Far away in Paris, André had no idea that Lindet was, at that very moment, quietly grumbling about him in his heart. Well—even if André had known, it would not have mattered. In France, the people most enjoyed a gallant political figure wrapped in gossip and scandal; one had to appear tolerant and understanding toward the public. By contrast, malice overflowed toward the “incorruptible” Robespierre, the handsome yet icy Saint-Just, and the rigid, emotionally single-minded Fouché.

  André reached Chalons-en-Champagne on the afternoon of December eighteenth. Along the way, he spent one night at the Reims barracks, discussing certain military preparations with Berthier and others, and he signed a provisional mobilization order to the officers’ corps: the rotational training cycle for new recruits of the National Guards of the Marne and the Ardennes was to be accelerated, reduced from five months to three; all live-fire drills were to be cancelled in the recruit camps; and special emphasis was to be placed on training for bayonet-and-knife close combat…

  Under military regulations, Brigadier General André—having already resigned his post as commander of the Champagne Composite Brigade—had no authority, even with a General’s rank, to issue orders to the troops he had formerly commanded.

  Yet at the Bacourt camp—who cared about that?

  Even if André took off his uniform, the Champagne Composite Brigade still regarded him as its supreme commander. General Berthier, acting as interim brigade commander, thought the same. Whether the Bourbon court, the constitutional-aristocratic faction, or Brissot’s circle, all had tried to lure serving officers of the Champagne Composite Regiment; few succeeded. André not only bound the officers’ political and economic interests to his own, he also enforced a policy of summary execution for all deserters.

  Two officers who secretly betrayed the Champagne Composite Brigade—and betrayed their commander André—never even made it out of the camp gates before the gendarmerie, already watching them, arrested them. After interrogation and torture, a court-martial publicly executed them for colluding with hostile foreign forces and attempting to defect to another country. A third defector was luckier—he escaped the camp—only to be seized by gendarmes near the outskirts of Paris, marched back to the barracks, and shot after a public trial.

  As for the political forces that had covertly incited André’s officers to defect, André naturally did not let them go. Within a week, nine Constitutionalists who had directly planned and participated in the affair were assassinated in public near the Feuillants Club—shot with pistols or stabbed with daggers—by killers dispatched from the Military Intelligence Office. The Lameth brothers, who did not know the full story, learned the course of events from Duport, one of the plotters; they denounced Duport and the others for their recklessness, and, representing the Constitutionalists, opened talks with André at a villa on the ?le Saint-Louis. Before long, the two sides reached an understanding.

  In late November, Duport announced that, because of severe heart trouble, he would resign as president of the Paris Criminal Tribunal, depart at once for Geneva to recuperate, and withdraw from Paris politics thereafter. One year later, as Duport returned to Geneva from elsewhere, he died, unfortunately, of a sudden heart attack.

  Compared with the summary executions of military deserters, André was far more tolerant toward administrative officials who “went their separate way” from him. So long as they did not oppose André openly, most parted on good terms, without coercion. However, those who left were required to return the benefits they enjoyed locally; they were not permitted to take them away, nor to sell them privately.

  …

  On the day he arrived in Chalons-en-Champagne, André met Basile and Lindet at the provincial administrative hall, and learned how the officials were progressing.

  Lindet handed André a stack of grade sheets and reported, “Except for one elderly official—weak and chronically ill—everyone else can pass the evening assessment with ease. Of course, as you required, the test range is entirely within the day’s instruction; it is neither complex nor abstruse.”

  André flipped through them casually, and his eye caught a name that was strangely familiar: “Joseph Fouché? From Loire-Inférieure?”

  He tapped the roster and asked Basile, “How did a western official get placed among the northern fifteen?”

  Lindet took the question and explained, “Fouché and the others learned of it through the Jacobins’ Correspondence network. When I received the applications, I approved them, allowing each department to send one official to join the training, at his own expense.”

  André did not pursue it further. He handed the roster to Basile and gave him a look. Basile excused himself and left; only André and Lindet remained in the receiving room.

  “In Paris, many people have complained to me that this sort of training-and-assessment for officials is meaningless—costly, burdensome, and without practical value.”

  As he said this, André glanced at Lindet. Lindet’s face was expressionless, so André continued:

  “In truth, I am only imitating the eastern civil service system that Voltaire praised. And assessment is an essential component of such a system. In my view, the eastern competitive examination and the establishment of the ‘merit principle’ solve only part of the problem of quality: they guard the ‘entrance’ by which officials enter government. But that is still far from enough. To truly bring civil servants’ talents into play and guarantee the efficiency of government work depends, to a great extent, on establishing a rational assessment system—one that includes diversity in both method and content.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Lindet, displeased, retorted, “Under the Constitution, officials who hold office must be chosen by electors, not produced by an assessment devised by a superior. This is the continuation of the spirit of liberty of 1789.”

  André smiled. He was not angry. He took a document from his portfolio and handed it to Lindet. “This is a policy research project of the Académie fran?aise. It analyses the period from 1749 to 1788 and finds that French local officials’ economic decisions had an error rate as high as 28%. Don’t rush to judge—keep reading. Another set of figures, from 1789 to 1791, shows that for local officials elected into office, the average error rate of decisions rose to more than 51%—that is, they did two things and got one of them wrong, or ruined it. And yet the ignorant people still believed in their representatives.

  “In the southern department of Tarn, newly elected Protestant officials, under the pretext of protecting grain outflow, established thirty-eight tax barriers across 6,000 square kilometres of the department, forcing passing merchants to detour through other territories. Most of the revenue went into the officials’ own pockets; only a small part was used to buy wine for the sans-culottes—and that alone won them lavish praise from the people. Worst of all, those Protestant officials openly practised religious discrimination in the department, driving out Catholic believers on a large scale. Someone once wrote to me that Tarn’s current population is now fewer than 160,000—nearly half have fled to the Mediterranean departments and to the valleys of the Pyrenees.

  “And what are our ‘respected and lovable’ National Assembly doing?

  “They pretend not to see. They pretend not to hear.

  “Two denunciation motions I submitted against religious discrimination in the South were jointly voted down in the Assembly hall by the deputies of the southern departments. Those shameless men even claimed: the officials were merely performing the duties entrusted by their electors; neither the Paris cabinet nor the Legislative Assembly had any right to interfere.

  “What duties are those—religious persecution and racial slaughter?!”

  Here André stopped. He collected his anger, paused, and in a slower tone told Lindet, “You will return to Paris today. Reflect on our conversation and on the realities of the departments—then make your own judgment.”

  Then he waved Lindet out of the room without further discussion. Before long, Penduvas and Basile entered from the adjoining room. In fact, the head of the Military Intelligence Office had arrived ten minutes earlier.

  “Major, what is your view of these deputies?” André asked suddenly.

  Penduvas hesitated slightly, for André rarely discussed Legislative Assembly deputies with intelligence officers unless there was a clear task directive.

  “I think, just as you have said, they are a crowd of arrogant men, each of them imagining himself the one seven-hundred-and-forty-fifth share of France’s supreme dictator. As representatives of the people, they believe they need no overseer and no leader. Until they crack their heads against the wall, there will be no reflection at all.” The intelligence officer merely repeated André’s earlier argument.

  It was precisely the insolent obstinacy of the southern departments that led André, consciously, to yield ground in the Legislative Assembly and make a strategic contraction. While supporting Brissot’s foreign war, he also watched—indeed, even quietly fostered—the steady growth of Robespierre’s camp, and then urged it, at the right moment, to launch an armed expedition against the southern departments. When Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Nantes, and Toulon were turned into rivers of blood by the Jacobins who advocated centralisation and by Robespierre’s supporters, André would then step forward as the saviour, seize the chance to sweep away every obstacle that blocked national development. In short: he would take the role of the “good man” for himself—and throw the blame onto others.

  “And you—what is your view?” André turned to Basile.

  Basile, a top graduate of the University of Reims, replied, “They know only how to worship Rousseau’s Social Contract as a supreme scripture, forgetting Voltaire’s rational thought, and Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws. Once any person—or anything—is lifted onto a pedestal by the crowd, it becomes the beginning of a new round of ignorance and retreat.”

  “Excellent!” André applauded with genuine appreciation. Then he warned the two men, “One day—if that day ever comes—if André loses himself, remember that it will be your duty to wake him.”

  After this interlude, Penduvas waited until Basile left the room, and then began reporting on the private situation of the northern officials during their training. At André’s direction, the Military Intelligence Office had planted copper-tube listening devices in each room of the hotel where the officials lodged. Every night agents hid in the basement and recorded, in detail, every word and act of the visiting officials.

  “Just as you predicted: apart from Pas-de-Calais and Moselle, officials in the other border departments, fearing that war will bring invasion and a great famine, attach great importance to introducing potatoes. As for the inland departments, most are not very interested. However, the officials of Somme and Oise, because of local famine, urgently need high-yield potatoes that can serve as a staple.”

  Listening to Penduvas, André felt moderately satisfied. Of the northern fifteen—aside from Marne and Ardennes, already in his grasp—six of the remaining thirteen departments urgently needed potatoes as a staple. That was two more than he had expected. Yet when he considered execution capacity, André believed the figure would have to be discounted again. His influence could not openly cover the surrounding departments; he could only use “assisting grain cultivation” and “guarding against invasion” as pretexts to draw them in quietly.

  …

  On the final day of the Northern Fifteen-Department Grain Work Conference, Deputy André—late at last—appeared at the closing ceremony. After a speech that was routine, stale, and without flavour, he kept the administrators of Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin, Meuse, Nord, Somme, and Oise behind for rewards.

  Besides granting each department 5,000 kilograms of potato seed stock, André also promised to establish fertiliser factories—focused on nitrogen and phosphate—in those six departments, and welcomed the officials to subscribe shares. Moreover, other “quick-turn” products of the United Investment Company—fountain pens, malted milk, milk powder, and the like—would also be licensed for local production in those regions.