One split within the Jacobins took place in July 1791, after the massacre at the Champ de Mars: Lafayette and Barnave, and others who advocated a constitutional monarchy, withdrew from the Jacobin Club and chose to establish the Feuillants across the street, in another abandoned monastery.

  As for the second split, it began in December 1791…

  With André’s departure, Paris once again returned to its historical “normal.” Led by Robespierre, the anti-war faction—despite its weakness in numbers—launched wave after wave of press and platform offensives against the “European war of liberation” preached by Brissot and his circle. And the very point from which this war would be ignited lay in the Jacobin Club’s Paris headquarters.

  In the week before Christmas, Robespierre resolved to imitate André and play the role of a “prophet” once. Standing at the club’s rostrum, facing more than 1,000 Jacobin members, he painted—at length and with emotion—a shocking tableau of disaster after war began:

  “Ah! I see a great crowd dancing upon the grass, playing with their weapons, cheering without end, singing praises to the greatness of war. And then—suddenly—the ground beneath their feet gives way. Flowers, people, weapons, all vanish at once; before my eyes there remains only a vast fissure in the earth, and innumerable sufferers have already fallen into that abyss. Ah—fly, fly! While there is still time, do not wait until that flower-covered land collapses without warning.”

  Confronted with Robespierre’s prejudice against him, Brissot was patient at first, explaining: if liberty was to be freed from the crimes of despotism and then secured, a foreign war was necessary. Brissot argued:

  “If we are to strike down the aristocrats, the refractory priests, and the discontented in one blow, we must strike down Coblenz within the German lands. Only then will the highest ruler of the state be constrained by the Constitution; outside attachment to the Constitution, he will have no safety, and his actions likewise must follow the Constitution.”

  Brissot further appealed to national glory and to interest. He said to Robespierre, “Must we even hesitate to attack them—the princes of the Empire? For our glory, for our credit, for the consolidation of the Revolution and its deep rooting in men’s hearts—everything compels us to do it.”

  Robespierre, meeting Brissot’s restraint, continued in a sharp tone, attacking Brissot’s theory of war. War, he said, was welcomed only by émigrés abroad, and welcomed only by the court and the constitutional-aristocratic faction.

  When Brissot told L’Incorruptible that “fear must be cast aside,” Robespierre retorted: “You would defend liberty without fear, without striking liberty’s enemies, without opposing the court, the ministers, and the moderates. How easy—how convenient—you make the path of patriotism appear!”

  Brissot also said that the root of the danger lay in Coblenz. Robespierre threw the question back at him: “Then is the root not in Paris? Between Coblenz and places not far from us, is there no collusion?”

  Robespierre believed that before overthrowing that group of aristocrats abroad, France must first suppress the aristocrats at home; before preaching revolution to foreign lands, France must first consolidate the Revolution within France itself. He mocked the fantasy of propaganda. He did not believe foreign peoples were already mature enough to accept France’s call and rise against their tyrants.

  For Robespierre was convinced: “Nowhere does anyone welcome armed missionaries.”

  At the same time, he pointed out the army’s lack of officers—or else its reliance on aristocratic officers; the incompleteness of the ranks; the National Guard’s lack of weapons and equipment; and the fortresses’ shortage of munitions. He predicted that if war ended in victory, liberty might fall under the control of an ambitious General. He even foresaw a Roman Caesar crossing the Rubicon.

  In the present situation, Robespierre hinted that General Lafayette—lying low in rural retirement—was the most likely to become France’s Caesar. Yet in the depths of his heart, he also placed André among the principal candidates for Caesar. For political reasons, however, Robespierre did not yet dare to speak that thought openly, lest it provoke a fierce backlash from André.

  “Who would play Caesar? Who?” Brissot cried in reply. “If he and his army dare to cross the Rubicon, then I shall be Brutus!” Brutus was the Roman senator who assassinated the dictator Caesar.

  At this point, seeing that his forbearance won him no respect from Robespierre, Brissot decided to strike back publicly. At the opening of the new year of 1792, Brissot and his supporters launched a vote inside the Jacobin Club on whether to support a foreign war; 1,100 members participated.

  The result was plain. Fired by patriotic passion, the Jacobins stood with Brissot’s faction: apart from fifty-two who remained neutral, 980 chose war. Those who supported Robespierre were fewer than 100. Over in the Legislative Assembly, Brissot’s faction also won a sweeping victory; deputies’ support for war exceeded 90%.

  From late November onward, on the tribune of the Legislative Assembly, at the Jacobin Club’s rostrum, and across the newspapers, Robespierre and Brissot fought an intense debate for three months. Their mutual friends tried to mediate, but no one could change either man’s position on the question of launching war.

  It was precisely this polemic that split Brissot and Robespierre from each other for good—and split the Jacobins with them. After the vote, Robespierre lost control of the club’s Correspondence Committee; for the first time, L’Incorruptible felt himself pushed outside the sphere of power by former comrades-in-arms.

  So Robespierre needed allies of like mind. His circle gathered every anti-war figure: Couthon, Carnot, Desmoulins, Billaud-Varenne, Tourneur, and Thuriot.

  Because of André’s quiet pressure behind the scenes, Pétion and Danton remained ambiguous for a time. They began by echoing Robespierre’s anti-war rhetoric; then they saw that most members of the Jacobin Club—and of its local branches—supported war. Very quickly, the two leaders of the Paris City Hall fell to Brissot’s side. It was said Brissot had promised them that, in the future cabinet, there would be seats for both of them.

  Yet Robespierre, though in the minority, gained an unexpected prize: Marat and his followers turned against war and supported Robespierre. Two years earlier, Marat had mocked Robespierre in print as an affected man who loved wigs and intensely despised the little revolutionary red cap, and who merely used the people. But such old quarrels no longer mattered. What interested Robespierre most was this: after Danton became the Prosecutor of Paris and took up his post inside the City Hall, Marat, Hébert, Chaumette, and others had in practice taken control of the Cordeliers Club.

  …

  Back in the Marne, André followed the great debate between Brissot and Robespierre closely. In truth, this was exactly the effect he had encouraged in secret.

  After the diplomatic scandal and the arrest of the administrator of Aisne, André—having successfully seized state power—astonishingly abandoned most of it at the very peak of his ascent. By leaving Paris briefly, he not only set an example for every ambitious man, but also deliberately left behind vacuums of authority.

  Plainly, in the first phase of 1792, Brissot defeated the outnumbered Robespierre with ease—an overwhelming victory, one might say. Yet Robespierre did not throw down his arms and surrender; rather, he fought on after each defeat, and grew fiercer with each struggle. After Marat’s faction joined his camp, L’Incorruptible gradually won the support of the Parisian sans-culottes.

  After reading a private letter from Prosecutor Danton, André actually sprang up from the sofa and cursed with loud laughter: “That damn Brissot—so excited he’s lost his head and started making promises at random!”

  To pull Danton into support for foreign war, Brissot had claimed that Louis XVI planned, sometime between March and April of this year, to authorize Brissot to organize a new cabinet, and promised the Prosecutor of Paris the exalted post of either Minister of the Interior or Minister of Justice. As for Mayor Pétion, because he had previously served as a deputy in the Constituent Assembly, the French Constitution of 1791 barred him from cabinet office for four years. And Pétion did not care for a ministerial post in any case; in truth, he was happy to continue holding the mayoralty over 600,000 inhabitants.

  Under the existing system, for Danton—once seen as one of the leading heads of the Paris riots—to enter the cabinet suited no one and no faction. The Tuileries despised the Champagne farmer’s son as coarse; the Feuillants (monarchist Constitutionalists) hated the imperiousness of the former sans-culottes club president; and Brissot’s friends feared Danton would become a second André, selling his political will straight into the centre of administration.

  André could easily imagine Danton’s fury and humiliation once he unexpectedly failed to obtain a ministerial post. In rage, the Titan would certainly break with Brissot’s faction—and, driven by the desire for revenge, reach out at last to the minority represented by Robespierre, whom he had previously neglected.

  And indeed. After Danton lost any hope of a cabinet seat, he rose in the Jacobin Club for the first time and defended his new ally Robespierre without ambiguity. From the rostrum, Danton unleashed the full power of his voice, exposing Brissot and others for their “base jealousy and the most harmful lusts.”

  Imitating André and Robespierre, Danton too began to prophesy boldly. He declared: “For more than three months, certain men have attacked without restraint that virtuous man whom the revolutionary masses of Paris revere—and the day when lightning will strike them is not far off, indeed it is close at hand.”

  One must admit: this was precisely the outcome André had hoped for.

  In Paris at present, because the Tuileries—those swine of allies—stabbed their own camp in the back, Lafayette and Barnave became disheartened and withdrew, as if by common impulse, into rural retirement; meanwhile, the listless Lameth brothers could not shoulder the leadership of that faction, leaving the Constitutionalists in a long state of headlessness. Facing the Jacobins’ aggressive momentum, they panicked and scattered like loose sand.

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  And because André had yielded ground in Paris of his own accord, Brissot’s faction continued to swell. The three-month polemic with Robespierre pushed the Jacobin Club and most of its local branches to Brissot’s side; the Legislative Assembly did the same. Intelligence from the Military Intelligence Office confirmed that Louis XVI would likely, within two months, replace the anti-war Constitutionalist ministers and authorize Brissot’s faction to form a cabinet with its supporters.

  In such a situation, Brissot and his friends would gain control of both cabinet and Assembly—yet this was not what André wished to see. Though he, who valued military power above all, did not care for the endless change of banners in Paris politics, André, as a mature politician, still favoured a policy of balance among Parisian factions; he would never allow a single party or clique to grow so large as to become a dictatorship and distort the polity.

  So even if Danton had not turned toward Robespierre, André would have compelled his Champagne compatriot to change his position again. Such was politics: deception, alliances and bargains—and then betrayal in the dark.

  André also instructed Legendre, who leaned toward him, to attach himself to Marat and strengthen Robespierre’s alliance; indeed, when Javert warned André that Marat’s faction was infiltrating the Paris police, André instead ordered Javert to maintain strict neutrality—and quietly selected a group of trusted men to declare openly for Marat’s camp.

  On another front, using certain connections Father Maury had left behind before departing France, André directed the Military Intelligence Office to establish contact with the non-juring priests in the Vendée and in Brittany.

  The Northern fifteen-department Grain Work Conference convened by André in Chalons-en-Champagne, in the name of the Legislative Assembly’s Interior Affairs Committee, had already begun on December thirteenth. At this time André, still detained in Paris and unable to split himself in two, had no choice but to appoint his colleague Deputy Lindet as Paris’s representative, and to have him co-chair the conference with Basile, the administrator of the Marne—this grain-yield conference whose central theme was “the large-scale promotion of the potato.”

  In early December, when André transferred from the Diplomatic Committee to the Interior Affairs Committee, he brought only Lindet—thirty-five years old—to his side; even his teacher Thuriot remained in the Diplomatic Committee. Lindet’s journey to Chalons-en-Champagne was therefore naturally in the capacity of André’s confidant: to represent André’s position and act in accordance with André’s will.

  The venue lay in a meeting room within the Marne’s administrative hall. About fifty men gathered: departmental administrators and agricultural (technical) officials from the northern fifteen departments. Compared with the electors’ hall that could hold 1,000 people (where meetings were held mostly standing), this room was not large. Yet every attendee noticed that in front of him stood a rare arrangement: a desk and a chair, and on the desktop a hinged notebook, a bottle of ink, and a reservoir fountain pen. This showed that Deputy André did not intend to treat the fifteen departments’ officials poorly; for even when deputies met, they had seats but no desks to write on—except the presiding chair and the secretaries below.

  It was said that the reservoir fountain pen was a new writing instrument André had invented half a year ago, later realized in practice by skilled craftsmen of the United Investment Company. Unlike the quill pen that required constant dipping, this pen was convenient and quick: the writer needed only press lightly on the piston at the back, and the ink would feed itself into the nib. After writing some 200 to 300 words, one pressed again, and the ink supply would continue without interruption.

  Because problems of materials and workmanship had not yet been solved, the pen’s output remained low: only 200 or 300 were placed on the domestic market each month, and every batch was snapped up at once. At present, a single reservoir pen sold in Paris for as much as 200 livres, and one had to wait more than three months for delivery. However, because the United Investment Company had long maintained certain special commercial interests with Britain, André agreed to grant Deputy Fox a licence at a merely symbolic patent price, and to form with him a joint-venture pen factory in London. (As a note: the modern fountain pen was originally first invented by the British in 1809.)

  In France, the domestic patent licence had not yet been implemented. Several quick-witted administrators intended to visit Monsieur Say, the general manager of the United Investment Company, in hopes of obtaining licensing rights. Yet after ten minutes, no one thought about that any longer.

  After a brief opening, Deputy Lindet, as André’s representative, announced the rules of the conference:

  “All persons—administrators and agricultural technical experts alike—after the two daily training sessions, must, at 10 p.m., sit a closed-book assessment of thirty minutes. The content of the assessment will be today’s lectures and notes, and further material derived from your own department’s situation. Note well: by the regulations of the Interior Affairs Committee and its Executive Secretary, André, anyone who fails twice in succession will receive a warning; anyone who fails three times, or receives two warnings, will see the Interior Affairs Committee—on behalf of the Legislative Assembly—submit an impeachment motion to his departmental commune.”

  Before Lindet’s words even fell, an uproar broke out below. Yet when he asked whether anyone objected, no one dared to utter a sound; collectively, they accepted the established reality of that “Lucifer”—the great demon. Only weeks earlier, André had sent the administrator of Aisne to prison on the charge of violating the Constitution. Despite Louis XVI’s pleas, the final outcome of the trial was still exile to the new Orléans in North America (a French colony). Now, that Executive Secretary of vast power in the Interior Affairs Committee would hardly mind impeaching one or two more provincial officials, simply to confirm his supreme majesty again.

  On the first day, it was Basile, the host administrator, who spoke at length about the Marne’s experience and achievements in potato cultivation. The lecture was overlong and packed with figures, but no one in the audience dared to be careless. The attendees listened while taking notes in their hinged notebooks, preparing for the first evening’s assessment.

  “…At present, the Marne’s total area is a little over 7,000 square kilometres. Arable land accounts for 25.5%—that is, 2,000 square kilometres, equivalent to 200,000 hectares (100 hectares equal 1 square kilometre). Yet land actually used for wheat, maize, and other grain crops is less than one third. For a long time, our grain has been unable to feed more than 300,000 inhabitants; more than half must be brought in from the southern Massif Central.

  “In last November, thanks to the long research of a botanist at the Academy of Sciences in Paris, the Reims City Hall finally selected the Prussian potato variety cultivated by Academician Fourcroy at the botanical garden of the Bois de Vincennes as superior seed stock. That month, across 3,000 hectares in the Reims region, we began trial cultivation of this high-yield Prussian potato.

  “In March 1791, when Reims farmers harvested this potato, the average yield per hectare reached as high as 16,000 kilograms; the record high was 25,000 kilograms per hectare. I remember everyone being dumbfounded, because even a high-yield wheat field produces no more than 400 kilograms per hectare.

  “This year, the whole Marne has vigorously promoted potatoes. The cultivated area has expanded to 32,000 hectares, and the 550,000 tons of potatoes harvested in September in the second half of the year (the summer crop in a two-season system) can fully meet the rations of 350,000 inhabitants of the Marne for more than half a year; there are even 50,000 tons left over to be sold to Paris…

  “Academician Fourcroy and we are of one view: the potato’s complete nutrition, ease of cultivation, high yield, and ease of storage are such excellent qualities that this unremarkable little thing can rise to become the staple of the northern people. Put simply:

  “First, the potato is nutritionally complete and has the inherent conditions to serve as a staple; it also accords with the consumption needs of the northern people at present. Compared with the two great staples—wheat and maize—the potato’s taste is not inferior. Chefs in Reims have already created many preparations: mashed potato, potato macaroni, potato flour, and fried potato slices.

  “Second, potato flour stores for longer. By existing Prussian experience, this flour can be stored at room temperature for more than ten years. After the Seven Years’ War, the Prussian kingdom has already listed potato flour as a strategic reserve. Likewise in northern France, turning potatoes into a staple can provide a new guarantee for national grain security.

  “Third, potato yield is extremely high, averaging 1.5 tons per hectare. If chemical fertiliser is properly applied and field management strengthened, pushing average yield per hectare beyond 20,000 kilograms is only a matter of time.

  “Moreover, the potato’s adaptability is extremely broad. Against other crops, it is drought-resistant, cold-resistant, tolerant of poor soils; its cultivation zone is wide, which helps relieve pressure on resources and the environment. Every unused plot across the northern fifteen departments can be planted. Beyond serving as a staple, the potato is also an important crop that combines grain, vegetable, and feed uses, and also serves as an industrial raw material…”

  Before the day ended, Basile told those present that, over the next three days, agricultural officials of the Marne would continue to lead specialised seminars, covering seed selection and breeding, field management, and storage methods. The fifth day—the final day—would be a field inspection of winter potato cultivation.

  After seeing off the officials from the fifteen departments, Basile, feeling somewhat tired, took out a packet of cigarettes. As he searched for matches, Deputy Lindet held out the lit end of his own cigarette.

  Basile casually thanked him; when his own cigarette caught, he handed it back. After a deep draw, Basile watched the curling smoke drift from his mouth and felt supremely refreshed, as if all his pressure and troubles dissolved and rose with the thin smoke into the heavens.

  “Do you think such assessments will be effective?” Lindet asked, watching the Marne’s administrator in his reverie.

  Basile kept his eyes closed, as if recalling earlier days. “Without doubt. In fact, this is exactly how my colleagues and I made our way through. Around this time last year, almost every Reims official opposed making the never-before-grown potato ‘monster’ into a staple for the people. Yet André still overruled everyone in the Assembly, declaring: whoever does not carry out the order, get out at once; whoever obstructs the order, spend the night in prison.”

  Lindet said nothing more. The outcome was evident: the officials of Reims collectively submitted to the dictator—and afterward André’s correctness was verified beyond all comparison.

  In truth, for Lindet the lawyer—long resident in Paris—André’s famous name had been known for a long time. In 1790, his sweeping victory in the Babeuf case marked the beginning of André’s meteoric ascent. Soon thereafter he took up the post everyone feared and avoided: the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court, and began to amass wealth for the state—and even more for himself. In Bordeaux, André not only became rich with astonishing speed; he also succeeded in building a force loyal to himself.

  By last year in Reims, André had already evolved into the de facto dictator of the region. Thereafter, by means of the emergency authority the Assembly granted during the King’s flight, he openly and covertly practised factional attack, purged opponents on a vast scale, and expanded the scope of dictatorial rule across the entire Marne and the Ardennes.

  Now, as a deputy in the Legislative Assembly, André enlarged his power still further: almost by himself he could counter the cabinet government. Deputies both loved and hated him—loved him because he raised the standing of the Legislative Assembly and displayed the authority of the state’s supreme power and its legislature; hated him because—Lindet believed—what they felt was more envy and jealousy. They thought they were no worse than André, and that, given the chance, they too could achieve the same success.

  In Lindet’s eyes, André possessed every trait of the upper world: decisive character, far-sighted judgment, diligence in work, a sharp gaze, composure and breadth. He dared to act, had confidence in achievement, and did not care at all for others’ criticism. Moreover, he seemed bold and open, affable, capable, resourceful, daring, skilled at managing disorder, able to adapt and wait for the right moment—changing the role he played as the situation changed.

  If André had faults, then from Lindet’s standpoint they lay here: his conduct lacked strictness, rumours spread everywhere; he was said to have four or five illegitimate children, yet never intended to marry. And his republican convictions seemed not entirely firm. Apart from his uncompromising opposition to the Tuileries, André did not mind maintaining close dealings with the leaders of the constitutional-monarchist faction—the Lameth brothers and General Lafayette among them.