Danton swore that the two-hour dinner he and Fabre had endured at the Minister of the Interior’s residence was the most miserable, most unbearable experience of his life. The courses were reasonably varied, but the portions were so small that they hardly counted as food. On top of that, the hostess explained that it was some damned religious feast day, and the table offered only a single glass of champagne. That, at least, could have been tolerated—after all, the Paris prosecutor and his assistant had not come to the ministerial townhouse merely to eat and drink at someone else’s expense.

  What truly soured the evening was Minister Roland himself: puritanical, rigid, stubborn, and seemingly incapable of recognizing humor. During dinner, Danton told one mildly bawdy joke—nothing more—and then had to endure the cabinet minister’s “puffy dead goldfish eyes” (as Danton put it) boring into him with vicious contempt for nearly two hours.

  As for the hostess, Danton loathed her even more. Throughout the meal, Madame Roland’s gaze kept returning, again and again, to the scar on the Paris prosecutor’s face—now faded into a pale line—and she would occasionally smile. But Danton could tell perfectly well that this was not flirtation. It was a smile of disdain.

  Vergniaud, Gensonné, and Barbaroux were also present, along with other deputies. They railed without pause at the mobs gathering in the streets, arguing that the lawless assaults of the sans-culottes were driving Parisian security from bad to worse. For that, they insisted, the Cordeliers Club—and its agitators Marat, Desmoulins, and Hébert—bore the principal responsibility.

  Danton’s temper flared hot enough to scorch. If Fabre had not quietly restrained him, the Titan might have exploded on the spot. Though the Paris prosecutor and many of his supporters—Fabre, Desmoulins, Fréron, Séchelles, and the rest—had greatly reduced their appearances at the Cordeliers, Danton remained, without exception, the greatest leader that popular club had ever known. He would not permit anyone to smear it, even if, at times, the tolerant Danton found Marat’s unbridled incitement deeply irritating.

  In the carriage back to the Commercial Courtyard—Danton’s residence—he vented freely in front of Fabre. He described the cabinet minister as “a pitiful old impotent,” Madame Roland as “a posturing political whore,” and the other guests as “a pack of sanctimonious echoers.”

  “And André?” Fabre cut in suddenly.

  Danton froze for a moment, then waved a hand and laughed. “So you’ve been seduced by Lucile, too?”

  With a licentious grin, Fabre replied, “About two weeks ago, she went looking for you and didn’t find you—then she happened to run into me.”

  “You bastard. Lucile is still carrying that belly.” Danton yanked off his wig in annoyance. “Poor Camille. He probably doesn’t even know whose seed his wife is carrying.”

  Then Danton’s face hardened. He spoke to his assistant with deliberate seriousness. “Don’t let Lucile and Camille get into your head and push you into slandering Brissot and André—openly or in whispers. And you will tell Camille for me: the quarrel between the Old Cordelier and the Brissot faction, and its war with Le Figaro, must end.”

  Fabre found it strange. “Didn’t Desmoulins say the tens of thousands of men in the Army of the North are still sitting idle on the border, wasting more than 100,000 livres in pay every week? In the Old Cordelier, he’s been calling loudly for the replacement—or expansion—of the Legislative Assembly’s plenipotentiaries, and for the punishment of Brissot and the others who pushed for foreign war. And today, this afternoon, Desmoulins even denounced André at the Jacobin general meeting, accusing him of using his authority as plenipotentiary to impose a military dictatorship over the Army of the North.”

  Danton did not answer directly. He closed his eyes and said, “I know all of that. Remember this: never underestimate André. I have a very strong feeling that that Champagne countryman has already arranged everything, and he is simply waiting for his opponents to jump into the pit. Fabre—tomorrow you will have the Old Cordelier sealed. No—now. Immediately. This minute. Seal the press.”

  “That will drive Desmoulins mad, and Marat and Hébert will leap up to condemn you,” the prosecutor’s assistant exclaimed in shock. Desmoulins had long been Danton’s intimate friend and supporter, and the Old Cordelier was not only Marat’s propaganda ground—it was, in effect, also the political mouthpiece of Danton’s faction.

  “You don’t understand,” Danton replied coolly. “I’m saving them.”

  He then ordered his assistant out of the carriage and sent him to execute, at once, the Paris prosecutor’s order to seize and seal the Old Cordelier.

  It had to be admitted: Danton’s political nose was remarkably sharp. On the very night the Old Cordelier was suddenly shut down, Major Suchet arrived in Paris with the first dispatch of victory from the Army of the North…

  The next morning, long-missed laughter rang again beneath the vaulted air of the assembly hall. Major Suchet, a witness from the battlefield, stepped onto the rostrum for the first time and, before seven hundred deputies and more than a thousand Parisians and invited guests, recounted the entire course of the Second Battle of Tournai with palpable feeling.

  “…When the Austrians drove 2,000 horses straight at us, I saw not a single soldier panic, not a single man shouting useless orders. Every one of them was a true fighter. In silence, they gripped their muskets, and with bayonets and flesh they advanced to meet the savage cavalry—because they knew that behind them stood their comrades, the elders of their villages, and all those whom we love in our French fatherland!

  …In this action, the central army under General Moncey wiped away the former shame of the Army of the North. Though we paid a grievous price, we destroyed two Austrian cavalry regiments—killing 800, taking 1,200 prisoners, and capturing the standard of a heavy cavalry regiment.”

  At that, Major Suchet suddenly raised the standard of the Austrian Royal Guards cavalry. The hall erupted. There was no doubt: a cavalryman was worth far more than an infantryman—let alone the most elite Austrian Guards heavy cavalry. Almost everyone rose to their feet. Applause thundered, and then arms went up as voices shouted:

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “Long live the soldiers!”

  “Long live General Moncey!”

  “Long live the Army of the North!”

  The roar lasted more than ten minutes, until the presiding deputy’s bell was shaken nearly to pieces and the jubilant choruses finally subsided. After Major Suchet stepped down from the rostrum, the Legislative Assembly swiftly passed two proposals introduced by the presiding deputy Gensonné (in truth, steps that had already been choreographed by the Brissot faction):

  First, everyone would rise and bow their heads in three minutes of silence, offering the highest respect and deepest remembrance to the more than 2,000 brave Frenchmen who had died for the nation in the Second Battle of Tournai.

  Next, the Legislative Assembly unanimously resolved that five days later—on June 20—a grand parade and public gathering would be held on the Champ de Mars, together with 600,000 Parisians, to celebrate this great victory won by the French army.

  And then came the time to settle accounts with the opposition.

  Brissot could barely contain himself. Though his cold had not yet cleared, he leapt up and, in a hoarse voice, angrily denounced the enemies lurking within Paris.

  “…There is always a small handful of men—deeply treacherous, profoundly wicked—who hide in the shadows to slander our armies, our soldiers, and our plenipotentiaries! They hope France will fail again and again, to satisfy their diseased and hopelessly vile desires. Who are they?… Yes. They are the writers and supporters of the Old Cordelier.”

  Two hours later, when a fully armed detachment of the National Guard arrived at the Old Cordelier offices, they found that the paper had already been smashed and sealed by order of the Paris prosecutor the previous night. Its principal writers—Desmoulins, Marat, Hébert, and others—had been expelled from Paris by Prosecutor Danton and exiled to the provinces. Those men, Danton’s close friends and comrades, were thus spared the fate of prison.

  It must be clarified: vindictiveness had never been the defining trait of Brissot and his little circle. Like the Constitutionalists, Brissot usually advocated leniency toward political enemies and scarcely interfered with freedom of the press. But this time, Desmoulins and Marat had gone too far. Day after day, the Old Cordelier published vulgar articles and crude, obscene cartoons, viciously attacking the Brissot faction’s “war of European liberation,” mocking French soldiers who had fallen in battle, and ridiculing every patriotic man who supported the war.

  Danton understood the deeper cause: Robespierre was encouraging Desmoulins and Marat from behind the curtain. If André’s dispatch of victory from the Army of the North had not arrived in time, Brissot’s war ministry might have collapsed. Danton did not especially like Brissot—but he loathed Robespierre for pushing Desmoulins to strike against his own former “father.” “Father” had been Desmoulins’s most affectionate name for Brissot in 1790, when the older man had offered him family-like help at the hardest beginning of his journalistic life.

  What Danton did not know was that even with the glory of the Second Battle of Tournai, and the stream of further victories that followed, Brissot’s friends’ ministry would still face inevitable reproach from the Tuileries.

  As early as the beginning of June, the royal court’s non-cooperation with the cabinet became increasingly public. Under the urging of Queen Marie, Louis XVI vetoed, in succession, the War Minister Servan’s request to summon 20,000 fédérés from the provinces to Paris, as well as the Legislative Assembly’s decree—advanced by the Brissot faction—to expel the non-juring clergy.

  In mid-June, Madame Roland, in the name of her husband, the Minister of the Interior, sent an open letter to the Tuileries. In it, he—or she—accused Louis XVI of moving too slowly in approving measures supported by a majority of deputies, warning that the king’s conduct would unsettle every part of France.

  The Minister of the Interior, or his wife, issued a stern warning to Louis XVI: “If this delay continues, the people will believe their king has become the friend and accomplice of conspirators.”

  At the Tuileries, Queen Marie—harder in will than the weak Louis XVI—delivered the final reply: Roland and his friends were dismissed from office.

  In retaliation, War Minister Servan, Interior Minister Roland, and Finance Minister Clavière, on the day before the king signed the dismissal decree, jointly issued their last cabinet order: they raised the Army of the North’s pay allocation to 50% of the total expenditure of the three main armies, and transferred at once 20,000,000 livres in assignats to the Lille headquarters (with an actual value of only 14,000,000 livres).

  On June 18, the cabinet of Constitutionalists carefully selected by Queen Marie was formed, and among its members was General Lameth, commander of the Army of the North, elevated to War Minister. After discussions with André, Lameth decided to accept the appointment from the Tuileries. Though there had been a rule that former deputies of the National Assembly could not serve as ministers of the king, the interpretive clauses of the French Constitution of 1791 did not explicitly confirm such a prohibition.

  Before departing, Lameth, at André’s request, ordered General Berthier, the chief of staff, to succeed him as acting commander of the Army of the North. Two days later, André likewise ordered all columns of the Army of the North to halt their offensives and hold in place along the Nivelles—Waremme—Torhout—Nieuwpoort (Atlantic) line.

  That same night, Cazalès—the former leader of the right wing in the Constituent Assembly, a resolute royalist, and a former captain of the Royal cavalry—slipped into the grand camp of the Army of the North in disguise, seeking a meeting with André.

  At their first encounter, André embraced the “old friend” with open warmth.

  “My friend, you are bold,” André said with a smile. “You declare yourself an envoy from Paris—aren’t you afraid I’ll have you seized and executed for treason?”

  Cazalès shook his head and replied with solemn composure, “Of course not. If you had truly wanted that, your gendarmes would have caught me at the border a year ago. This time, I also represent Father Maury—and some other well-intentioned men whose true names I cannot yet speak.”

  André handed him a glass of red wine and waited patiently for him to continue. In truth, given the intelligence gathered by the Military Intelligence Office, and André’s own knowledge of events, he already understood the general outline of his visitor’s purpose.

  After fleeing France, Cazalès and Father Maury had gone to Koblenz, the main gathering place of the émigré nobility. There they sought an audience with the effective commander of the émigré forces—Louis XVI’s brother, the Comte d’Artois. The meeting turned sour from the start. Cazalès urged the king’s brother and the émigrés not to assist the Prusso-Austrian Coalition in attacking the French fatherland, and he was refused with harsh words. Not long afterward, that small group of patriotic royalist nobles suffered cold neglect and open obstruction in Koblenz.

  “…So we all hope to join the French army fighting the invaders,” Cazalès said. But reality was brutal: neither the Army of the Rhine under Marshal Luckner, nor the Army of Moselle under General Lafayette, dared to accept men who had once defected. In the end, Cazalès decided to try his fortune with André’s Army of the North.

  André shook his head and laughed. “My friend, you’ve come to the wrong place. As far as the Austrian Netherlands is concerned, the Army of the North is the true invader.”

  Seeing Cazalès’s crushing disappointment, André’s tone shifted.

  “Go to Rotterdam,” he said. “I believe the United Provinces will need a great number of émigré noble officers to help them resist the military danger of the Army of the North.”

  Without letting the man interrupt, André went on, “Yes—the Army of the North will continue its march forward, toward the Baltic… The two packets on this table contain a total of 1,000,000 livres in assignats. It will be enough for you and your companions to settle your households. Once you reach the United Provinces, someone will come to you on their own.”