André went on. “If we are counting the men the Tuileries most want to kill, I suspect Georges (Danton) and I would both make the top ten. But if we are counting the man the royal family most worries about—most fears—then it can only be Lafayette. Queen Antoinette, in particular, hates that Marquis who serves as the court’s jailer with a clenched, grinding rage. And especially last week, Lafayette refused—again, for the third time—to let the Queen’s Swedish lover, the Comte de Fersen, enter Paris.

  “Gentlemen, hatred can cloud the judgment of any wise man, let alone that foolish Austrian woman. Besides, the other pillar of the Constitutionalists—the Barnave faction—will not sit by and watch Lafayette become Mayor of Paris. And the same is true in reverse. So with the royal family and the Barnave faction aligned, Lafayette can only leave in frustration. Likewise, under the counterattack from the Lafayette faction, Barnave and his people will not obtain the mayoralty of Paris either.

  “So from this moment on, my friends, keep a lower profile, polish the surface, and show the public—especially high society, and even, shamelessly, the Tuileries—our benevolence and goodwill. Pétion, you should draw closer to the Barnave faction, but I suggest you leave no written traces. And Georges, you and your followers need to stay away from the political activities of the Cordeliers Club for a while—and don’t rush to bring that madman Marat back to Paris ahead of time. As for the rest—such as coordinating interests with the Lafayette faction—I will handle it.”

  After André’s meticulous, step-by-step analysis, Pétion’s heart finally settled, and he exclaimed in admiration, “All right. Now I’m beginning to believe the street talk. André, you truly are a God-Favoured man—with the eyes of an eagle, the ears of a wolf, the strength of a bear, and the cunning of a fox.”

  André burst into laughter, but he noticed a faint displeasure at the corner of Danton’s eye. Plainly, the Titan was not very happy: André had returned to Paris and stolen his thunder at once. Still, Danton was a man who understood the larger picture, and that small irritation dissolved immediately before the prospect of immense political gain. For Danton, now sunk into a political low point, badly needed a deputy like André—one with wide connections—to beat the drum and raise the flag for him.

  Compared with Danton’s complicated inner thoughts, Pétion—handsome, warm, and decisive—seemed far more genuine. The former deputy’s trustworthy manner, plain speech, and plebeian style were refreshing; even without the great “cheat” of history in his hands, André would have urged Pétion to run for the mayoralty of Paris.

  Twenty minutes later, the future Mayor of Paris and the future prosecutor of Paris rose to take their leave. André smiled and escorted them out. Not long after he returned to his seat in the café, the intelligence officer Lieutenant Lozère arrived, leading an elegant woman to André.

  “Good evening, Madame Roland.” André stood, as usual, to greet her, but there was less of a certain desire in his eyes; his words, too, were more like the courtesy due to a stranger. For André knew that this seemingly small and delicate woman had already helped her husband build a “political circle” for the Roland couple in Paris; before long, in the salons, a brilliant flower of liberty would bloom…

  Madame Roland nodded with reserve. She had come on behalf of Brissot and his circle to negotiate a political bargain with André. Previously, André had repeatedly declined the Rolands’ salon invitations on the grounds of official business. As a politician growing ever more mature, André understood that refusing first, and yielding later, only strengthened the effect of a bargain struck at the gate.

  A week earlier, news reached Paris that a Black slave uprising had broken out in the colony of Saint-Domingue. This meant that, for a long period to come, sugar, coffee, cocoa, indigo, and the like might all fall into severe shortage across France. Yet Brissot—who styled himself as a man of Marian virtue—and his allies in the Society of the Friends of the Blacks actually cheered for the insurgents, celebrating that belated justice had finally come to that wicked land…

  This angered André greatly. And when, on September 25, Brissot’s allies once again vetoed the cabinet’s proposal to provide military aid to Saint-Domingue, André ordered to publish a piece of documentary reportage describing the tragic fate of the colony’s inhabitants after the uprising of 100,000 slaves (the number may not have been accurate): “September 1791: Escape from Hell on Earth!”

  “…In the autumn of the Caribbean, looking out from the skylights of Cap-Fran?ais toward the outskirts, thick smoke-clouds swallow the horizon. Day belongs to the smoke; night belongs to the flames. Within it are the terrified screams of women and children who have fled… Devilish Black cavalrymen carry out massacres and plunder with ruthless ferocity. Under cover of the jungle, they rape, kill, desecrate corpses, and burn. Because they favor the jungle, the mobs spontaneously form into bands of several thousand; brandishing short knives and muskets, baring their teeth and claws, they crash upon unguarded plantations with earth-shaking cries, using bloody violence to destroy everything they see—including civilization… Even when the overstretched troops arrive at last, the mobs mostly melt back into the jungle, waiting to slaughter the next target without mercy…”

  This report—together with several white and mixed-race refugees from Saint-Domingue whom André secretly encouraged to testify in person on the floor of the Assembly—set Parisian opinion in an uproar. People denounced the riot in Saint-Domingue and demanded that the state immediately restore law and order there.

  Meanwhile, one night, Brissot and his Society of the Friends of the Blacks were attacked by a large group of unknown assailants. Fortunately, there were no casualties, but the property damage was severe—the place was wrecked. Throughout the smashing and looting, the Paris police and the city guard, both under the influence of the Constitutionalists, chose to stand aside and do nothing.

  Given this, Brissot had little choice but to negotiate with the forceful André. For Brissot’s disciples—the deputies from the Gironde—might, out of personal or family economic interests, choose to stand with André and demand repression of the colonial rebels. Even his old friend Condorcet, under the influence of his Bordeaux-born wife, expressed a certain displeasure at Brissot’s improper words. After weighing it all, Brissot decided that only Madame Roland was suitable to step forward—though Monsieur Roland was not pleased by it.

  Madame Roland, clear in her purpose, did not circle around it. She named her price at once. “In tomorrow’s sitting of the Legislative Assembly, Brissot will recommend you as executive secretary of the Foreign Affairs Committee.”

  André smiled without speaking. His post in the Legislative Assembly had already been settled through compromise with the two main pillars of the Constitutionalists, along with the support of some Jacobin deputies; it was, in effect, a certainty. Brissot was trying to use what was already destined for André as a bargaining chip—and that was plainly not enough.

  The five most important working committees under the Assembly included:

  the Judicial Committee, which usually linked with the Palais de Justice and the cabinet’s Ministry of Justice, and fought for control;

  the Finance and Taxation Committee, which faced the cabinet’s Ministry of Finance in a relationship of competition;

  the Administrative Committee, which had to supervise the cabinet’s Ministry of the Interior, the Paris police, and Paris City Hall;

  the Military Committee, tasked with overseeing the cabinet’s Ministry of War and Ministry of the Navy, as well as the Paris National Guard;

  the Foreign Policy Advisory Committee, which naturally confronted the cabinet’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  Among these, the Foreign Affairs Committee ranked last. In truth, given André’s wide connections and personal strength, he could have sought a better post and greater power in the Judicial Committee, the Finance and Taxation Committee, or the Military Committee; yet in the end, he chose the least conspicuous—the final one.

  Seeing André’s dismissive look, Madame Roland did not lose heart. She continued: “Second, we know you have special economic and political interests in Saint-Domingue, but Brissot’s political ideals include emancipating all enslaved Blacks and achieving equality for mankind. That cannot be vetoed—at least not now. However, Brissot and we will keep silent the next time the cabinet government provides military aid to the colonies.

  “Third, once war breaks out, we will propose that the Legislative Assembly grant you the rank of Major General, and, as executive secretary of the Military Committee, send you to oversee the Brabant, Liège, and Luxembourg theatres (present-day Belgium and Luxembourg), with overall authority over all military and administrative affairs in that region.”

  André still treated Brissot’s second condition with visible indifference, but the third was irresistible. Plainly, Madame Roland had seen through André’s hunger for command. Fortunately for André, Brissot and his circle did not care about contesting power outside the Paris department—so long as their core interest, Paris, was not endangered—even if it meant handing over the supreme command of a Champagne region, together with an army group.

  Like all the noble-minded, pure-hearted politicians of the age, Brissot and the Roland couple believed in the power of centralization. They thought that as long as they held Paris, they could control the provinces of France; even if André stood as a local strongman, he was merely a second Lorraine—a copy that would ultimately surrender to Paris of its own accord. On this assumption, Brissot dared to make such promises and gained his allies’ unanimous consent. Before 1794, Parisian politicians rarely broke their word.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  If André were not André, he would have thought the same as Brissot’s faction. But the truth of history was not so. After the Enlightenment, and after the people’s unprecedented victories in challenging royal authority twice, the 600,000 citizens of Paris accepted neither any ideological yoke nor any party discipline. Whoever failed to satisfy their demands would be met with an insurrection; patriots would then form a new government—only to be overthrown again, and rebuilt again—until all were sick of the political game that piled up too many dead, and were finally conquered by a military despot named Emperor Napoleon.

  And the road André was taking now was a reformed Napoleonic path of military dictatorship—except that before his death he would arrange France’s democratic enterprise, like the enlightened Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in later times. After all, compared with General Bonaparte, who would rise in Paris a few years later, André possessed more resources and wider connections. And from the beginning, André had always insisted that his so-called prestige in Paris was a floating weed—easily battered by wind and waves—and that it had to rest upon a hard foundation: the army, loyal to him, battle-hardened, and able to win victory after victory with iron and blood—a lion without equal.

  Since Brissot and his people had thrown out the result André wanted, André naturally agreed to a package compromise with Madame Roland. It included supporting Brissot’s control of the Administrative Committee of the Legislative Assembly; supporting Brissot’s proposal for a rotation system among the executive secretaries of the five major committees every sixty days; and André also promised to attend the salon banquet hosted by Madame Roland, to mend the crack and deepen their alliance.

  “I hear Monsieur Roland has gone to Lyon—so you can skip going home tonight!” As he helped Madame Roland into her carriage, André suddenly caught her delicate hand, let his lips brush lightly near her earlobe, and whispered the line.

  Unfortunately, the ill-intentioned libertine at once met a deliberate retaliation from a chaste lady. Something like a metal blunt instrument struck André hard in the ribs; the pain nearly doubled him over.

  “Don’t miss me too much!” Even after the carriage had gone far, André still stood there, waving. But whether it was Madame Roland or André himself, both knew clearly that what bound them was political interest—not desire.

  While André and his circle were plotting over the posts of Paris City Hall in a café, on the Rue de Rivoli near the Place Louis XV, in a three-storey wealthy apartment building with a private garden, Brissot and his followers from the Gironde and across the south were already discussing the coming work of the Legislative Assembly in advance.

  It should be noted that this luxurious apartment had been lent to Brissot by his Swiss banker friend, Clavière. On ordinary days, besides the owner Clavière, Condorcet and the Roland couple came and went; other visitors included General Servan and General Dumouriez.

  Like Pétion, Brissot also came from Chartres. But unlike Pétion—handsome, refined, and born into wealth—Brissot was short and unremarkable; his hair, however, was slicked to a glossy shine, and his clothes were plain, with only a few livres in his pockets.

  More than ten years earlier, when he first arrived in Paris, Brissot added a “De” to his name to suggest noble birth. In truth, he was only the eleventh child of a small innkeeper in Chartres. Though he had not finished secondary school or attended a formal university, Brissot was clever from childhood, capable, and wrote well. In his youth, he travelled widely, went to America, Britain, and the Netherlands, visited Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau, and became close friends with the great scholar Condorcet. Before August 1791, Brissot had also been a favored guest of the Duc d’Orléans, often entering and leaving the Palais-Royal.

  Brissot’s southern followers were lawyers and former municipal officials. They, too, were talented and ambitious. Apart from the aged Monsieur Roland, most were excellent young orators. In appearance, Vergniaud seemed shy and clumsy, but once he stood at the tribune he became an eloquent Roman rhetorician; the force of his speech and gesture was scarcely inferior to André or Danton. Guadet was also sharp-tongued, merely somewhat more biting; Gensonné was cautious in deed and speech and left no trace; Grangeneuve was quick to improvise; there was also the rough-mannered yet kind-hearted Guadet, the brilliant and cheerful Ducos, and Barbaroux, the playboy from Marseille—men with the talent to make black sound white and white sound black.

  Late at night, when Madame Roland’s light carriage drew to a stop in the apartment courtyard, the female visitor passed a letter out through the dark carriage window to the butler who had been waiting for a long time. She then ordered the coachman to turn back toward the Roland residence. The butler hurried upstairs to the second floor and delivered Madame Roland’s handwritten letter to Deputy Brissot.

  At that moment, everyone in the large room paused their work at once. The eager eyes of more than ten young men fixed on Brissot alone, for every person present knew that letter was André’s political reply.

  Those deputies from Bordeaux understood the immense power André held. If their mentor Brissot broke with him, it would force Vergniaud and the others into a painful choice: either distance themselves from Brissot and his friends from this moment on, or let their family businesses suffer enormous and irreparable losses.

  In the Gironde, the Bordeaux wine consortium under André’s indirect control, together with the Bordeaux customs house that had thrown in with André, could make an opponent’s wine bear an additional 200% levy. And the French privateer fleet that André directed in secret could strangle the opposing faction’s ocean trade in both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

  Fortunately, after Brissot finished reading the letter, the anxiety in his eyes vanished at once, replaced by joy. He swung his arms forcefully, waved the letter in his hand, and cried out, “Friends, André has agreed to ally with us again. Then the Legislative Assembly will be our common stage!”

  Happy laughter rose immediately in the second-floor hall. People embraced one another, as if they had won a great victory. Brissot’s heart, however, was bitter. He knew his strength was far beneath André’s. The mere existence of the Bordeaux wine consortium—together with the colossal United Industries Company—was enough to intimidate every domestic merchant into obeying André’s rules. Moreover, André commanded a fully equipped Champagne Composite Brigade, an ocean-ranging privateer fleet, and hidden influence within nearly half the manpower of the Paris police; with such armed backing, André had the power to strike back at any person or organization he wished.

  His only consolation was that André seemed not to care much about controlling Paris. He would rather retreat and rule like a king in the provinces. He had even, at the request of the Constitutionalists’ chief of police, voluntarily reduced his influence over the Paris police, and pushed the meritorious Inspector Javert into a quieter second-line role—placing him in charge of an unremarkable national police academy.

  Moreover, André’s undisguised ambition toward the rich lands of Luxembourg and the Netherlands aligned well with Brissot’s prized foreign policy of “exporting the Revolution.” In that sense, there was still a basis for alliance. For the future, Brissot repeatedly warned himself that he had to bind his friends’ forces tightly together, striving to control Paris and the cabinet government, in order to restrain André’s vast power on every front.

  …

  On October 1, 1791, the 745 representatives of the people from France’s eighty-three departments gathered in the Assembly chamber at the Manège Hall, and the National Legislative Assembly formally opened.

  As in the Constituent Assembly, the seating of Left, Center, and Right was sharply defined. André first glanced to the right and greeted a cousin of one of the Lameth brothers; then, after exchanging a few words with the new Bishop of Lyon, Lamourette, and others seated in the center, André turned back toward the Left. As he walked, he spoke warmly with friends he knew, and only after more than ten minutes did he sit down, high on the Mountain on the Assembly’s left side, looking down over the whole.

  “He thinks he’s a king,” Carnot said scornfully of André’s theatrical manner, even though his own friends—including Robespierre—greatly admired André’s contributions to France.

  The disabled Couthon beside Carnot frowned and cautioned him. “No, my dear friend. André is one of our most important members in the Jacobin Club. Whether he wants to be a king, I do not know. But it is certainly he who led troops to bring the king back from the frontier to Paris, and prevented a civil war that would have spread across all France.”

  Couthon would have said more, but thunderous applause had already erupted in the chamber: the venerable Marquis de Condorcet had been recommended by the deputies as the Legislative Assembly’s first rotating president, for a term of fifteen days. Under the constitution, the rotating president’s term was ten to fifteen days, and he could not be re-elected consecutively.

  When President Condorcet stepped onto the platform, his first words declared his determination to uphold the new system and new laws established since 1789, including respect for the founders of French liberty.

  Before long, the right-side door of the chamber opened. The Assembly’s chief archivist, Camus, accompanied by twelve of the eldest former deputies of the Constituent Assembly (now out of office), solemnly presented the full text of the French Constitution of 1791 to the Legislative Assembly. At the rotating president’s command, the entire chamber rose and removed their hats, accepted the constitution, and, amid applause from the galleries, swore loudly in accordance with it: “No liberty, rather death!” The Legislative Assembly then passed a resolution thanking the deputies of the Constituent Assembly, and began the day’s formal work.

  In the selection of executive secretaries for the twelve working committees, the Constitutionalists, with superior numbers, took seven seats in one sweep, including the three most important committees—Military, Judicial, and Finance—while the Jacobins held four committees, including the Foreign Affairs Committee chaired by André and the Administrative Committee led by Brissot. By contrast, the largest bloc by headcount—the centrists of the Marsh—obtained only one committee, the Education Committee, widely seen as a mere consolation prize.

  In the afternoon, the Legislative Assembly adjourned temporarily. The executive secretaries of each committee began work separately, accepting or inviting deputies to join their working groups. The office of the Foreign Affairs Committee was in the rightmost room on the second floor; from its large terrace outside the windows, one could take in the full view of the great Tuileries garden.

  Like the other working groups, the center of the office held three long tables, each five meters in length, arranged in a squared U-shape. One side near the wall, opposite the fireplace, had been left open, so that when hearings were held, other deputies and relevant persons could attend, observe, and testify. Each table was covered with a somewhat worn blue velvet cloth, and around it stood twelve old-fashioned armchairs, likely used back in the Estates-General. Whether one was the executive secretary who actually ran the committee, or an ordinary committee member, there was no assigned seat; the committee followed a very casual, democratic practice.

  In accordance with prior preparations, André placed six deputies from the Marne, the Ardennes, and the Gironde into the Foreign Affairs Committee, selecting the other five from the Left and the Center. Together with André, they formed a twelve-man Foreign Affairs Committee. It included Thuriot and Lindet, as well as Louvet (thirty-two years old, editor-in-chief of ), who was close to Brissot, and Brion and Isnard (forty-five years old, a merchant). Under Carnot’s influence, however, Couthon—who had originally intended to join—politely declined André’s invitation to work.