On the morning of August fifteenth, with the National Guard’s cooperation, 200 gendarmes successfully “recaptured” the Tuileries from more than one thousand sans-culottes who were reeling drunk. After repeated bombardment by over twenty cannons and volleys of musket fire, and after five days and five nights of frenzied looting and destruction, the once-glorious Bourbon palace no longer resembled itself.

  On the ground floor, the walls were punched through by huge holes left by solid shot. Every window in the suites and garrets had been shattered. Countless royal ornaments, furnishings, gilded mirrors, silk curtains, and velvet bed linens had been bundled up and carried off—or torn to pieces. In the cellars, innumerable bottles and casks had either been smashed or drunk dry.

  Inside and outside the palace, corpses lay everywhere on the killing ground—remembered at roughly 2,000 bodies. The dead were divided in roughly equal thirds: the revolutionary attackers, the defenders of the palace, and innocent bystanders—servants, maids, court musicians, and ordinary townspeople who had come only to gape. From noon on August eleventh, the corpse-collectors dispatched by the Paris Commune spent four full days dragging the remains to a suburban cemetery, where they waited for families to identify the dead one by one before burial.

  In addition, under the Legislative Assembly’s latest resolution of August fifteenth, the Tuileries—once the royal palace of the age of Louis—was to be sealed for the long term and placed under military control by the Paris National Guard.

  That afternoon, Javert, now promoted to Deputy Director of the Paris police, received a special mission from André: in secret, on Rue Renault near Saint-O—he was to locate a locksmith named Gamain. Gamain had been the former King’s private craftsman and, before the Revolution, had often entered the Tuileries to work for Louis XVI. Javert was to bring Gamain into the Tuileries in secrecy, open a hidden cabinet concealed in the King’s bedchamber, remove every document and object within it, and restore everything to its original state.

  André emphasized repeatedly that the entire operation must be kept strictly confidential. To avoid attention, Javert and the others would be disguised as gendarmes on duty. Moreover, every document and object from the cabinet had to be packed by Javert personally, without leaving a single item behind, and delivered intact to the villa on the ?le Saint-Louis.

  “So this is Gamain?” Javert stared at the wretch cowering in the corner of the carriage, silent from start to finish. He could not help thinking that a crisp gendarmerie uniform was wasted on someone so shabby and cringing.

  “Yes—and beyond any doubt,” Captain Grisel said with a smile from the opposite seat.

  “The moment I identified myself, he said he would come with me. He made only one demand: that we take his wife and three children out of Paris with him, and as far away as possible. The people of the Paris Commune have all gone mad. Every day they hunt down anyone connected to the royal household. Even craftsmen, musicians, and ordinary laborers who once served Louis XVI are seized by pike patrols, thrown into prison to be tortured, or simply slaughtered.”

  Javert gave a snort and said nothing more. Ten minutes later, under gendarmerie cover, the four-wheeled carriage carrying the three men slipped in through the western gate and stopped at a rear palace door used for moving goods.

  As they stepped down and put on their caps, a gendarmerie major on duty approached. He cast a wary glance at the unfamiliar locksmith, Gamain. After Captain Grisel gave him a signal, the major lowered his voice.

  “My men have just formed up and gone to lunch. You have twenty-five minutes. Will that be enough?”

  At Captain Grisel’s cue, Gamain nodded frantically. Javert added, “It will be enough.”

  The major went on. “On the second floor I have a hollowed wooden crate. Once you seal it, push it into the stairwell. At a quarter past two, my men will deliver it—unharmed—to Commandant André’s villa, under the pretext of hauling out rubbish.”

  Javert shook his head and cut him off. “No, Major. Captain Grisel and I will wait for your cart at the western exit of the square. This cargo must be escorted to the ?le Saint-Louis by me personally.”

  Captain Grisel nodded in agreement.

  The major shrugged and accepted it. Privately, he indulged in the gossip of it: perhaps Deputy Director Javert and the captain-adjutant meant to “pick something up” for Commandant André while they were at work inside the ruined palace. Yet after two full nights of sans-culottes plunder, what could possibly remain worth taking? Nothing but broken junk.

  The three men went straight to the second floor, and within a short walk reached the King’s bedchamber. Captain Grisel stayed at the entrance as lookout, while Javert watched Gamain’s every movement. The locksmith walked directly to the fireplace, cleared out the charred debris the mob had burned there, and then bent and crawled inside.

  Javert lit an oil lamp he had prepared in advance and aimed the light into the dark throat of the hearth.

  Gamain seemed to mutter to himself. “The mechanism is inside the sixth firebrick from the right side of the fireplace. There is a round pull-ring inside.”

  As he found the brick, he shoved it upward halfway, revealing a small hole. He thrust in his hand and pulled—there was a click. The wall to the right of the fireplace swung open by itself, revealing an iron cabinet roughly two meters high, one meter wide, and half a meter deep.

  The cabinet was shut tight, with two keyholes. Gamain produced two brass keys from his person, inserted them into separate locks, and turned them both one and a half turns. With a heavy clank, the iron door opened. Inside, the cabinet was divided into three tiers, crammed with documents and letters.

  Gamain stepped aside at once, deliberately keeping his eyes away. Captain Grisel had already pushed a large wooden crate forward. He and Javert removed every item from the cabinet, placed them into cloth bags, sealed the mouths with wax, and set the bags into the crate. Then Gamain used a hammer and nails to fasten the lid shut completely.

  When it was done, Javert ordered Gamain to lock the cabinet again and crawl back into the fireplace to reset the mechanism, restoring the wall to its original state. The two keys, of course, were now in Javert’s hands.

  As they left the palace, Captain Grisel told Gamain, “In forty-eight hours, you and your family will depart Paris and go to the Reims camp. The Army of the North needs craftsmen like you. You may rest assured—this is André’s promise.”

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  The locksmith nodded gratefully, repeating, “Yes—André’s promise is more precious than gold!”

  In addition, the captain, honoring an earlier promise, handed Gamain a cash cheque for 2,000 livres. Beginning this August, the Marne and Ardennes had restricted the circulation of assignats and switched to cheques issued by a joint commercial bank. Before the end of the year, this rule would be gradually extended across the commercial circles of the northern provinces.

  As part of that new policy, André, as rotating President, had supported an economic motion jointly proposed the previous morning by deputies from Bordeaux, Marseille, and Lyon. The motion replaced the former cabinet’s rule of compulsory use of assignats (the state paper currency) with a principle of voluntary commercial acceptance, and called for the restoration of metallic coin in transactions.

  Deputy Lindet, now transferred to the Internal Affairs Working Committee, was trained as a lawyer, but he understood economics, finance, and monetary policy well enough to know that shaking the assignat’s status as legal tender at such a moment would inflict immense, incalculable harm upon the national economy. Yet Lindet’s objections were far too faint. Once the rotating President André raised his hand in support of the “non-compulsory assignat” proposal, eighty percent of the deputies present followed with votes in favor.

  During a break in the Assembly’s sitting, Lindet ran to the second floor to consult with Deputy Brissot and the former Minister of the Interior, Roland. He demanded that they veto the “non-compulsory assignat” proposal for a second time, but both declined with polite evasions. At that moment, Brissot and his Patriot ministers—former Minister of the Interior Roland, former Minister of War Servan, and former Minister of Finance Clavière—were already overwhelmed and had no attention to spare for what they considered a petty matter.

  Because André, openly and in private, delayed or opposed them, the cabinet list submitted by Brissot and his circle still had not been put to a collective vote in the full sitting. Under the Constitution, after King Louis XVI fell, the rotating President of the National Assembly began to perform the essential functions of head of state.

  Brissot and Roland both understood, of course, that this was André’s revenge against the Girondins. Only days earlier, Brissot and his associates had held a secret meeting on filthy Peacock Street with Robespierre, Danton, and Marat of the Robespierre–Danton faction. Yet because of internal frictions within each camp—Legendre, Carnot, Condorcet, and others—the Jacobins’ anti–André faction ultimately failed to produce any concrete countermeasure against the parliamentary dictator.

  After August tenth, André, almost without anyone noticing, took control of this patched-together National Assembly. Although the number of deputies had fallen to 362, it remained the kingdom’s lawful supreme organ of power. Moreover, André exploited a decision error made by Danton and Marat on August tenth: when the Cordeliers Club later moved to besiege the National Assembly, André succeeded in striking back and curbing the Paris Commune’s arrogance. And because Brissot’s friends could not form a cabinet, the state’s executive authority, in the end, temporarily fell into the Legislative Assembly’s hands.

  Added to this was André’s long-standing relationship with the Palais de Justice. André Franck now held, in effect, legislative, local, executive, military, and judicial power at once—like a Caesar—though his term as rotating President could last no longer than August twentieth, only five days away. Yet who could guarantee that a dictator, swollen with power, would not employ other lawful—or unlawful—means to prolong his rule?

  “We cannot go on fighting like this, Jacques,” Roland warned Brissot sternly. “I know you have reached an understanding with Robespierre—and with Marat and Danton as well—plotting to reduce the number of deputies until the National Assembly dissolves itself. But that would be a catastrophic disaster, unless we are willing to watch great France destroy itself in this internal struggle. So compromise.”

  “But Robespierre, Marat, and Danton will think we have abandoned our allies,” Brissot still hesitated.

  “Allies?” Roland laughed. “My friend, I would sooner count André—who keeps his word—as a friend than take the madman Marat, the swindler Danton, or the hypocrite Robespierre for my friends.”

  Contempt showed on Roland’s face. On August tenth, the barbaric massacres carried out by the sans-culottes under the Paris Commune had filled the former minister with disgust.

  In the end, Brissot accepted Roland’s counsel. “Very well,” he said. “Tonight I will go to the villa on the ?le Saint-Louis—with a mission.”

  …

  After five consecutive days of working until two or three in the morning, even André—no weak man—said he could not endure it. At dusk on the fifteenth, the young rotating President delegated the conduct of the Assembly hall for a time to one of the secretaries, and, under gendarmerie escort, returned home to rest.

  In truth, “rest” was only an excuse. André could hardly wait to read the documents and letters hidden in the palace’s secret cabinet.

  The moment he returned to his study, as he reviewed the papers laid out on his desk, he found exactly what he expected: a confidential letter in which Mirabeau urged Louis XVI to buy André over. In the letter, Mirabeau also described André’s hidden political ambition and called him a dictator draped in the cloak of liberty and equality. Worse still, an annex attached to the letter listed figures for André’s corruption in Bordeaux—down to vineyard acreage, the number of estates, and the profit brought by each transfer of shares in Church assets, and more.

  At the sight of it, André’s anger flared. So that fat corpse, even on the verge of death, still meant to leave behind a hidden traitor to stab him once more. Fortunately, André was André: he already knew where Louis XVI’s secret cabinet was concealed. Otherwise, once that letter was dragged into the open, André could not guess how much manpower, money, blood, and how many corpses it would have cost to put out the fire.

  André handed Mirabeau’s letter to Father Marey, who had just come from Reims to Paris, and ordered, “Your people will handle this. But I believe the leak can only have come from within the Bordeaux Wine Trade Federation.”

  “Périer?” asked the man in charge of domestic work for the Military Intelligence Office. “He has been in Bordeaux for nearly two years.”

  “No exceptions,” André replied. “That includes the Comtesse who is about to come to Reims.”

  He might have said more, but outside the door, the captain-adjutant reported that Deputy Brissot had arrived and was waiting in the small reception room.

  André laughed with genuine pleasure. It seemed the Girondins had broken first: they had not even waited for August twentieth. They were already raising the white flag and preparing to reopen talks with him.

  Before he went out, André told the priest, “In a moment I will have Captain Grisel assist you in dealing with this batch of papers. First, destroy anything that touches on me, Berthier, Judge Vinault, Legoff, Condorcet, Pétion, Manuel, Prieur, Thuriot…and the rest. Then have people forge a new set of documents and put them back in the cabinet. As for the specific plan, you will coordinate separately with Director Javert, and report to me afterward.”

  …

  Few people knew what happened at the villa on the ?le Saint-Louis on the night of August fifteenth. But three days later, people learned the final outcome from the National Legislative Assembly.

  On the morning of August eighteenth, Danton’s two closest comrades, Fabre and Desmoulins, ran to his house together. They pounded on the bedroom door with their fists until it shook.

  When Gabrielle cautiously opened the door, the two men surged in, hauled the half-asleep Danton out of bed, and shouted in unison, “Georges, wake up—you’re a minister!”

  Fabre leaned close and roared in Danton’s ear, “Damn it—you must appoint me your Keeper of the Seals’ secretary!”

  Desmoulins grinned at the newly awakened man. “And I must be the private secretary to the Minister of Justice.”

  That very morning, under the chairmanship of André, the rotating President, and after the number of deputies had fallen again, the Legislative Assembly’s 350 deputies held an election for six cabinet ministers. They elected Roland as Minister of the Interior, Servan as Minister of War, Clavière as Minister of Finance, Danton as Minister of Justice, Lebrun as Minister of Foreign Affairs (a well-known journalist and editor who had spent a period in the diplomatic service), and Monge as Minister of the Navy (an academician, a towering figure, and a celebrated mathematician).

  To strengthen cooperation between the cabinet and the National Assembly in this difficult emergency, the six ministers would each be paired with an executive secretary from one of the Assembly’s six working committees. These included Brissot, André, Carnot, Thuriot, Vergniaud, and Guadet. Together, the twelve men would form a Committee as the Council of State to handle the nation’s major affairs.