Before Prince Hohenlohe-Kirchberg could complete the concentration of the coalition forces to the north and east and begin the siege of Verdun, the coalition main body of forty thousand—already encircled by more than one hundred thousand French—had been attempting breakouts on both flanks and to the rear. Every attempt failed. Before long, with the support of his chief of staff, Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg, Duc de Brunswick finally changed his approach and decided to stake everything on a single throw: a frontal assault, advancing along the Champagne road toward the heavily fortified French positions on the heights of Yvron and Valmy.

  The first attack was at night. The Prussian Army tried to use darkness as cover for a surprise strike, but the vanguard assigned as the spearhead was extremely unlucky: at the foot of the hill, it stepped onto a warning mine laid by French engineers. The surprise became a forced attack within moments, and the French beat it back with ease. Duc de Brunswick saw that the attempt could not succeed and at once ordered the main assault force to halt. The losses were not heavy, but the coalition’s morale took a severe blow.

  The second attempt was a straightforward frontal assault. The coalition main body formed two columns. Under the cover of thick morning fog, they advanced slowly toward Yvron Hill, the Greater Valmy, and toward Valmy, the Lesser Valmy. By noon, when the coalition had completed its deployment, the fog in the valleys began to thin and drift away. The Prussians then massed the forty-four guns gathered from across the army under the unified command of General Tempelhoff, and opened a violent bombardment against the French batteries along the Valmy ridge at a range of 1,200 to 1,500 meters.

  At the outset, the Prussian guns seemed to suppress the French batteries; in twenty minutes they fired more than 1,000 rounds. Yet the coalition artillery’s effective range was limited. Although the gunners did everything they could—and even used double charges of powder, but only in bronze pieces, since iron guns would have burst—so as to lob solid shot out to a maximum range of 1,200 meters, the fire was scarcely accurate at all. Moreover, the soil on the two Valmy hills had been soaked by long rains and was saturated with moisture, so most incoming shot buried itself deep in the mud instead of ricocheting. French gunner casualties in this phase were no more than single digits.

  Once the midday sun drove the fog away, the battlefield became clear and bright. The French artillery, which had been holding back, suddenly launched a lethal counterstroke. Across several batteries, a total of 110 twelve-pound heavy André artillery fired in a single coordinated volley. Countless projectiles flew toward the Prussian gun line like a dark swarm, and the deafening detonations made the entire field tremble.

  In only one round of fire, the French destroyed nearly half of the coalition’s guns and crews. Those André cannon capable of hurling shrapnel shells at long range inflicted devastating losses, and even the artillery commander, General Tempelhoff, lost half an arm. Minutes later, after five consecutive rounds of massed volleys, there were almost no living men left on the coalition artillery position. More than forty guns were destroyed outright.

  With the coalition artillery annihilated, Duc de Brunswick—now fully aware that victory was impossible—once again ordered all engaged units to withdraw and return to the Moon Bay fortress complex. In this battle, Brunswick and his army lost more than guns and morale: they lost all initiative on the field. They could only watch as the French tightened, step by step, the fatal noose around the necks of the forty thousand coalition soldiers, while they themselves had no strength left to resist.

  ...

  At two o’clock in the afternoon, when Goethe and Princess Louise returned to the Moon Bay fortress, it was the sixth day of the coalition’s encirclement. There was no doubt that André had sent them back to persuade the coalition commander to surrender.

  “Oh, so that arrogant Commander-in-Chief André has sent you to bring me what—unconditional disarmament and surrender, to be shaken down by that Reims scoundrel?” Brunswick roared the moment he saw them, launching into a storm of abuse.

  The unfortunate Princess Louise was too frightened to speak. She claimed she needed to find her betrothed, the Crown Prince, gathered up her skirts, and fled the headquarters at a run, leaving only the Duc’s staff officers behind.

  At one side of the desk, Duc de Brunswick’s private secretary, Lombard, gave Goethe a slight nod—a quiet signal among staff, telling him not to speak yet and to let their master cool down.

  Goethe, however, sighed and spoke with blunt candor. “Your Grace, I have accepted a commission from the French Commander-in-Chief and have returned to report the news of these past days. Yesterday afternoon, the twenty-two thousand reinforcements led by Prince Hohenlohe-Kirchberg were annihilated under the walls of Verdun; only a few dozen escaped. As far as we know, the relief force has indeed collapsed; we cannot verify the exact number of survivors, but that no longer matters. Around us, one hundred and fifty thousand French troops—three times our strength—will launch a general offensive within twelve to twenty-four hours. The French Commander-in-Chief requests that all non-combatants be withdrawn to the area of Yvron Hill, the Greater Valmy, and placed under the protection of French gendarmerie, so as to avoid unnecessary accidental casualties. As for the final point, General André, in his capacity as the French Commander-in-Chief, invites you to meet today at the foot of Valmy Hill and share one cup of afternoon tea.”

  Although the first two items were within Brunswick’s expectations, the coalition commander was still struck silent for a long moment. His lips moved slightly, as though he meant to answer French threats with hard words, but no sound came. Goethe was not delivering rumors; he was repeating André’s terms, and they were facts as hard as iron.

  Plainly, Duc de Brunswick did not have Frederick the Great’s luck. At this moment, it seemed that the whole world had abandoned him and his forty thousand. To continue resisting was merely to drag every officer and soldier down into ruin with him. And even that was too grand a description: among those who still wished to resist to the end beside their commander, there were likely very few.

  When one counted it carefully, apart from the émigré detachment’s noble officers—driven into a corner with no road left—and a handful of battalions, a few die-hard loyalists of Frederick the Great who still dreamed of dying on the field to preserve Prussian honor, the overwhelming majority of the coalition had already given up.

  As for the Prussian Crown Prince, after the fighting at Clermont, the failed breakouts on both wings, and the failed frontal assault on Valmy Hill, he was close to breaking. He grew listless and despondent. Every day, the only thing Wilhelm III could do was to drown himself in whisky bought at outrageous prices on the black market, numbing himself into a stupor to escape reality.

  From a tent to the east of headquarters came a sudden crash of shattering bottles, followed by the Crown Prince Wilhelm III’s furious shouting and Princess Louise’s quiet sobbing.

  “Herr Goethe—one hour from now, you will accompany me to see André,” Brunswick said. He then walked out of headquarters. Once back in his own tent, the Duc summoned an aide and ordered hot water and towels at once, as well as a razor and soap, and a full Prussian marshal’s uniform for formal attendance, with the great orders and decorations. Even a Prussian marshal on the verge of defeat had to preserve a marshal’s dignity.

  Inside the gently rocking carriage sat only Brunswick and Goethe. Outside rode a small detachment of dragoons in yellow uniforms, serving as a guard. The two men remained silent after they boarded, until Duc de Brunswick finally opened the conversation.

  “Herr Goethe, have you written any new poems among the French?”

  The German poet hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “I have. A long narrative poem called September. But there is one line André ordered me to force into it.”

  “Oh? Which line? Let me hear it.” The Duc leaned forward, genuinely curious. Deeply influenced by Frederick the Great, Prussian nobles were often devoted to poetry, music, and the arts, and many had real accomplishment. Duc de Brunswick, both a Prussian prince and a great noble, was one of them.

  With his resonant voice, Goethe began to recite September. In the manner of a poet adopting a merciful, godlike vantage, he described the grandeur of France’s defensive war. The final line ran:

  “September, Valmy—here and now the world enters a new age; and what you would say is that you saw its birth with your own eyes.”

  The Duc sighed. “If André had been born in Germany, he would have been an honored guest at Brunswick. I simply cannot understand this: with the poetic talent to write If Life Deceives You and The Song of Freedom, why did he make that Army of the Meuse marching song so crude and unbearable, so arrogant and bombastic?”

  Goethe did not take up the topic. He suspected that, if André had been born in Germany, the first to suffer would have been the conservative and autocratic Kingdom of Prussia. André had once told him, with undisguised bluntness, “If you ask me who the enemies of revolutionary France are, I can tell you with certainty: any state that still preserves monarchical absolutism is our enemy.”

  This “export of revolution” was a political term coined in October of the previous year by Brissot and others. It referred to the idea that, after overthrowing despotism in France and sweeping away feudal forces, France would then “help” other countries carry out social revolutions of the same nature. André agreed with it deeply and, from the side, encouraged it.

  Yet this was political posture, nothing more. André was only arguing with the poet; he had no intention of putting it into practice. Aside from the Netherlands, which was at best half a republic, all of Europe consisted of monarchies. André was not a fool who would declare war on every monarchy in Europe merely to win an argument.

  Still, there were indeed two or three kingdoms that had to be brought down—removed entirely from Europe’s political map. Unfortunately, the Kingdom of Prussia was one of them. André would not give the German nation the chance to awaken, unify under Prussia, and in the end bring grievous disaster upon France and even all Europe.

  “Is there anything else you can tell me?” Duc de Brunswick asked again. The question left Goethe at a loss, uncertain how to reply. So he told the Prussian prince everything he had seen and heard around Reims.

  “Yes—beneath our wheels, that astonishingly smooth asphalt road, wide enough for four carriages to pass abreast, is steadily extending into the towns and villages of the Marne and the Ardennes. André says that, on such roads, his soldiers can raise their marching speed from 4.5 kilometers per hour to 6.2 kilometers per hour.

  “In Reims, there is no darkness in the night, as though a bearer of light had descended upon that city of kings. The countless gas lamps erected in streets and lanes, at every corner, make the night sky of that magnificent city as bright and beautiful as day.

  “Although, one month ago, the glorious French Royal Academy of Sciences ceased to exist, in Reims a larger institution with more members is rising rapidly: the Reims Polytechnic Institute. Its inventions in industrial manufacture, the street gas lamps, the artillery on the battlefield, the reconnaissance balloons—so they say—all come from that institute.

  “Two days before I left Reims, I was invited to attend an experiment at the institute. A massive steam engine was placed upon iron rails laid side by side, scarcely half a man’s width apart. Steam produced by burning coal drove a set of iron wheels, allowing the machine to move along the rails on its own, without human or animal traction. Afterward, André told me that this enormous and complex machine was called a steam locomotive, or a locomotive, and that it was an invention destined to change the entire world.”

  The inventions Goethe described—gas lamps, André artillery, reconnaissance balloons, and the steam locomotive—were not hidden marvels; they had already been displayed before the world. As for the steam engine, many mechanical engineers in Britain had begun various experiments as early as twenty years before, but the technology had not matured, states had not wished to promote it, and competitors in the same trade—chiefly the coachmen—had banded together in resistance. In the end it had never been applied on a large scale.

  As for what the poet had not seen, there was even more: for example, tens of kilometers of rail laid specifically for steam engines. Although the steam locomotive’s miserable performance left André deeply dissatisfied—its failure rate was extraordinarily high, its braking unreliable, and its average speed only eight to ten kilometers per hour—the dictator still ordered the Polytechnic Institute to lead the construction of a practical rail line across the Champagne plain between Reims and Sedan. As André put it, “Once the locomotive matures, it can be installed on the rails and used directly.”

  In addition, there was another decisive weapon: a steamship invented by an American mechanical engineer in André’s employ, Fulton. Months earlier, Fulton had declared that he had successfully placed a steam engine aboard a river vessel. After more than twenty launch trials and a series of technical improvements, the result proved far better than expected.

  The practical vessel, named Meuse No.1, was a single-masted craft, 28.3 meters long, 5.8 meters wide, and 2.5 meters in draft. Its carrying capacity was 332 tons, including crew, passengers, and cargo. Meuse No.1 was designed specifically for inland navigation: steam power drove an underwater screw propeller, allowing it to move forward under its own power. In unobstructed conditions, its range could reach fifty to sixty kilometers; after half an hour of maintenance, its unobstructed range could reach roughly one hundred kilometers.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Compared with the earlier model André had inspected in May at the ship-testing grounds, this version’s engine performance and endurance were far superior. Overall, it barely met André’s minimum requirements. The iron-and-wood propeller, however, was still of poor material; after 400 to 500 kilometers it would be completely worn out and had to be replaced. For that reason, Meuse No.1 was not capable of ocean-going service.

  Originally, André had intended to use Meuse No.1 as a supply transport on the Meuse, a river too narrow for convenient sailing and ill-suited to human or animal towing. But an enthusiastic Fulton proposed to the military that Meuse No.1 could be converted into an inland gunboat mounting eight to twelve twelve-pound guns. After the experiment succeeded, Fulton was ordered to refit two more Meuse No.1 steam gunboats, to be used in the coming counteroffensive on the northern front.

  André chose the meeting place east of Valmy, 600 meters from the foot of the hill, on a foundation bedded with loose stone. It had once been a windmill, but weeks earlier the French had dismantled it entirely. Like the surrounding forest, it was left stripped and pitiful.

  At the Commander-in-Chief’s instruction, field craftsmen erected a vast white canvas tent on the windmill’s former site. It was richly decorated with garlands of blue cornflowers, a bloom beloved among northern Germans and taken to symbolize tenacity and stubborn vitality. André also insisted that the interior be arranged with something like an antechamber and a sitting room, so that guests would feel a kind of homely warmth.

  Duc de Brunswick’s carriage was stopped by French troops about 200 meters from the tent. A gendarmerie captain stepped forward and, in a stiff tone, informed the guests inside that the carriage and the escort could go no farther.

  The Duc’s accompanying aide flared up in fury and nearly drew his sword to challenge the man. Brunswick merely lifted a hand and stopped the Colonel from courting humiliation. A defeated man had to behave as a defeated man. At present, the forty thousand Prussian troops in the Moon Bay fortress, and nearly the same number of coalition prisoners held in French camps, depended on a single sentence from André. Although the French Commander-in-Chief had agreed to guarantee the lawful rights of German prisoners, he could still, in private, kill a batch of men under one pretext or another if he chose. The victor would not be condemned.

  During the Seven Years’ War, the elder Duc de Brunswick—an uncle of the current Duc, and long known for an outward show of mercy—had had more than ten French prisoners buried alive on the battlefield. The immediate cause was their refusal to salute a Prussian marshal. In addition, those captured French nobles had openly mocked the older Duc’s ambiguous relationship with Frederick the Great. The truth of the rumor could not be confirmed, but it was a fact that neither the Prussian king nor the old prince had legitimate heirs.

  On the French side, André saw the invited guest through his spyglass: the fifty-seven-year-old coalition commander-in-chief, a dignified German elder with graying hair. When André’s gaze settled on the great Prussian order pinned to the man’s left breast, he smiled, then turned and instructed his major aide to bring one of the commemorative medal samples sent from the joint factories, and to hang it on his own chest.

  The medal was 65 millimeters in diameter. At its center was a half-length image of Saint Joan of Arc on horseback, armored and brandishing a saber. Around the edge ran a white ring with gold letters bearing the medal’s name, the War of National Defense of 1792, and inside the ring was a string of numbers, the medal’s serial code. In addition, behind a red star, a saber and a musket crossed behind Joan’s image.

  The design was meant to signify that, under Saint Joan’s guidance, the recipient had taken up arms in the War of National Defense of 1792 and won glorious merit. The medal was divided into two main categories: the War of National Defense of 1792 medal, the larger class, and the War of National Defense of 1792 auxiliary medal, the smaller class.

  The former, 65 millimeters across, was awarded only to officers and men who had been under fire, and to mid- and senior-level commanders; it also included engineers, staff officers, and battlefield medical orderlies. The latter, slightly smaller at 50 millimeters, was usually awarded to medical personnel, supply and baggage troops, soldiers assigned to the general reserve, and various civilian volunteers, including those who had performed outstandingly in scorched-earth measures. Battlefield medical orderlies, however, were counted under the larger class.

  The designer’s first concept had been to place André’s portrait in the background of the medal, but André rejected it at once. The designer’s flattery had its merit, but André did not dare to be so brazen. He proposed instead to use the radiant figure of Saint Joan as the theme. Naturally, the Bourbon battle flag that Joan customarily raised in her right hand was discarded and replaced with a saber.

  From the moment André led the Champagne Composite Regiment into Reims in 1790, he had openly and quietly encouraged official and private circles alike to commemorate and praise this French heroine in every manner: compiling and publishing books, illustrated albums, and pamphlets to spread her image; building a grand Hero Square in Reims and setting a huge bronze statue of Saint Joan at its center; organizing, on the day of her martyrdom, large-scale Saint Joan festivals and parades under the auspices of the Marne and the Reims City Hall; and, in addition, declaring in many public settings that it was under Saint Joan’s noble example and guidance that he had resolved to dedicate himself to France and to the French people.

  Through a series of vivid religious-patriotic campaigns, André strove to make the people of Champagne believe that André was the great the God-Favoured—someone sent by God to France to protect the masses from the ravages of war, hunger, and suffering—a living embodiment of “Saint Joan of Arc.”

  Indeed, since André entered Reims, famine and plague, smallpox, had begun to withdraw from Champagne. Now, with André’s two hundred thousand French troops about to encircle and annihilate the Prusso-Austrian Coalition main body and win a great victory in the war, his political prestige in Champagne had risen to an almost immeasurable height.

  When Duc de Brunswick entered the tent, André, accompanied by an aide, also descended from Valmy Hill. Along the road, rows of soldiers stood in perfect order on both sides. They shouted “Long live André!” in a roaring chorus, jubilant and thunderous, the words overlapping until they were barely distinguishable. The combined cheers carried like explosions, unstoppable, reaching the Moon Bay fortress, reaching Reims, reaching Chalons, reaching Paris, and reaching the northern front and the Austrian Netherlands, where fighting still raged.

  Before long, a light breeze rose, drawing streaks of white across the blue sky like gauze over a glaring sun, softening the light. From the moment he began his descent, André had never felt so light, so pleased, so happy, so powerful. Before entering the tent, the French Commander-in-Chief removed his hat, turned, and waved it back to his soldiers in salute. The applause grew louder still. He could feel the troops’ fervor in his bones.

  At this moment, André was not merely a commander. He was a god—God himself, at least in the hearts of his soldiers.

  The instant he stepped into the tent, André felt a satisfaction he had never known before, not even in Paris, when he had held all legislative and administrative power as temporary head of state. André believed that, whatever storms the future might bring, France’s history two hundred years from now would still remember this moment.

  As André and Duc de Brunswick clasped hands inside the tent, André was even thinking to himself whether he should raise a bronze statue of his own on Valmy Hill, or at the windmill’s former site at the foot of the slope...

  Fortunately, the intelligence aide beside him was used to his commander’s habit of drifting into wild thoughts. He coughed twice, quietly. André came back to himself and released his grip, only to find that his palm and the back of his hand had been reddened by the displeased old German’s squeeze. André burst into laughter, spread his left arm, and invited the two guests to take their seats at the table.

  In Duc de Brunswick’s eyes, the French Commander-in-Chief was tall, handsome, and calm, with the unmistakable Germanic traits of golden hair and deep blue eyes, and an expression that was half-smile, half-mockery. He has some familiar face features to someone the Duc knew but he couldn’t remember just now. He wore a general’s uniform in blue, trimmed in the tricolor of blue, white, and red. On his head was a bicorne with a handsome plume. The golden sash over his right shoulder gleamed. He wore a sword, and his boots stood out sharply beneath white trousers. On his left breast hung a strange medal Brunswick had never seen. Born to a noble house, Brunswick had been learning to identify European coats of arms and family emblems since the age of five, including the court orders of many kingdoms.

  “Your Grace, this war is a tragedy. I hope we can end our killing as soon as possible, so that the soldiers may go home early,” André said, his gaze bright and steady.

  In a low voice Brunswick answered, “I feel the same.” The old Duc, rich in artistic sensibility, had a pleasant voice and spoke fluent, pure Parisian high-society French. As for André’s German, he could manage it when reading books, but his speech was halting. French therefore became their working language.

  André nodded, signaled to a major aide, and had assorted pastries and tea and wine brought in. The aide filled the cups for the three of them. The pastries were mainly scones with jam and clotted cream. Before Brunswick, Goethe, and André sat cups of black tea with milk and sugar. It was the English manner of afternoon tea, and even the vessels that held the food and drink were fine bone china and crystal glass made in Britain.

  In the family genealogies, Duc de Brunswick’s mother was Frederick the Great’s sister, a blood relation of the House of Hohenzollern. His wife, Princess Augusta, was the daughter of the former British Prince of Wales, Prince Frederick, the father of King George III. In other words, Duc de Brunswick was King George III’s brother-in-law.

  For that reason, André could fully display a victor’s pride, but he could not humiliate King George III’s close kin too harshly, and still less could he allow Duc de Brunswick to die amid chaos. At least until André had secured the whole of the Netherlands, he had to ensure that Britain and France did not tear away the last restraint and declare war on each other.

  Thus, the surrender terms André offered were not harsh. Aside from requiring coalition officers to pay ransoms to redeem themselves, the soldiers’ terms of labor were generally only about one year. As for the Prussian Kingdom’s war indemnity...

  “Twenty million thalers,” André told Brunswick directly—equivalent to 76,000,000 livres.

  “Forgive me, Commander-in-Chief! I cannot accept that clause.” Duc de Brunswick shook his head and rejected the indemnity at once. Not to mention twenty million thalers: King Wilhelm II could not raise even two million at present. As for borrowing from rich nobles, that was out of the question. The Prussian nobles who had marched with Duc de Brunswick were likely selling estates and jewels as it was, scraping together money to redeem their husbands and children.

  André did not grow angry. He said to his aide, “Major, take Herr Goethe for a walk. I believe our great poet will appreciate Valmy’s unique scenery.”

  When the enormous tent held only the two opposing commanders-in-chief, André took a letter from his pocket and placed it lightly on the table before Brunswick. Then he poured a glass of Champagne for himself and for his German guest.

  The letter was a trophy taken by the French during the Verdun encirclement battle, found on Prince Hohenlohe-Kirchberg, still unopened. In fact, it was a letter personally written by the Prussian king to Duc de Brunswick. In it, King Wilhelm II ordered the coalition commander-in-chief to end the war against France at once, to withdraw all fifty thousand Prussian troops to Berlin before October, and to cooperate with the Russian Empire in preparation for the coming second partition of Poland.

  Brunswick read the short letter five times. He could be certain it was not a French forgery, because it bore a special private mark known only to him and the king. Moreover, the question of marching to partition Poland was something Wilhelm II and Brunswick had discussed repeatedly and finally settled: so long as Russia continued to bite into Poland from the east, Prussia had to devour that ancient realm from the north and west—a country once praised by the Catholic Church as the “Spear of God,” once glorious, but now thoroughly decayed.

  Although André regarded Poland as a natural ally, not here, and not now. Poland was weakened but not dead; whether patriotic nobles or furious soldiers, none would pay a sufficient price for any foreign savior of the Polish fatherland. Earlier, André’s private envoy had asked the Polish Sejm whether Poland would provide fifty thousand troops to campaign alongside France; in return, André would provide military aid in 1793 and 1794.

  The answer was that Poland’s noble assembly, proud to the point of arrogance, rejected André’s proposal. Worse still, the Poles demanded that France’s National Convention release King Louis XVI and his family, and permit the Bourbon royal house to take refuge in Warsaw. In anger, André ordered the entire French mission aiding Poland’s resistance against Russia to return to France, and thereafter tacitly allowed Prussia and Russia to partition Poland together.

  “Prussia still has no money,” Brunswick repeated, dejected. André had been waiting for those words.

  The victor set down his Champagne glass and smiled. “No money is no problem. There are many peaceful ways to resolve this—among them extending the soldiers’ labor terms, and increasing the officers’ ransoms.”

  André watched the defeated man’s face, reading the tangled mixture of anger, unwillingness, and helplessness. After a brief pause, he produced a prepared map of central Germany and spread it across the table. Several regions had already been marked in red: Upper Guelders, East Frisia, Cleves, Mark, and Ravensberg. These were enclaves the House of Hohenzollern had acquired in western Germany between 1614 and 1744 through marriage or war.

  Because these Prussian lands had long been far from the Hohenzollern core, their economies were backward. At the end of the Seven Years’ War, Frederick the Great, seeking to pay off the state’s enormous debts, had even considered selling all these western border territories, but no one was willing to take over such poor and harsh lands.

  André went on. “Do not worry. Ownership of the land remains with the Kingdom of Prussia. It is merely pledged, for the time being, as collateral to the United Commercial Bank. When you have made enough money in the east, you may redeem it from my commercial bank. Of course, His Majesty King Wilhelm II may also choose to reopen the war—so long as he can defeat France and defeat me.”

  Brunswick fell silent. In truth, he found André’s proposal persuasive. Wilhelm II did not like those distant enclaves either. No one wanted them even as a Prussian princess’s dowry—something that had indeed happened—let alone wished to spend money to buy them.

  Now, by giving up these useless scraps, Prussia could rescue forty to fifty thousand troops from prisoner camps, then seek to recover the honor, dignity, and money it had just lost in Poland’s fertile fields and wealthy cities. It was, in truth, a very profitable trade, at least for the Kingdom of Prussia.

  “First, it must be a secret treaty. For five years, neither side may publish it. Second, the East Frisia territory, which borders the Atlantic and Hanover, must not station French troops; even police or gendarmerie must not exceed 500 men. Third, Prince Wilhelm and Princess Louise must be allowed to return to Berlin first. I can guarantee that within two weeks His Majesty will sign the secret treaty.” After weighing it, Duc de Brunswick set out the conditions on the Prussian king’s behalf.

  “As to the first two points, I can accept them,” André said, nodding. He had no intention of stationing troops in East Frisia before 1793; that would be a direct path to a rupture with the British Empire.

  “In addition, long-distance carriages are already prepared. They can reach Berlin within four days. So I need the signed treaty between our two countries within ten days. As for the details within the secret articles, we can discuss them after we have taken over the Moon Bay castle,” André said.

  Brunswick shook his head. “No. We must discuss the details now. In fact, before I departed, I ordered the Prussian forces under General Clermont-Clifford and General Hess to take control inside and outside the coalition camp and to disarm the émigré detachment completely. After we settle all details, the French army may assume the defenses of the Moon Bay fortress, and the Prussian army will cooperate.”

  If the price was right, selling one’s allies was a natural enough thing. Since André could abandon Poland, Brunswick could sell the French rebels who had once fought at his side. For the Kingdom of Prussia, it was even a noble act. After all, the dead would not go to hell to appeal to Satan and denounce Christians.