Former cabinet Minister of Finance Beaulieu had long refused to allocate funds for building the semaphore telegraph, citing insufficient finances. Only after Brissot’s new cabinet took office in March of this year did Paris finally decide to follow the Marne’s example by preparing a telegraph bureau, and by inviting military engineering specialists to begin the preliminary geographic surveys for the semaphore stations.

  By the time war broke out, station construction from the capital Paris to the northern stronghold of Lille had only just begun, and it was expected that the network would not be completed in stages until half a year later. Therefore, all intelligence from the northern front still had to be transmitted through the traditional military relay posts—by horse. When the terrifying news reached Paris that two of the three columns of the Army of the North had returned empty-handed, and that General Dillon’s vanguard infantry brigade had been almost annihilated, it was already early May 1792.

  The failure at the front—especially the crushing defeat of the Army of the North—threw the nation into an uproar. A newspaper journalist who maintained a neutral stance described the chaotic political scene in Paris with plain honesty. He wrote: “Everywhere you go, you hear the same talk: that the King has betrayed us; that the generals have betrayed us; that there is no one left to trust. The Austrian Committee hidden in the Tuileries is about to be arrested, and Paris is about to face the Prusso-Austrian Coalition’s mad siege. At this moment, I feel as though I am standing inside the crater of a volcano that is about to erupt.”

  Robespierre, newly recovered and returned to public life, spent every day at the Jacobin Club. He repeatedly proclaimed the greatness of his own foresight, then cried out in righteous fury: “No! I do not trust the commanders at the front. And except for a few respectable exceptions, I believe that almost all of them regret the old order, and regret the favors the court once bestowed upon them… Therefore I rely only on the people; only the people are reliable.”

  At the same time, Marat and his supporters gathered at the Cordeliers Club, shouting that there were traitors in the Tuileries. Marat declared without disguise that Queen Marie, together with that infamous Austrian Committee, had leaked the operational plans to the Austrian army. “So I can conclude,” he said, “that the conspirators in the Palais des Tuileries are raising Champagne at this very moment, toasting France’s defeat!”

  In fairness, the tragic death of General Dillon and the heavy loss of a single infantry brigade—more than 4,000 men in all, with as many as 2,500 killed or captured—were not decisive in the overall strategic balance. After all, the 150,000 troops of the three armies remained intact, and provincial volunteer battalions continued to arrive each week as reinforcements.

  However, the consequences of the setback were that many noble officers lost confidence in the war and began to leave the army in succession. Worse still—and more infuriating and alarming—three cavalry regiments defected to the enemy and joined the émigré nobility: the Saxe Cavalry Regiment, the Bésénier Light Cavalry Regiment, and the Royal-German Cavalry Regiment.

  Meanwhile, the commanders of the three armies openly placed all blame on the troops’ indiscipline and the soldiers’ lack of quality. In mid-May, Marshal de Rochambeau, General Lafayette, and Marshal Luckner gathered at the headquarters of the Army of the Moselle (the central army), at Charleville-Mézières, for secret consultations. Afterward, all three agreed that the armies should coordinate their actions and cease all operations that crossed the frontier. Moreover, those rash commanders drafted a memorandum and sent it to the cabinet ministers and to the Legislative Assembly’s Military Affairs Committee, stating that “under present conditions, an offensive has become impossible,” and urging a shift to a defensive posture.

  …

  “Damn it—this is not a report. It is an ultimatum. It is betrayal meant to shake hearts, and a naked provocation!”

  In the Military Affairs Committee’s large office, a furious André pounded the table until it rang. The memorandum from Charleville-Mézières had already been thrown to the floor by him and trampled underfoot. Brissot, who had hurried over after receiving the news, witnessed André’s severe loss of composure.

  Brissot first motioned the other committee members to step outside for a moment. He quietly closed the door, then silently gathered up the memorandum pages that lay scattered about, stamped all over with shoeprints. In truth, Brissot’s own days were even harder now. With the failures at the front and the commanders’ dereliction—indeed, their near-rebellious conduct—he felt more shame and unease than André did. Brissot and his cabinet friends tried desperately to placate and mollify the generals, but with no effect.

  Before long, Brissot’s faction decided to divert the trouble elsewhere. In the press and in the Assembly, they launched fierce attacks on Robespierre and his allies, calling them anarchists, and shifting the blame for failure onto the anti-war Robespierre faction. They claimed that the poor performance of officers and men at the front was the result of Robespierre and his ally Marat taking the opportunity to vent personal grudges. Yet this move met fierce opposition from Paris City Hall, led by Danton.

  Thus, within the Jacobin Club itself, endless infighting began. The hall filled with faces of extreme fear, groundless accusations delivered in raw anger, and hysterical abuse. The club’s chamber became a sea of jeers at the members’ “mutual slaughter,” and the atmosphere felt like the end of the world.

  At this moment, Brissot grasped at a lifeline: André, the executive secretary of the Military Affairs Committee. Among the Jacobin factions—Brissot’s, Robespierre’s, and André’s—he was the one least attacked in the wake of the front’s defeat. The reason was simple. André had supported the foreign war without hesitation, and he had successfully foreseen “uncertainties” in the conflict and demanded that the cabinet’s Minister of War address them. It was only because General Servan had been too careless to take them seriously that no blame could easily be pinned onto André.

  “André—what should we do?” Brissot asked in dejection. His thin face looked utterly drawn, and long-term sleep deprivation had left his eyes bloodshot.

  André replied with a grave expression: “First, we must break up the alliance among the three army commanders. I do not want 150,000 troops on the frontier turning their guns around and marching on Paris with the Austrians—though that possibility is not great. Second, we must stabilize morale at the front as quickly as possible, and the best medicine is a clean, satisfying victory. The Army of the North must continue the offensive; it cannot cling to a defensive stance. Third, to ensure these measures are carried out effectively, I demand that the Assembly and the cabinet jointly empower a plenipotentiary commissioner to supervise the Army of the North and its future operations. The commissioner’s remit must include not only civil administration, discipline, and logistics, but also the power to appoint and dismiss senior officers; when necessary, he must be able to bypass the army commander and issue operational orders directly to the troops.”

  Brissot nodded once for nearly every sentence André spoke, accepting the decisions. But at the end, he raised an objection regarding the commissioner’s authority: “Isn’t this commissioner’s power too great? It will be difficult to restrain him in the future!”

  André smiled, turned his finger, and pointed to himself. “That is why this commissioner must be a representative of the National Assembly, the executive secretary of the Military Affairs Committee—and of course, that means me.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  The greatest power also meant the greatest responsibility, and the greatest future honor—or guilt.

  That much was beyond doubt. Brissot understood it perfectly. If André was willing to leap into the fire of his own accord, it meant he was willing to share fate with Brissot’s faction, whose political prestige was already wavering, and to shoulder upon himself the pressure and firepower of every future opposition. As for whether this plenipotentiary commissioner, armed with such authority, might step onto the path of military dictatorship—Brissot could no longer tell, and had no time to brood over it.

  Two hours later, Brissot instructed the Gironde deputies—centered on Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, and Barbaroux—to submit a bill in the Legislative Assembly to create an Army of the North commissioner. That night, Brissot returned to the residence of the Minister of the Interior and explained André’s proposals and demands to his friends: the Minister of the Interior, Roland; the Minister of Finance, Clavière; and the Minister of War, Servan.

  Unexpectedly, General Servan was the first to voice support, and even suggested that André be granted the rank of Lieutenant General in the army in the name of the Ministry of War. He had no choice: among all the cabinet ministers, the Minister of War was bearing the heaviest pressure from the Assembly and the public. Some madmen had even issued death threats against Servan and his family, to the point that the unfortunate minister needed armed attendants whenever he went out, as protection against mob attacks.

  The Minister of Finance, Clavière, likewise supported the plan. Roland did not openly oppose it, yet the Minister of the Interior still cautiously reserved his position. “André’s authority must be limited to a certain extent,” he said.

  Brissot had already prepared for that. He explained: “André will serve as commissioner of the Army of the North in the direction of Nord, not of the Army of the Moselle (the central army), which sits in the Ardennes. Moreover, Marshal de Rochambeau, as commander of the Army of the North, has such lofty prestige in the army that he will be able to restrain any unreasonable action by Commissioner André.”

  But calculations could not match the turn of events. Brissot’s plan soon fell apart. On the day before Commissioner André was to reach the Army of the North headquarters, Marshal de Rochambeau suddenly announced his resignation as army commander and temporarily entrusted command to his deputy, Alexandre LamethCharles Malo Fran?ois Lameth

  The real situation, however, was that Berthier, visiting Marshal de Rochambeau as a friend, privately urged him to resign, relinquish command, and avoid entanglement in political disputes, in order to preserve his personal reputation and the safety of his family.

  After a series of political transactions, both public and behind the curtain, the Assembly and the cabinet jointly issued an announcement on May 20: they appointed André Franck, the executive secretary of the Military Affairs Committee, as plenipotentiary commissioner of the Army of the North, to supervise and compel the next phase of operations in the war against Austria. At the same time, the Ministry of War granted André the rank of Lieutenant General in the army and conferred upon him military command authority as well as the power to appoint and dismiss middle and senior officers—except the army commander.

  On the day he received the appointment, André, in his capacity as commissioner of the Army of the North, issued a series of promotion orders and urgent redeployment orders for multiple units. He ordered Brigadier General Moncey’s infantry brigade (4,500 men), Brigadier General Hoche’s cavalry brigade (2,000 horse), Colonel Brune’s 1st Gendarmerie Regiment (800 men), and Colonel Laclos’s six artillery companies with their train (1,600 men)—Laclos being formerly the secretary to the Duc d’Orléans and now the director of the artillery school—to form a westward detachment of 9,000 men. This detachment would be led by the Army of the North’s new chief of staff, Brigadier General Berthier, and would march west from the Sedan camp to Lille, 200 kilometers away, to take over the fortress defenses—Lille being the departure point of General Dillon’s forces.

  The orders reached the Sedan camp on the evening of May 22. André required Berthier and his core units to arrive at the Lille camp by May 28 at the latest, and to assume control of all city fortifications.

  General Lafayette, left behind at the Charleville-Mézières camp, was visibly displeased, because the units André redeployed nominally belonged to the Army of the Moselle’s order of battle—and they were full-strength, well equipped, and well trained. Yet all such objections proved useless. From the cabinet and the Assembly above, to the officers and men of the westward detachment below, no one cared about the protests of this proud and aloof commander.

  On the night of May 25, the day before he left Paris as commissioner of the Army of the North, André attended a regular Jacobin meeting. This was at the request of Robespierre’s brother Augustin, who wrote to ask André—as a friend—to help Robespierre defuse the groundless accusations being hurled at him by many club members.

  Under the deliberate guidance of Brissot’s faction, the majority of pro-war club members, enraged by the front’s setbacks, poured all their anger onto Robespierre, who had consistently opposed the war. Someone openly accused him: “It is your dictatorial ambition, and your jealous hatred of those in power, that has driven you to malign a just war… Now you have finally gotten what you wanted—you can rejoice and applaud with the Austrians.”

  Robespierre was so furious at those words that he spat blood. He immediately resigned his public-prosecutor post, which paid 8,000 livres a year, to show that he had no ambition and would never conspire with rebels. Yet no one believed him. Someone sneered, “That is exactly the proof that he possesses political ambition beyond measure!”

  At seven o’clock that evening, when André entered the club, it was already in chaos. From the black mass of the crowd came constant curses aimed at Robespierre. The generals at the front had issued yet another open letter accusing Robespierre of tarnishing the reputations of General Lafayette and Marshal Luckner in the Jacobin Club. (Note: Robespierre and Carnot both held Marshal de Rochambeau in high respect, which was why the Marshal survived the Terror with no great peril and died peacefully with his family.)

  Robespierre, boiling with rage, rushed to the platform, snatched the open letter from the reader’s hands, and tore it to shreds before the crowd. The hall grew even more turbulent. Jeers and curses rose in one continuous roar. Several hot-headed members tried to charge the platform, intending to drag Robespierre down and beat him.

  Then a loud voice in the hall stopped the disturbance.

  “Gentlemen—gentlemen!” André had a tall wooden table brought in and carried to the middle of the crowd. He climbed onto it and shouted to the entire assembly: “Please let me say one word!”

  When hundreds upon hundreds of eyes turned toward him, André continued: “Monsieur Robespierre has never exercised dictatorship here. If he has, it has been only a dictatorship of reason. This accusation from the front-line commanders is not patriotism—it is base jealousy and terrible passion, and it will only incite malicious attacks upon Monsieur Robespierre. As a friend and a comrade, I am willing to vouch for Robespierre: everything he has done has been for the interests of the people and the nation, with no selfish motive at all.”

  When André’s words fell, the club sank into a deathly silence. After a moment, someone began to clap; then applause rolled across the hall and thundered up into the air.

  Soon after, the cries began again—“Long live André!” “Long live Robespierre!” The members who had been ready to beat Robespierre now had tears in their eyes, and they embraced and kissed the great patriot, the L’Incorruptible slandered by bad soldiers.

  After some time had passed, when André left the club, he found Robespierre waiting by his carriage.

  “Thank you,” Robespierre said with heartfelt gratitude. His eyes were red. If André had not come to speak for him, his political life might have been cut short that very night.

  André smiled. He lightly patted his friend’s arm and asked with concern, “Do you need me to send you home?”

  Robespierre raised his head and looked at André. “No, thank you. The club’s Correspondence Committee has just restored me to my post as executive secretary, so tonight must be an all-night shift.”

  André did not insist. After bidding Robespierre farewell, he left the club by carriage.

  Not long after, Carnot approached and asked Robespierre in a low voice: “Do you still doubt André’s political ambition now?”

  Robespierre answered firmly: “Yes. On this point, I am convinced beyond doubt. Even if he saved my political life today, out of responsibility to our French fatherland I must remain vigilant over André’s every move. However, before he falls into the abyss, I will give him a well-intentioned warning.”