This twelve-member committee, composed of cabinet ministers and the executive secretaries of the National Assembly’s working committees, was plainly the product of a compromise between the Brissot camp and “the André faction.”

  As for “the André faction,” this was a new label that Robespierre began using in June of this year to describe André and those who cooperated with him for profit and interest. Even André himself found it an unusually accurate description. The French temperament—freewheeling by nature—made it impossible for them to build a party with strict organization and discipline.

  Within the cabinet, Roland as Minister of the Interior, Servan as Minister of War, and Clavière as Minister of Finance remained Brissot’s closest comrades. To reward the Paris Commune for its role in the assault on the Tuileries, its de facto leader, Georges Danton, became Minister of Justice. As for Lebrun as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Monge as Minister of the Navy, both were elevated on André’s recommendation.

  In truth, André had originally preferred the former ambassador to Prussia, Basseville (already expelled from Berlin), or the ambassador to Denmark, Barthélemy. Yet one week earlier, Basseville, as the Assembly’s diplomatic plenipotentiary and André’s personal representative, had been urgently dispatched to the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and the Dutch Republic, replacing the previous envoy, Talleyrand, who had already been dismissed by the National Assembly. Acting as rotating President, André had accused the former ambassador in the Dutch Republic, Talleyrand, of colluding with the fallen royal household and the foreign interventionists, in an attempt to violate and sell out the interests of great France.

  Barthélemy’s mission in Copenhagen had been highly effective—at the very least, it ensured that Denmark would not join the anti-French coalition led by Prussia and the Austrian Empire before October of 1792 (the chaos in previous chapters occurred in August of 1792). Denmark’s diplomats might have offered a few mild complaints about revolutionary France, but the language was harmless and perfunctory. André understood, however, that Danish neutrality would not last much longer.

  On the second day after the former King Louis XVI and his wife were imprisoned in the Chateau du Temple, the ambassadors of Britain and Denmark—countries that had long been at daggers drawn—actually arrived together at the National Assembly. They personally submitted a protest to President André, now acting as head of state, accusing France of indulging mob extremism and humiliating the rightful monarch of France.

  Fortunately, Lebrun—journalist and editor, and a man who had studied in Britain—volunteered to smooth things over with both ambassadors and barely prevented a diplomatic crisis. In return, André recommended Lebrun as Minister of Foreign Affairs. There was also another reason—perhaps the most important one—that Lebrun had worked for half a year in the editorial office of Figaro and was “one of ours,” recommended to the owner by the editor-in-chief, Blanc Deyo.

  André’s effort to place Monge as Minister of the Navy was likewise a matter of returning favors. As a member of the Academy of Sciences, Monge had not only given the young Fourier enormous help, but had also used his influence to ensure that the French Navy quietly gave André’s privately supported privateer fleet a wide berth and a green light.

  This very year, the Navy reassigned two newly refitted ships of the line and four cruisers to the privateer fleet of General Allemand, ostensibly to strengthen this irregular squadron’s campaign against North African pirates. The reality was that naval officers were bleeding away at a catastrophic rate—down to less than one-sixth of the level of 1789—leaving large numbers of warships immobilized in the ports, waiting to rot.

  In addition, André used his authority to push the National Legislative Assembly to promote General Allemand to Brigadier General of the Navy, and to promote the fighting hero of Saint-Domingue, Saint-Cyr, to Brigadier General of the Army.

  As for the executive secretaries of the Assembly’s six working committees, the former Constitutionalists nobles had been removed entirely. The Brissot camp and the André faction divided the seats between them again. In the process, André—performing the part of an unselfish Grand Duke—also nominated Carnot as executive secretary of the Ordnance Administration Committee. On paper, it looked like an attempt to appease the Robespierre camp; in reality, the forthright and righteous Carnot was steadily drifting away from Robespierre. Those who preached outright anarchism, men such as Fran?ois Chabot, failed to enter the core of governmental and parliamentary power.

  In the political settlement after the Revolution of August tenth, Brissot and his friends preserved their advantage within both cabinet and Assembly, becoming the foremost leadership tier among the Jacobins. At the same time, the André faction gained sharply in strength, expanding at speed from the provinces and the military into the central organs of government and parliament.

  Meanwhile, the self-styled “commoners’ party,” the Robespierre–Danton faction, lost the most. Danton became Minister of Justice, and Carnot became one of the executive secretaries, yet both men grew more and more distant from Robespierre. Perhaps out of jealousy or other motives, Robespierre ordered Danton and Carnot not to be deceived, and demanded that they resign every public office and return to work inside the Jacobin Club. Danton and Carnot refused in unison.

  …

  At the villa on the ?le Saint-Louis, Father Marey—having removed his black robe and put on a tailcoat—looked invigorated and almost carefree. He was, at that moment, describing in vivid detail to André the story of what had happened in that little tavern on Peacock Street. One point should be stated plainly: the Bishop of Paris had accepted Father Marey’s request to be released from the clergy, and from August eighteenth onward, he held no clerical office.

  “…I saw Robespierre’s sea-green, catlike face drawn long with anger. But Danton and Carnot acted as though they could not even see the leader’s orders, and refused to carry them out. When Robespierre finally rose and began to curse, an enraged Danton actually reached out and knocked the sea-green wig to the floor… In the end, the three parted on hostile terms.”

  After listening, André smiled faintly. “My friend, politics is not that simple. Whether men divide or unite depends on practical interests. Carnot is a pure technical soldier; he only wants a stage on which to use his talent. Danton is different. Before long, he will demand more and strive to become the leader of the revolutionary government. Lawyers are a greedy breed—myself included. This time, I suspect André will also be added to Robespierre’s list of vengeance. Still, I imagine my name will rank after Louis XVI, after Brissot, and perhaps even after Danton and the others.”

  “Why not strike first?” Javert asked suddenly, where he had been sitting in silence. Of André’s two earlier attempts to prod Lafayette into eliminating (or exiling) the radicals, Javert alone knew something.

  André hesitated for a moment, then said, “That is the art of politics. Never decide in the heat of impulse, and never take pride in eliminating political enemies. Weigh the gains and losses, borrow force, and turn strength against strength.”

  Perhaps sensing that his meaning was still too abstract, André recast it in another form.

  “For example: a great noble owns one million livres. I once asked to borrow fifty thousand from him. He refused and even insulted me. Not long afterward, a band of robbers strips the proud noble of everything. Then I send troops to destroy those robbers, seize the one million livres for myself, return only fifty thousand to the noble’s family—and in the end I even win their gratitude.”

  Before these confidants and countrymen—Javert, who commanded intelligence and much of the police apparatus in Paris, and Marey, the domestic chief of the Military Intelligence Office—André did not hide much.

  Marey laughed shamelessly. “So this is the truth of ‘promise-keeping André’!”

  Yet Javert frowned. Uneasy, he glanced at André, and only relaxed a little when he saw the man’s expression had not changed. The cautious old police officer decided that later he would find a moment to caution the young Marey: one must never treat a future sovereign as a childhood playmate. That was a path to ruin.

  Soon, Javert remembered something else. He said to André, “Two days ago, I was commissioned by Paris City Hall to inspect the Chateau du Temple on behalf of the Paris police. I saw that Princess Thérèse still has that brooch pinned at her collar.”

  André nodded. “That is my promise to élisabeth. The brooch is only the child’s one-way ticket. It is valid for no one else. And there is one more matter. Today I signed my last deportation order as rotating President. Before dawn tomorrow, your patrolmen and the gendarmes must work together to deliver these people and their relatives—205 in total—safely and without incident onto two two-masted merchant ships moored along the Seine.”

  By this point, André had already done this five times: under the pretext of deporting domestic criminals to fill overseas colonies, he openly released large numbers of Constitutionalists nobles from Parisian prisons.

  Marat and others—just appointed by the Paris Commune to the Supervisory Committee—voiced fierce opposition. In the Cordeliers Club he thundered against André’s “shameless betrayal” of the Revolution, declared that he would no longer recognize the Legislative Assembly manipulated jointly by the André faction and the Brissot camp as the true representative of twenty-five million citizens, and called on the people of Paris to overthrow that “filthy den” which sheltered counterrevolutionaries.

  In response, André directly ordered the gendarmes to arrest Marat in public at the Commune’s meeting, and—on the charge of insulting the sacred Assembly—sent him to the Versailles quarries for two weeks of hard labor. Throughout it all, Danton, once chairman of the Cordeliers Club and now a newly appointed cabinet minister, maintained complete silence.

  Inside the lavish ministerial residence of the Ministry of Justice, Georges Danton felt none of the excitement he had shown when he first received his appointment. Only one day earlier, in his first public memorandum, he had styled himself “the revolutionary minister of the freest, the mightiest, the most democratic twenty-five million people in the world.”

  Now, as Desmoulins, Fabre, Fréron, Séchelles, Tallien, Billaud-Varenne, Robert, Paré, Barère, Legendre, Chaumette, and other comrades from the Paris Commune and the Cordeliers pressed him with questions, Danton erupted in fury. His huge fist hammered the desk again and again, until the room was filled with the Minister of Justice’s beastlike roars—cold enough to raise gooseflesh.

  “Damn you—what do you want me to do? Sign an order in the name of the Minister of Justice that cannot be enforced and would make us a laughingstock, and then ‘extract’ Marat from a prison guarded by gendarmes? Or have the Cordeliers and the Paris Commune prepare a new uprising to overthrow the joint rule led by André and Brissot?

  “…Remember this: Marat was publicly inciting riot and trying to overthrow the National Legislative Assembly. André, as rotating President, has already shown great restraint. He did not arrest Marat for the capital crime of inciting revolt. If he had, even the lightest sentence would have meant deportation to the North American colonies 6,000 kilometers away!”

  With that, Danton waved his hand and rudely drove everyone out of the ministerial residence. Soon, his shy, enchanting wife slipped quietly into the study from another room.

  “Georges, I got lost again among all these salons and bedrooms, and I was so frightened I started trembling in front of a gilded Venetian mirror,” Gabrielle said, pouting, her hands settling naturally around his waist.

  Each time he heard her sweet voice, Danton’s anger vanished as if by magic. He pulled Gabrielle into his chest, and the two kissed and touched like lovers deep in infatuation.

  But it did not last. Two detested voices sounded again in the study: Fabre, his Keeper of the Seals’ secretary, and Desmoulins, his private secretary, had found their way back. Gabrielle took out a handkerchief and gently wiped the lipstick from her husband’s face and neck. Then she slipped away through the door into the small dining room.

  Just as André had observed, Danton’s ability to appoint subordinates and assistants was mediocre.

  Desmoulins, frivolous by nature, handled the Ministry of Justice’s business with the casualness of a child playing with his toys. He could write provocative, inflammatory articles well enough, but he was vain, excessively idealistic, and incapable of plotting or executing with care. He pushed every serious matter onto Fabre and let him run wild.

  As for Fabre, he had been no more than a mediocre playwright, and had even lived as a vagrant, regarded by many as a petty thief. Once he became the Keeper of the Seals’ secretary to the Minister of Justice, he gained access to his master’s signature authority—and abused it without restraint, in pursuit of money, women, and luxury. In just two days, Fabre drew five thousand livres from the ministry’s treasury to furnish his new home with extravagant furniture and fine boots. Some of it was purchased on the black market, obtained by trickery and threats, and traced back to the royal property looted from the Tuileries.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Danton understood perfectly what sort of men his two confidants were. Yet he was emotional, overly tolerant, and generous. Especially toward friends, even if they deceived him—if they even betrayed him—he did not take the initiative to harm them, no matter how bitter the hatred in his heart.

  And that, too, was one reason André supported Danton’s appointment as Minister of Justice. As for Robespierre, André increasingly felt the man was petty and cramped. His thick notebook was filled with the names of those he hated, including people who had once been Robespierre’s benefactors, comrades, classmates, fellow soldiers, and even relatives.

  The reason Danton’s two secretaries returned was that they had brought him earthshaking news—and the same news was also delivered to Robespierre…

  Robespierre spent almost every day at the Jacobin Club, fortifying his political camp from this “fighting post” that seemed to have been forgotten by Brissot and André. He spoke again and again to the club members, laying out his views, interpretations, and claims about the Revolution of August tenth. Afterward, he printed his speeches in full and used the Correspondence Committee he controlled to distribute them across France to the Jacobin branches.

  One piece of correspondence read:

  “In 1789, the people of Paris rose against royal oppression and freed themselves from the old order. Yet at that time their idea of liberty was still vague, and their understanding of liberty’s principles was shallow; everything remained only the fervor of insurrection. Then a group of seemingly great men took up the power the people had won, while the people who possessed nothing still gained nothing…

  “In 1792, the people of Paris became calm and steady. They no longer seek merely to avenge the laws that offended their liberty; they seek to avenge themselves upon every disloyal commander who disregarded their rights. They will put into practice the principles proposed three years ago by their representative (Robespierre himself). They will exercise their sovereignty and use their power to secure their own safety and happiness…”

  Robespierre tirelessly worked the crowd, striving to make them believe that he was the true tribune of the people, defender of their interests—that he had organized, planned, and led a Revolution of August tenth even greater, wiser, and purer than the taking of the Bastille.

  He also hammered home a single point: “universal suffrage of profound significance” must be implemented as soon as possible, so that every passive citizen would enjoy the rights of an active citizen—“one of the great blessings the Revolution has brought.” In other words, because the Legislative Assembly had not been elected by universal suffrage, it had to dissolve early at the end of September this year and hold new elections for national deputies.

  On the night of August nineteenth, Robespierre had just finished a speech at the club. When he returned to the floor, he learned from Couthon of the fighting on the northeastern frontier: one hundred and thirty thousand troops of the Prusso-Austrian Coalition, guided by ten thousand French émigré fighters, had entered French territory at dawn on August eighteenth from the direction of the Duchy of Luxembourg. The interventionists split into two columns: one was moving to attack the border fortress of Verdun (Meuse), while the other prepared to strike at the great northeastern city of Metz (Moselle).

  In fact, as early as late June, André had repeatedly set out a coming reality in the National Legislative Assembly and at the Jacobin Club: with authorization from the monarchs of Prussia and the Austrian Empire, Duc de Brunswick (a Prussian prince) was assembling a huge German federal intervention army. André predicted that, guided by large numbers of French traitors, the Germans would launch a sudden invasion of France from the northeast, through Lorraine and Alsace.

  Unfortunately, whether it was the Brissot camp, the Robespierre–Danton faction, or ordinary Parisians, few were willing to believe André. The first two camps naturally assumed it was merely André’s habitual political intimidation—a tactic designed to extract more military authority and more supplies from the National Assembly, so that he could build his dictatorship in the northern provinces. Under the influence of the anti–André faction inside the Jacobins, the national deputies twice rejected André’s request to establish a unified supreme Command Headquarters in the northern provinces that would combine military, administrative, and judicial authority.

  Parisians likewise believed that General André was crying wolf. Even if France’s position as Europe’s continental hegemon had been declining for many years, she still remained one of the foremost land powers on the continent; no one, they thought, would dare invade sacred France. As for the warning two or three weeks earlier—supposedly triggered by the Brunswick Manifesto—that “the nation is in danger,” and the mass conscription that followed in the Paris region, many dismissed it as nothing more than diplomatic saber-rattling. People and politicians alike were confident that the mutually distrustful monarchs of Prussia and the Austrian Empire would never go to war in earnest with mighty France for the sake of the foolish Louis XVI and the pretty crown on his ugly, oversized head.

  Yet the reality now unfolding was exactly what The God-Favoured had foreseen. Guided by ten thousand noble rebel fighters, one hundred and thirty thousand brutal Germans came on like a plague of locusts. Verdun and Metz were said to be under siege and could fall at any time. Sedan and Verdun were to be the next objectives. After that would come Chalons, Reims…and finally Paris.

  Beginning at six o’clock on the morning of the twentieth, alarm bells rang without pause from countless towers across Paris. People rushed into the streets, asking what had happened. When they learned that France had been invaded by the Prusso-Austrian Coalition, they were stunned, utterly unlike the high spirits with which they had answered the Brunswick Manifesto only weeks earlier.

  A few brave souls clenched their fists and shouted fine slogans—“Long live the Nation!” “Down with the Germans!” “Hang the émigré nobles!”—but they won little applause, and no one answered them. Most onlookers lingered only briefly, then drifted away, dejected, each returning home.

  At a quarter to eight, André—dressed in full uniform—ascended the steps of the Legislative Assembly with Captain Grisel at his side. Behind him, remaining in formation on the square outside the Manège Hall, stood 500 gendarmes and 3,000 volunteers, fully armed and drawn up in review order. On many faces was the excited smile of men about to march to war.

  As André entered the Assembly’s antechamber, deputies, journalists, and members of the public who were lingering there stepped aside and opened a passage as soon as they saw the general’s uniform. They applauded.

  Only the night before, upon learning that the intervention army had invaded France in force, André—still rotating President of the National Assembly—had decisively halted every proceeding in the chamber. He issued an immediate order: beginning on the twentieth, anyone entering the Assembly hall—deputies, journalists, invited guests, or observers—who held, or had ever held, a military rank, whether active or retired, must enter in uniform, to display the spirit of arms.

  At eleven that night, André also had the other members of the “twelve-member committee” summoned together to the second floor of the Assembly building. After two hours of emergency consultation, at one in the morning, the decision committee produced a plan:

  Lieutenant General André would be empowered to establish a Northern Theater Supreme Command, overseeing two corps and holding the highest command over the Army of the North and the Army of the Rhine. Until the Prusso-Austrian Coalition was driven from French soil, the National Guard and militia forces in the northern provinces, along with administrative and judicial officials, were required to obey without reservation the Northern Command Headquarters headed by Lieutenant General André.

  The Northern Command Headquarters would consist of six men. Besides André as supreme commander, it included the two corps commanders, General Berthier and General Kellermann. Deputies Thuriot, Gensonné, and Carnot also held seats. This was plainly a compromise designed to account for the various Jacobin factions. In addition, André, as military supreme commander, held two votes; with the support of Berthier and Thuriot, he could suppress any opposition.

  When André entered the Assembly hall, he found that more than one thousand people—deputies, guests, journalists, and members of the public—had all risen. There was no cheering, no applause, no slogans. Every gaze fixed on André. And in those eyes he read fear, helplessness, anger, and yearning.

  André stopped in the open space between the rostrum and the lectern. As the still-serving rotating President, he ought to have mounted the rostrum. But at that moment he had entered the chamber as supreme commander of the Northern Command Headquarters. An elderly secretary rose at once; taking André’s place as acting President, he invited General André to speak first from the lectern.

  As applause and cheering finally rose from all sides, André walked up with a confident stride. When the noise gradually subsided, he removed his soft-cornered cap bearing the revolutionary cockade and placed it calmly on the lectern. He stood solemn and cold, composed and restrained, every gesture controlled, confident, and at ease. Even facing one hundred and forty thousand troops of the Prusso-Austrian Coalition, he seemed unafraid.

  In the guest section, Robespierre, attending as a representative of the Jacobin Club, watched with envy. In that instant, some of his earlier suspicion and jealousy toward André ebbed. Just as Danton had said at the Commune’s emergency meeting before dawn: across all Paris, the only man who could save the Revolution’s crisis was André—and André alone.

  Of the twelve-member committee, only André, Servan, and Carnot had military experience. Yet General Servan had never commanded in battle, and Captain Carnot’s rank was too low for him to be readily subordinated in a high command. André’s own rank, by contrast, had been earned step by step through merit and victories. The Army of the North was André’s carefully built core force: it not only had over sixty thousand regular troops, but also the provincial volunteer battalions being integrated, the National Guard, and local reserve forces. Marne and Ardennes—soon to be the battlefield—were André’s fundamental power base.

  Robespierre had learned from Danton that André, in the name of uniting the Jacobins and the Assembly’s factions, had personally invited Deputies Gensonné and Carnot into the Northern Command Headquarters.

  For a brief moment, the Incorruptible considered examining his own harsh attitude toward an old friend. But he quickly pushed the thought aside. The only change he made was to move André a few places lower on his blacklist. France, after all, now needed senior commanders willing to shoulder responsibility, to defend her and strike back at foreign intervention. Everything else could wait until the Third National Assembly formally convened.

  …

  On the lectern, André said nothing at first. He slowly swept his gaze across the hall. After roughly half a minute, he suddenly raised his hand in a “V” sign to the audience. The chamber fell instantly silent. Everyone knew it was André’s own gesture for victory, and that in French, as in English, the word for victory began with the letter V.

  Then, in a calm, level tone, André stated a terrible fact.

  “I speak now because we have reached the decisive moment of war. Three days ago, the Prussians, the Austrians, soldiers of the German states, and royalists who have sold themselves to the foreign interventionists—a host of one hundred and forty thousand—advanced along the Moselle and crossed the frontier through Lorraine and Alsace.

  “One hour ago, I received the latest dispatch from the front. The fortress of Verdun has endured a savage bombardment by hundreds of heavy guns of the Prusso-Austrian Coalition. The casualties are severe, and the position is close to breaking. Metz, sabotaged by traitors, has unfortunately fallen. I can state with certainty that the enemy’s next objective is the gateway to Paris—Verdun.”

  At that, the hall erupted in alarm. People had not expected the situation to be so dire, and voices rose in frantic discussion. André ignored it all. He raised his voice slightly and continued.

  “Some may say: this is too terrible—should we seek talks with the Germans, satisfy certain conditions, and try to restore peace. My answer is this: those invaders are devils—insatiable, ruthless, and drenched in blood. Their violence is brutal, their invasion savage, their conduct beyond the worst forms of human depravity. In the towns and countryside that have already fallen, the people live by the land. Their lives are hard, yet there is still basic human joy—girls laughing, children playing.

  “But I have seen the German war machine roll over them, carrying out slaughter with ferocity. I have seen Prussian and Austrian officers in full dress, swords and sabers clinking, boot-nails ringing. I have seen masses of German soldiers—trained, obedient, cruel, and brutal—shamble forward like crawling locusts. The consequences of their cruelty and aggression go far beyond the full catalogue of human crimes.”

  Then André leaned forward and roared, demanding, “Is there still anyone who wants talks—or surrender—so that you may hand your aged parents, your beloved wives and children, and your honored friends to shameless, savage German soldiers, to be abused, trampled, and slaughtered?”

  “No—never!”

  “No talks, no surrender! Fight to the end!”

  “Kill every invader, to the last one!”

  …

  That was the shared cry of the more than one thousand deputies, guests, journalists, and citizens. André nodded with satisfaction. When the fury had poured itself out, he lifted his hand for silence.

  “Yesterday, I received a joint appointment from the National Assembly and the cabinet government to form the Northern Command Headquarters and lead the struggle against the invaders. This will be a great war—a sacred war!

  “Let noble wrath rise like surging waves, to strike back against the plunderers and the beasts that feed on men.

  “Yes—though we have suffered setbacks, we will never surrender, never yield. We will fight to the end.

  “We will fight on in Lorraine and Alsace.

  “We will fight on the Rhine and the Moselle.

  “We will fight, with full confidence, in every city, every town, and every span of our soil.

  “We will fight in the Ardennes and on the Lorraine plateau.

  “We will defend France at any cost.

  “We will never surrender—never!

  “Right now, as supreme commander, I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. You ask: what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory.

  “Victory at all costs.

  “Victory despite all terror.

  “Victory, however long and hard the road may be.

  “For without victory, we cannot survive!

  “I swear: driving out every invader will not be the end of this war—it will be the beginning of the sacred war!

  “I swear: the revolutionary tricolor will fly high over Luxembourg, Brussels, Cologne, Mainz, Koblenz, Berlin, and Vienna!

  “I swear: the Tree of Liberty will be planted across the continent of Europe!”

  …

  With that, André put on his cap, strode down from the lectern, and, amid thunderous cheering and applause, left the Assembly hall without looking back.

  From that moment on, André formally assumed the sacred mission of supreme commander of the Northern Command Headquarters.

  When André returned to the square outside the Assembly, the solemn bells of Notre-Dame rang out again. The supreme commander stood quietly on the last step. When the distant peals faded, he raised his voice to the thousands of officers and men before him, and to the tens of thousands of Parisians who had rushed in at the news.

  “Citizens! Soldiers!

  “The bells that ring are no longer an alarm—they are the call to strike the enemies of the nation!

  “To defeat them, we must dare, dare, and dare again. When we fear nothing, France is saved!

  “As the supreme war commander of a free nation, I now order you: grip your weapons, follow my steps, destroy the Germans who have invaded this sacred soil, and send every traitor of France to the guillotine.

  “If I charge forward, follow me closely.

  “If I turn to flee, shoot me.

  “If I fall, avenge me!”

  …

  Then André took the reins handed to him by Captain Grisel, swung into the saddle, and rode toward the gates in the northeast of Paris. Behind him came thousands of cavalry and infantry, and a vast rolling tide of Parisians from every walk of life.