17 April 1790, an utterly ordinary day—or, as it would later be called in the Republican Calendar, Germinal, the month of budding grass and returning warmth.

  Yet to Chief Prosecutor Pratty, this bright spring morning was hateful.

  His carriage halted 300 yards short of the Chatelet Court—the road ahead choked with citizens and newspapermen clamouring to attend the rehearing of the Babeuf case. The corpulent man had no choice but to descend and waddle the rest of the way on foot, sweat glistening beneath his powdered wig.

  By eight o’clock, the square before the Criminal Court was a seething sea of heads. More arrived by the minute, some from the Paris suburbs, others from as far as Picardy.

  “Look—your adversary!” cried Ma?tre Séchelles, spotting Pratty in the crowd. André followed his companion’s pointing hand and smiled.

  “Adversary? He is unworthy of the name.”

  In the ledgers of the Palais de Justice, Monsieur Pratty, aged forty-seven, was noted as a man who had purchased his post for 100,000 livres—a perfectly legal transaction under the old regime. His competence was moderate at best; he often misquoted the law, and in six years of service had produced no remarkable verdicts.

  His only merit was reliability: once bribed, he remained bought.

  André had another reason to relish this confrontation—he loathed the man’s name. In his former life, a Parisian prosecutor named Pratty had bungled a major investigation, pursuing petty criminals while shielding powerful bosses. That fiasco had forced André into feigned death—and, ultimately, rebirth in this world.

  As they mounted the nine steps to the courthouse, a familiar voice rose above the roar of the crowd. “Hey, Monsieur Franck!” shouted Fréron, notebook in hand, forcing his way through his fellow reporters. “Before the trial begins, could you say a few words to the citizens of Paris?”

  It was a cue they had arranged in advance. André accepted it with theatrical grace.

  Handing his briefcase to Séchelles, he turned, raised his right arm high like a Commandant preparing to issue orders—and the tumult subsided.

  “Silence!” “Let the people’s lawyer speak!” “Quiet, all of you!”

  Within moments, the square fell still. In the front rows, Legendre, Hoche, and young Meldar grinned with satisfaction.

  André drew a deep breath and began:

  “Today I am honoured, as a lawyer of a free people, to stand in this great trial—one that shall be remembered in the history of France as the day 20 million peasants claimed their right to liberty.”

  His voice rang clear against the stone fa?ades.

  “Eight months ago, in the hall of the National Assembly, a company of virtuous men signed the August Decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. For millions of our countrymen, long scorched by the flames of injustice, those documents shone like a beacon of hope—a dawn breaking the long night of bondage.

  “And yet—

  “Eight months later, 20 million peasants remain unfree. Eight months later, 20 million peasants are still crushed beneath feudal chains. Eight months later, 20 million peasants dwell in misery, without land, without property, stripped of dignity. Eight months later, 20 million peasants live in forgotten corners of the nation, driven from their homes, wandering as beggars in their own land.

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  “Therefore, today I speak for my client, Citizen Babeuf—unjustly imprisoned for the cause of these 20 million souls—and I proclaim these truths before the world.”

  The repetition thundered like drumbeats; André had learned the rhythm from Mirabeau himself, who taught that oratory was not about meaning but momentum. Each time André paused, the crowd roared; when he raised his hand, silence fell again. Even the Privates on guard stood rigid, awaiting the next command.

  Then, from his pocket, André drew a cheque—a voided draft he now flourished like a banner.

  “In a sense,” he cried, “I come in the name of 20 million peasants to demand the fulfilment of a promise. When the 800 founders of our new nation inscribed the words of the Declaration, they pledged that all men are born and remain free and equal, endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

  “But to 20 million peasants, that pledge was an empty cheque—stamped ‘insufficient funds’ and returned unpaid.

  “Yet I do not believe the Bank of Justice is bankrupt. I do not believe the Treasury of Opportunity is empty. Therefore, in the name of Babeuf, and of 20 million peasants, I demand that the cheque be honoured!

  “With this faith, we shall work together, pray together, fight together, suffer imprisonment together. With this faith, we shall guard our rights and secure for ourselves the blessings of liberty and justice. With this faith, I, André, shall not fail you today.”

  The crowd erupted—cheers, applause, cries of “Vive André!” Few realised they had just heard a speech borrowed from a century yet to come.

  Flushed with triumph, André strode up the courthouse steps like a Roman orator entering the Senate.

  “Charlatan,” muttered Pratty, trapped in the crowd. He dared not speak aloud—too many sans-culottes around him would happily make him the next victim of mob justice. Instead, he beckoned his clerk close and whispered a few venomous words of instruction.

  From a third-floor window, Judge Faria peered through the curtains, muttering: “Damn fool. Yesterday I even sent Madame Lavoisier to offer him terms, and he turned it into a crusade.” André’s speech, he realised, carried a subtext:

  “You may render any verdict you wish—I have already won. I speak for 20 million, and history will prove your impotence.”

  Elsewhere in the crowd, Maximilien Robespierre, unnoticed, scribbled notes in a small leather book. He recognised the tricks—the deliberate conflation of ideas, the rhythm of conviction overpowering logic, the orchestration of applause.

  “Demagoguery,” he thought, “but effective. Terribly effective.”

  Since arriving in Paris the previous May, the timid lawyer from Arras had studied every orator he could—friends, foes, even those who despised him.

  At another corner, two men conversed quietly: Billaud-Varenne, a member of the Paris Commune’s General Council, and Prieur, deputy to the National Assembly. Both were thirty-four, both lawyers, both ardent Jacobins.

  “Your compatriot André of Reims performed admirably,” said Billaud, with a mixture of admiration and envy.

  Not only had André orchestrated the agitation against the fermiers-généraux that Billaud and Prieur had long advocated, but he had succeeded where they had failed. That very morning, the Assembly had approved a motion from the Tax Committee ordering the creation of a Special Fiscal Tribunal to prosecute forty-eight tax-farmers for crimes against the state—an initiative André himself had engineered.

  “Remarkable,” Prieur admitted. “He understands power: to share profit is to secure loyalty.”

  Still, Prieur’s smile was tight. He distrusted André’s flexibility, his calculated prudence. To him, a true revolutionary should charge forward, fearless and uncompromising.

  There was also personal resentment. Both were graduates of the University of Reims; both disciples of Thuriot—or had been. Prieur’s relations with the professor were sour, and André had once sought work through a rival magistrate instead of appealing to his “fellow alumnus.”

  “I heard,” whispered Billaud, glancing about, “that André expelled Hébert from the Cordeliers Club the very day he took command. Danton was furious—and Marat fled to England because of it…”

  “Enough, my friend,” Prieur interrupted sharply. “A politician must care for outcomes, not process.”

  At the mention of Danton, his irritation flared. That boisterous man from Arcis-sur-Aube claimed a degree from Reims too—but it had been a four-week correspondence course, as had Saint-Just’s.

  Real graduates thought Prieur—like himself, Thuriot, and André—belonged to another breed entirely.

  Note:

  fermiers-généraux: Tax farmers