his face was all smiles. The curious and inquisitive went to ask what had happened and learned that there was happy news: the mayor’s younger daughter Louise had accepted Ouvrard’s engagement ring the previous evening.

  As the trusted man whom the dictator of Reims had planted inside City Hall, Ouvrard’s every word and deed followed André’s intentions. His marriage to Louise naturally gave Mayor Basile new political confidence.

  Whether as a broker or as mayor of Reims, Basile was quite capable in running the city. In his youth he had studied at the University of Paris, where he was steeped in the doctrines of mercantilism, which had flourished for more than two centuries but was now in decline. Ten years later, after returning to Reims, Basile began to study Turgot’s physiocracy (classical economics) and the Encyclopedists. In practice, his economic policy had always been unapologetically pragmatic.

  While developing traditional agriculture and the wine-making industry, Basile also took on board proposals to use commerce (including smuggling) to secure grain supplies and maintain social stability. During his tenure, Reims built large granaries to stockpile flour, corn, and oats sufficient to feed the 50,000 people of the Reims region for eight months. City Hall also reduced transaction taxes on imported grain, encouraging merchants from the Paris Basin to bring in grain in exchange for champagne and wine…

  In André’s previous life, Basile had been a tragic figure. Because a large number of Parisian nobles—especially the king’s brother, the Comte de Provence—fled abroad via Reims, he came under fire from both the National Assembly and the Marne Commune, was forced to go into exile with his entire family, and soon died in Rotterdam in the Netherlands from overwork.

  In this life, with the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor André shielding him from the wind and rain, Basile successfully avoided judicial investigations from Paris and Chalons-en-Champagne. Even so, this highly capable man still retained his habitual caution, forever looking both ahead and behind. Thus André encouraged his close follower Ouvrard to court the mayor’s daughter boldly, using a political marriage to dispel Basile’s anxiety.

  At that very moment, in the Gendarmerie Headquarters building, Ouvrard was reporting to André on his work in City Hall and mentioned that he had formally proposed to Louise two nights earlier and that she had accepted his ring.

  “Congratulations, my friend!” André poured a glass of champagne and handed it to Ouvrard.

  The two men raised their glasses and drained them in one gulp.

  The marriage between Ouvrard and Miss Louise was not only part of André’s overall plan but also something he was personally delighted to see. In the same way, Ouvrard knew his employer’s character all too well: André liked to put men with families in important positions, because the “price” of betraying one’s superior would increase several-fold. Fortunately, as a man trained in law, Ouvrard genuinely liked Miss Louise and did not resent entering a marriage whose purpose was political.

  Just two days earlier, when André’s staff officer, Lieutenant Davout, had timidly asked for leave to return to the town of Lavielle to fetch his bride, André had cheerfully granted him three weeks of fully paid wedding leave and gifted him one thousand livres as a wedding present. Encouraged by André’s example, a wave of matchmaking fever swept through the unmarried officers of the Champagne Composite Regiment…

  Setting down his glass, André asked again, “So when are you planning to hold the engagement and the wedding?”

  “Let’s do the engagement ceremony here in Reims,” Ouvrard replied. “We’re thinking of early April, one week from now. As for the wedding, our preliminary plan is late June, in Paris.”

  André shook his head. “The wedding is scheduled too late. Go and tell your relatives in Paris to move it up to sometime before June.” As for why it had to be brought forward, André offered no further explanation, and Ouvrard raised no objection. He simply nodded and promised to take care of it.

  After this pleasant conversation about private matters, Ouvrard quickly shifted the topic to official business. He took several documents requiring André’s signature from his leather briefcase and laid them out on the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor’s desk for André to review one by one. On top was a draft from Reims City Hall: the “Grain Production and Reserve Plan for 1791–1792.”

  In Reims and throughout the Marne, traditional viticulture, brewing, and animal husbandry were highly developed, yet cereal crops such as wheat and corn were badly insufficient. Each year, two-thirds of the region’s grain had to be brought in from the plains east of Paris or from the provinces of the Central Massif to the south. Since Mayor Bailly of Paris had proclaimed that he would “spare no effort to ensure bread for 600,000 citizens,” most of Reims’ imported grain now came from the production areas of the Central Massif.

  In its planting plan, City Hall proposed not only maintaining regular output of wheat and corn, but also further expanding cultivation of potatoes, especially in the relatively poor soils of the northern districts.

  In fact, after the Spaniards unexpectedly discovered the potato in the Americas in the 16th century and brought it back to Europe, conservative Europeans—whether French, English, or Austrian—failed for a long time to recognise it as a proper food crop, aside from the remote island of Ireland.

  For the upper strata of Europe, potatoes were little more than an exotic curiosity from the New World, a plant for gardens: they were grown in botanical gardens across the continent and were a common sight in the gardens of palaces, nobles, and the wealthy. Many ladies were captivated by the small white, red, or purple blossoms of this Solanaceae plant. For a period, Queen Marie Antoinette of Louis XVI liked to wear a few potato flowers in her hair.

  To some extent, before the French Revolution, potatoes were still something of a rarity in Paris and northern France. In the south and along the Mediterranean coast, however—especially among farmers in the Pyrenees along the Spanish border—potatoes had been cultivated for nearly two hundred years.

  For French Catholics, their first impression of the potato was anything but auspicious. Because no version of the Bible ever mentioned this plant, many mentally shackled priests publicly denounced the potato as an unreliable crop, claiming that its roots and tubers hid evil spirits and that anyone who ate potatoes would be punished with leprosy, tuberculosis, or rickets…

  In response, the philosophers of the Encyclopedist school, who saw it as their mission to spread Enlightenment ideas, devoted lengthy passages to describing the cultivation of potatoes and their economic value. They hoped this would help the French people shed superstition and persuade Parisian rulers of the importance of potatoes to the economy and the state, so that the government would vigorously promote potato cultivation and allow the poor to obtain food more easily in times of famine and war.

  Ironically, however, what flourished abroad failed to take root at home. Despite the Encyclopedists under Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvétius, and Holbach compiling and popularising the Encyclopédie with great effort, their work did not lead to widespread potato cultivation in central and northern France. Instead, France’s mortal enemy—the Prussians—were the ones who seized the opportunity.

  During the successive Silesian Wars and the Seven Years’ War between Prussia and the Austrian Empire, Prussia was besieged by the European powers on all sides (France, Russia, Austria, Sweden, and others). Almost all men over the age of fifteen were conscripted to fight, leaving women and children to till the fields. Grain remained in chronically short supply. To address this, King Frederick II personally intervened. From 1746 onwards he promoted potato cultivation in all Prussian territories and even issued decrees compelling peasants to treat potatoes as a mandatory crop. Planting spread rapidly, and by the end of the 18th century potatoes were grown across all of Prussia and northern Germany.

  Back in France, the land of Enlightenment and the Encyclopédie, it was only after the Revolution—after the two great famines of 1793 and 1817—that potatoes finally began to be cultivated on a large scale. Two centuries later, the FAO of the United Nations would announce at a Paris conference that potatoes, along with wheat, rice, and corn, should be counted among the world’s four principal food crops.

  Now, at Mayor Basile’s proposal and with André’s strong backing, Reims City Hall had designated potatoes as a key crop for promotion. Once the “Grain Programme for 1791–1792” was approved and implemented, vineyard owners throughout Reims would be required, after their grapes were harvested, to plant a second crop of high-yield winter potatoes imported from Prussia in the unused strips at the edges of their vineyards. As an additional form of compensation, the city’s tax officials made it clear that potatoes turned over to the authorities could be credited against various indirect taxes as payment in kind.

  Under the bilateral agreement André had concluded in 1790 with Marquis de Condorcet, the Académie des Sciences would send ten technical scholars each year to participate in research projects designated by the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor. Thanks to the long-term work of one of the academy’s botanists, Reims City Hall finally selected as its seed stock a Prussian variety of potato that this scientist had cultivated in the botanical garden of the Bois de Vincennes. To ensure healthy propagation, the potatoes would be pre-soaked in Bordeaux mixture for 30–40 minutes, followed by proper soil selection, fertilisation, and regular field control of pests and diseases…

  By March 1791, when Reims farmers harvested this Prussian potato variety, yields reached nearly 20,000 kilograms per hectare. Everyone was dumbfounded by this high-yield crop—everyone except André. In 21st-century France, average potato yields had already reached 50,000 kilograms per hectare, and the world average was between 30,000 and 40,000 kilograms.

  After carefully reading through the plan, André found no fault with the planting proposals. In terms of grain reserves, however, he felt that City Hall’s draft was too conservative and did not implement his earlier demands.

  “Go and tell Mayor Basile,” he said, “that I have already stressed this repeatedly: by May 1792 we must build another two or three large granaries and raise our reserves to cover the basic needs of at least 500,000 people for five months. Remember: 500,000 people—not 200,000. On this point, there can be no argument.”

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  Five months happened to coincide with the purchasing season for winter potatoes; as for 500,000 people, André was clearly already thinking ahead to the refugee crisis that the 1792 war would inflict on the five north-eastern provinces and the resulting influx of disaster victims into the Marne and Reims. On top of that, once Britain entered the war and blockaded key ports on the Atlantic coast, grain from North America and eastern Europe would no longer reach France. Paris would face several bouts of famine in 1793, which would in turn become a major factor behind constant changes of government.

  Unlike André, Ouvrard could not “foresee” these future events. Like most people, he found such decisions rather irrational. But since the dictator insisted, he promised to convey the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor’s final demands to Reims City Hall and to draft a new grain plan.

  The second document dated back two months. At André’s request, Reims City Hall had commissioned graduating students from the University of Reims, at a fee of two hundred livres, to conduct a random survey of 1,000 women and children living below the poverty line in the city and its surrounding districts. The survey focused on their health. The results showed that 66.1% of poor women were most worried about gynecological diseases; among children under the age of three, 67.9% of deaths were due primarily to severe malnutrition.

  The report soon reached the field hospital. After studying it, the two army surgeons, Percy and Larrey, submitted a series of recommendations to Reims City Hall. Military doctors and some city physicians agreed that most gynecological illnesses stemmed from unhealthy living habits. Under their plan, the “sister-nurse corps” led by Head Nurse Charlotte would regularly visit fixed locations in Reims to teach women hygiene knowledge, spread awareness of healthy lifestyles, and distribute free devices and medicines to prevent common gynecological conditions. The cost would be shared equally between the field hospital and City Hall.

  As for child malnutrition, the army surgeons recommended providing sufficient milk and white bread every day, or substituting cheese and butter as nutritional alternatives…

  Health education and disease prevention for women were, in André’s view, entirely reasonable, and he approved the surgeons’ suggestions at once. Feeding thousands of impoverished infants with expensive cheese, butter, and white bread, however, struck him as wholly detached from reality—the expense was simply too great. Even officers of the Champagne Composite Regiment did not enjoy white bread every day (black bread was traditional in the French army). Milk, moreover, was difficult to supply on a regular basis because of the production cycle of dairy cows and the short shelf-life of fresh milk; over time the cost would be enormous.

  Faced with such a headache, André’s usual solution was to toss the problem back to the highly paid scholars of the Académie des Sciences. He offered a reward of five thousand livres to spur scientists to develop an entirely new infant nutritional product. Of course, André was not sending them on a wild goose chase.

  In his written suggestions to the expert group, he wielded his “cheat sheet” of history and proposed using instant milk powder or, better yet, cheaper malted milk powder as infant nutrition. Under normal circumstances, scientists needed only to work with engineers to refine the production process for these products and reduce losses in cost.

  The earliest method of making milk powder had originated in mid-19th-century Britain among fresh milk traders. André had once visited a museum of the Industrial Revolution in the suburbs of London and seen one of the earliest milk powder production processes in the modern world.

  First, chemicals such as soda ash and certain additives were added to fresh milk that was about to expire. The mixture was then poured into an open steam kettle and evaporated until it reached a dough-like consistency. Sugar was added, and the thickened mass was rolled into strips in a rolling workshop, further dried, crushed into powder, and finally sealed in standard-sized tins.

  Malted milk powder was even simpler to produce: flour, malt extract, and milk were mixed together in certain proportions. To keep costs low, malted milk powder was usually packed in cheap glass bottles with a shelf-life of no more than six months. In terms of price, a pound (about 450 grams) of milk powder cost 4–5 livres, whereas the same weight of malted milk powder cost only 1.5 livres, making it far more suitable for poor families to supplement their children’s diets.

  André also proposed that at some point in 1791 the Reims authorities should offer a special subsidy with the aim of lowering the retail price of malted milk powder in Reims from 1.5 livres per pound to one livre, and that part of it be given free of charge to the very poorest families, so that more young children could benefit.

  Standing beside him, Ouvrard continued his explanation. “The patents for milk powder and malted milk powder are all registered under the newly-established United Investment Company. We have currently licensed three companies in Reims, Bordeaux, and Paris to produce them. As for London, Rotterdam, Vienna, Saint Petersburg, and Madrid, we have instructed local lawyers to file patent applications. As for America…”

  “Forget those savages,” André cut in. “Those shameless Americans have never learned to respect European patents. And the Prussians are bastards as well.”

  From the day it was founded, the new United States had been scorned by the European powers as a nation of imitators. This would be even more true in the latter half of the 19th century. American factories constantly watched their European counterparts and laboratories; whenever a new technology appeared, the “hard-working and brave” American people would copy it at once and then undercut the world with higher output. The British and French often sneered at America as “a lonely continent of deported criminals, without human rights or safety, riddled with institutional corruption, rape, and murder.”

  Of course, the Germans were no better. From the mid-19th century onwards, they too grew rich by copying British and French patents. The oft-told story of raising the height of a glass bottle by two centimetres to claim a brand-new patent originated in this supposedly “rigorous” northern European country.

  When his eyes fell on a set of glass containers displayed in a cabinet in the corner of the office, Ouvrard was reminded of a matter André had once mentioned. He reported, “I have already sent people to find Nicolas Appert. At the moment he is merely a confectioner and pastry chef in Chalons-en-Champagne. His business is mediocre, so in his spare time he experiments with new methods of preserving food, and it seems he has achieved some success.”

  André’s interest was piqued at once. “Oh? And is he willing to accept my terms of investment?”

  “Of course,” Ouvrard nodded. “Appert could hardly refuse the price offered by the United Investment Company.”

  In fact, André had already set down in writing all the key elements of canning—using boiling water to preserve food—so Appert had little choice but to cooperate. Out of respect for the man who would one day be recognised as the inventor of hermetically sealed food preservation, André chose not to monopolise the patent, but instead enticed Appert into partnering with the United Investment Company.

  Over the next two months, the United Investment Company would serve as the main investor in a food processing plant to be built in Chalons-en-Champagne on the banks of the Marne. Holding thirty percent of the shares, Nicolas Appert would be authorised to oversee research and day-to-day operations. This new-type factory would produce glass-bottled and tin-plated canned foods, designated both as special military supplies and as necessities for long-distance ocean voyages.

  The last document at the bottom of the pile was Reims City Hall’s proposed plan for upgrading the city’s road network.

  In 18th-century France, roads were usually built from gravel, coarse sand, and limestone, with little proper surfacing, and thus required constant maintenance. After the Revolution broke out in Paris, the National Constituent Assembly abolished unpaid corvée labour, and intercity roads that no longer received timely upkeep soon fell into disrepair.

  A report from Reims City Hall stated that apart from the main roads used for trade (and smuggling), very few routes were fit for four-wheeled carriages. In many areas, the paths between villages were practically impassable, and the connecting roads between Reims and the surrounding townships had long gone unrepaired, leaving their surfaces rutted and in poor condition.

  Thanks to the “generous contributions” of the Reims Church and Bishop de Talleyrand, André now controlled tens of millions of livres in capital. On Ouvrard’s recommendation, the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor agreed to place the reconstruction of rural and urban roads on the formal agenda. A new Bureau of Roads and Bridges under Reims City Hall would be responsible for this long-term and arduous infrastructure programme. Naturally, it would also be extremely lucrative: the total investment amounted to fifteen million livres, with an initial budget of three million livres earmarked for building a rapid road network in Greater Reims.

  In terms of road construction, the bureau hired France’s most famous civil engineer, the seventy-five-year-old Trésaguet, as consulting expert. Planning, design, and construction oversight would be jointly carried out by his many disciples. Technically, Trésaguet insisted that the base of the roadbed should run parallel to the surface, with larger stones laid in the lower layer to separate the wearing surface from the foundation and thereby lengthen the lifespan of the road. He claimed that roads built to his design would last more than ten years with only basic maintenance.

  André, however, snorted in contempt. To him, Trésaguet’s methods were little more than “old tricks from 1775,” lacking any truly groundbreaking innovation. His initial hope had been to use techniques from a century in the future: improved Portland cement as a binding agent, mixed with stone and gravel, topped with a layer of soft asphalt…

  Yet defects in both raw materials and processing meant that the cost of producing improved Portland cement remained stubbornly high. Natural asphalt was cheap enough, but the cost of transporting it over long distances would make it insanely expensive by the time it reached Reims. In the end, the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor’s grand vision could only be applied to the city’s internal roads. The expense was great, but future savings on upkeep would be equally impressive: there would be no need for frequent, gut-wrenching excavations, greatly reducing the disruption to traffic and daily life.

  Armed with his knowledge of history, André declared with unshakable confidence, “I am certain that within one or two years, scientists and civil engineers together will double the quality of Portland cement. At the same time, they will reduce its cost to a quarter of what it is now—or even lower!”

  …

  In the several months since moving into Reims, André had successively dealt with City Hall, the National Guard, the police and judiciary, the local Catholic Church, the suppression of rebellious elements, and the destruction of the Ardennes bandits. Step by step, he gathered all military, civil, and ecclesiastical power in Reims firmly into his own hands.

  At the end of March 1791, André was preparing to set out again, this time for the new provincial capital of the Marne, Chalons-en-Champagne, a little more than fifty kilometres away. The purpose of the trip was twofold: to present a report on his five months of work as Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor to the General Committee of the Marne Commune, and to inspect the construction and production of the Joint Steam Engine Company.

  But no plan survives contact with the unexpected.

  On the night before his departure, André suddenly received a coded message from Paris. Deputy Chief Javert had sent a courier with a secret dispatch stating that Comte de Mirabeau was gravely ill. The most eminent physicians in Paris had unanimously concluded that Comte de Mirabeau had at most three or four days to live.

  Sharp differences in political views had long since opened a rift between André and Mirabeau, and their alliance was much weaker than before. During the months since André had returned to Reims, there had been very few letters between them. Even so, deep in his heart André still regarded Mirabeau as his finest political mentor.

  Learning that Mirabeau was at death’s door, André immediately abandoned his routine reporting trip to the provincial government of the Marne. He jumped into a carriage and, escorted by his attendant Second Lieutenant Dumas and a small detachment of gendarmes, set off westward through the night for Paris. Meanwhile, Mayor Basile and Father Marey were informed that they would temporarily stand in for the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor and travel to the provincial capital to answer questions on policy.

  …

  As early as the beginning of 1791, Mirabeau had fallen ill once again. His suppurating eye disease forced him to come to the Assembly chamber with his diseased eyes bandaged, walking with faltering steps.

  Two months later, serious kidney disease flared up again (some claimed it was late-stage syphilis; the narrator suspects it may also have been renal failure brought on by severe diabetes). The intense pain brought Mirabeau’s speeches in the Assembly to an early end and confined him to bed at home.

  On March 28, after battling illness for three days and nights, Mirabeau lay on his sickbed with an ashen face and a look of extreme suffering. He knew his end might come at any moment. He told a visitor that his body felt as if “it were wrapped in a sheet of iron and placed upon a furnace to roast, and now only the ashes remained.”

  Beginning on March 30, countless anxious Parisians gathered at 42 Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, outside the town house of Comte de Mirabeau. They anxiously questioned everyone entering or leaving the house about the health of its master. In the crowd were people from every party, every estate, every station of life—from the exalted King to the lowliest house servants (under current law, all servants were barred from voting).

  At the insistence of the deputies, the rotating president of the National Constituent Assembly sent two delegations of deputies to visit Comte de Mirabeau each day and to report on the progress of his illness. Written bulletins were delivered to the royal family in the Tuileries, to the judges and lawyers at the Palais de Justice on the ?le de la Cité, to the leading officials of Paris City Hall, and to all ordinary citizens concerned about Mirabeau’s fate.

  On March 31, acting on behalf of the Assembly, the right-wing representative Father Maury and the centrist Talleyrand (not the bishop) paid a joint visit to the convalescing Mirabeau. They brought flowers and the Assembly’s best wishes on behalf of the people. Once the formalities were done, Father Maury—who despised his host’s dissolute character—left at once. The other visitor, the high-ranking cleric who had been stripped of his priestly functions by the Holy See and who lived a life of luxury and debauchery, remained seated casually at the bedside, chatting with Mirabeau.

  At some point, for reasons unknown, Mirabeau fixed Talleyrand with a gaze full of despair and, after a long silence, said slowly, word by word, “My friend, I shall probably never rise again. When I close my eyes forever, I will take with me the last hope of preserving the monarchy… so hurry and carry this to the Tuileries, and make the King understand how grave this is.”

  Talleyrand merely smiled, unconcerned. It was only several weeks after Mirabeau’s death that he remembered these words (historians suspect that Talleyrand’s “forgetfulness” was deliberate, meant to sabotage Louis XVI’s escape plan) and passed them on to the Tuileries—far too late. Mirabeau had wanted Louis XVI to seize the opportunity of the grand funeral that the people of Paris would hold for him, slip away under the cover of Marquis de Bouillé, abandon all illusions, and flee at once to a frontier city instead of hesitating any longer…

  At midday on April 1, a dusty four-wheeled travelling carriage slowly drew up to 42 Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin. When the crowds outside Comte de Mirabeau’s residence heard that the “people’s lawyer” André was in the carriage, they respectfully opened up a passage. Everyone remained silent, as if some great calamity were at hand. Their faces were heavy and drawn; there were no shouts or loud chatter.

  Before the carriage had even fully come to a halt in the courtyard, André had already pushed open the door and jumped down, striding in two or three steps towards the entrance of the house. Servants stood on either side. Once they recognised him, not one of them attempted to bar his way. As usual, Second Lieutenant Dumas tried to follow close behind his superior, but André sent him back, ordering his African servant-officer to wait by the carriage.

  Accompanied by a Swiss servant, André climbed to the second floor. As he approached Mirabeau’s bedroom, he heard a fierce quarrel from within. When the servant moved to knock, André signalled him to withdraw and instead sat down on a bench outside the door to await the owner’s summons.

  The voices from inside were all too familiar. Listening more closely, André was certain that they belonged to the two arch-enemies standing at Mirabeau’s bedside: the Constitutionalist Lafayette and the republican Danton, locked in a battle of words.

  True to form, Lafayette was speaking with his usual arrogance, promising the dying Mirabeau in ringing tones, “As long as I draw breath, the French monarchy will continue to exist, and France will not fall into the chaos of anarchy.”

  Notes:

  corvée labour: A system of compulsory unpaid labour imposed by the state or local authorities, typically requiring peasants to work on public projects such as road building.

  Trésaguet: Pierre-Marie-Jér?me Trésaguet was a leading French road engineer whose layered-stone roadbed methods became influential in eighteenth-century road construction.