On August 25, at the Bacourt camp—Northern Command Headquarters.

  In the conference room, Carnot sat upright at an oval table—an uncommon sight in itself—still in full uniform, yet visibly ill at ease. Without thinking, he tugged at his brand-new blue field officer’s coat, a uniform the Legislative Assembly had hastily granted him before he left Paris. By unwritten convention, a national deputy’s rank ought to be Brigadier General; but Carnot, retired as an engineer Captain, had accepted only the rank of Colonel.

  In the past few days, dispatches from the front kept arriving. Many signs suggested that the Prusso-Austrian Coalition’s main force would abandon the plan to establish a winter headquarters along the northern frontier, and instead continue south to strike at the fortress of Verdun. Once that key crossroads was taken, they could push through the Argonne forest—those rolling hills—and emerge from the pass nearest to Chalons into the open, flat expanse of Greater Champagne. And yet André remained unmoved. He still kept the main strength of the former Army of the Moselle positioned around Charleville-Mézières in Ardennes, the fortress of Sedan, and the fortress of Montmédy.

  True, two days earlier, the two infantry brigades under General Augereau—newly promoted—had successfully ambushed careless Hessian mercenaries near Montmédy, even killing a General from one of the German states. But that only delayed the coalition’s advance into Ardennes; it did nothing to alter the grave danger now bearing down along the Marne axis.

  Carnot did not believe the street gossip claiming André would defect to the Austro-Prussian interventionists. In truth, on the émigré formations’ kill list, André would rank near the very top. Carnot dismissed every other explanation in turn, until only one possibility remained: the young commander was doing this deliberately.

  To Carnot’s left sat General Berthier of the Army of the North, a soldier who had once hovered between the Defenders and the Constitutionalists. Yet after Louis XVI’s failed flight, Berthier had thrown in his lot entirely with André—then the Marne’s chief prosecutor and commander-in-chief of the Champagne Composite Brigade.

  From that day onward, no one dared mention Berthier’s “Royalist Party General” past again. Perhaps because they were both men of the technical arms, Berthier—never talkative—and the taciturn Carnot privately conversed more than anyone else did, their discussions even drifting at times to Paris politics, family, and friends.

  On Carnot’s right sat Gensonné, likewise a deputy, serving as commissioner to the Army of the Rhine. At this moment, the sharp-tongued parliamentarian wore a fawning grin as he faced André in the oval chair of the presiding seat. Whenever the young commander offered an opinion on any matter, the shameless Gensonné was always the first to rise in support, loudly acclaiming it—solely to win a word or two of André’s approval.

  “A lapdog with his throat in someone’s fingers,” Carnot judged him coldly, in his own mind.

  Across from Gensonné, on André’s right, sat General Kellermann, commander of the Army of the Rhine. Compared with the army’s brazen commissioner, the commander himself was scarcely better. Throughout the meeting, Kellermann kept his eyes lowered, wearing the face of a meek and compliant “good man,” never objecting to a single one of André’s proposals. As for Deputy Thuriot—André’s former professor of law—there was even less to say.

  Following the practice André had established as rotating president, he had long since ordered his aide to circulate the agenda to the other five members before the meeting began.

  The first item was a resolution appointing General Berthier as Chief of the General Staff of the Northern Command Headquarters.

  The second was to accept Berthier’s request to resign as commander of the Army of the North, and to appoint General Fardel as the new commander of the Army of the North, with General Hoche as deputy commander, and Brune—promoted to Brigadier General—as chief of staff.

  The third was to restore the former Army of the Moselle—or, more precisely, to create the Army of the Meuse. Its area of operations would correspond to that of the former Army of the Moselle. General Moncey, formerly the central-column commander under the Army of the North, would take command of the Army of the Meuse; General Custine, currently with the Army of the Rhine, would serve as deputy commander. Within the next week, Custine would lead 30,000 troops to the Marne to join the Army of the Meuse.

  All three passed unanimously, as expected.

  Berthier’s ability was indeed exceptional, but so were his flaws: his indecisive temper suited him only as André’s chief of staff, a counsellor and planner. General Moncey, who had once personally commanded the Army of the North’s central column and won the second Battle of Tournai, deserved an army command by right.

  As for placing General Fardel over the Army of the North, and naming Custine deputy to the Army of the Meuse—these were markers the young commander deliberately set up for every officer to see: even a General outside the “inner circle,” so long as he obeyed and carried out André’s orders, could be entrusted with high command.

  The fourth item was the creation of a Gendarmerie Command under the Northern Command Headquarters, placing the gendarmerie forces of the Army of the North, the Army of the Meuse, and the Army of the Rhine under one unified administration. From this point forward, no army commander would be allowed to interfere in his own army’s gendarmerie affairs. In personnel terms, Chassé—promoted to General, and born in the Netherlands—would become Commander of the Gendarmerie, and also the Northern Command Headquarters’s Chief Judge Advocate.

  This was, in essence, André tightening headquarters control over every army’s internal discipline. The old commissioner system, crude and blunt as it was, no longer satisfied the young commander’s need to control effectively the northern theater’s 160,000 troops—their operations and their discipline. The newly founded Gendarmerie Command would also possess nearly 20,000 mounted and foot troops, forming a strategic reserve directly in headquarters’ hands.

  Carnot noticed Kellermann’s mouth twitch several times—perhaps he meant to summon the courage to object. In the end, the Army of the Rhine’s commander abandoned the effort, because Kellermann had just heard Gensonné—the army commissioner—stand up yet again as the first to endorse André’s proposal for the Gendarmerie Command.

  André was not merely using the gendarmerie to hold the armies in check. He meant them to conduct intelligence collection and counter-espionage as well, especially to dig out hidden spies and traitors inside the forces. The Army of the Rhine, in screening senior commanders, had performed abysmally: it had even allowed a Colonel with Royalist Party leanings to become a fortress commander. After Metz fell, Kellermann and Commissioner Gensonné naturally lost whatever nerve they might have had to resist this resolution.

  As a former professional officer, Carnot understood the double-edged nature of such a command: it could monitor the armies’ highest levels, and it carried the scent of dictatorship. Yet in the nation’s dire hour, Carnot remained silent. In truth, once both Gensonné and Kellermann had moved to André’s side, any objection from Carnot alone became meaningless.

  In addition, André reshuffled the army commissioners on a wide scale. Carnot would become the First Commissioner of the Army of the North; Thuriot the First Commissioner of the Army of the Rhine; Gensonné would be reassigned as the First Commissioner of the Army of the Meuse. The word “First” was used because each army was meant to have three to five commissioners—yet with Assembly membership already fallen to roughly 300, there were not enough deputies to fill the remaining seats. That would have to wait for the next—third—National Assembly.

  In tandem with this, the three army commanders and Gendarmerie Commander Chassé would all enter the Northern Command Headquarters itself. The command headquarters would expand to nine members: Commander André; Chief of Staff Berthier; Army of the North Commissioner Carnot; Army of the Meuse Commissioner Gensonné; Army of the Rhine Commissioner Thuriot; Army of the North Commander Fardel; Army of the Meuse Commander Moncey; Army of the Rhine Commander Kellermann; and Gendarmerie Commander Chassé.

  At this moment, the three newly appointed commanders—Fardel, Moncey, and Chassé—had already been summoned to Bacourt the previous night and were waiting in the adjacent sitting room. Once Captain Grisel delivered the notice, the three entered together, took their seats at the oval table, and formally joined the Northern Command Headquarters.

  Only then did the meeting turn to its true core.

  At André’s signal, General Berthier, now Chief of Staff, rose at once. Taking up a pointer, he walked to the front of the room, drew the wall-length curtain aside, and revealed a vast military map of the northern theater.

  Berthier’s low voice immediately filled the chamber.

  “…At present, under the Northern Command Headquarters, the Army of the North, the Army of the Meuse, and the Army of the Rhine together comprise 160,000 troops. Beyond that, the northern provinces also have 50,000 National Guards, 30,000 volunteers, and 30,000 reserve troops—110,000 more that can be called upon at any time…”

  160,000 plus 110,000 made 270,000—a figure that sounded immense, yet in truth yielded little usable strength.

  The Army of the North’s 50,000 were confined to a line running Nieuport–Torhout–Walem–Nivelles to the Atlantic, holding the central-southern regions of East and West Flanders to guard against an Austrian Netherlands thrust southward and a right-wing attack by the Bohemian Corps. Over the past two weeks, the Austrians had probed several times, and each time the French repulsed them. Thus, for the duration of the war, the Army of the North would find it difficult to send aid eastward toward the Marne.

  The Army of the Meuse, 60,000 strong, was currently resisting coalition attacks in two places: the Ardennes forest, under General Lefebvre, and the Montmédy fortress, under General Augereau. There it faced pressure from the north (the Bohemian Corps) and the east (the Prussian corps). The maximum force that could be detached southward toward the Marne was 40,000, and those troops were presently concentrated at the Sedan camp. In addition, within a week, General Custine—already under orders—would bring 30,000 troops from the south of the Meuse province, swinging around to the Marne’s capital.

  When that occurred, the Army of the Rhine’s strength would drop to 20,000. Until the Army of the Meuse, as the Northern Command Headquarters’s main striking force, won its battle, the Army of the Rhine could only cling to the Nancy–Strasbourg line. Fortunately, there were signs that the coalition’s left column might halt its southward movement and instead shift west.

  In other words, if the Prussians altered their invasion strategy and drove hard to the south, André would meet them on the plains and rolling hills of the Marne with 70,000 troops, facing the main column of Duc de Brunswick—80,000—and a portion of the Crown Prince’s left column shifted westward—about 10,000—making 90,000 in total.

  70,000 against 90,000: the French would be at a clear numerical disadvantage; and in quality, too, the French field armies could not yet match the famed Prussian corps. The previous two “victories” had been woodland skirmishing and prepared ambushes. A face-to-face battle in the open—perhaps even André, as commander, lacked the confidence to promise success. Therefore, they had to find every means to reduce the interventionists’ numbers and to expand their own.

  Yet the so-called 110,000 strategic reserve—50,000 National Guards, 30,000 volunteers, and 30,000 reserve troops—hardly inspired confidence after the string of defeats since April. In peacetime the National Guard might keep order, but in war it was fit, at best, for the aftermath: clearing battlefields, aiding the wounded, guarding prisoners, and other simple duties.

  The 30,000 volunteers from the provinces, though untrained, were of good quality and high morale. Unfortunately, since June, André had ordered them all held at the new recruit camp at Soissons, where they had to undergo ninety days of brutal training under sadistic instructors. The one consolation was that within two weeks, the Soissons camp would begin sending 10,000 new troops as reinforcements to the Army of the Meuse.

  As for the 30,000 reserve troops in Ardennes and Marne, outsiders like Carnot, Kellermann, Gensonné, and Fardel did not trust their fighting value—save André and his own officers. Per André’s instruction, Berthier offered no further explanation.

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  In fact, those 30,000 reserve troops were far stronger than the 10,000 recruits about to graduate from Soissons. More than half of the reservists had undergone over ten months of regular training, and among the rest, around 80% had at least six months. In ordinary times, the reserve forces of Marne and Ardennes often trained with regular units in many forms of exercise, improving both combat capability and cohesion.

  All told, within two weeks, the southward-moving component of Moncey’s Army of the Meuse would expand to at least 100,000 men. And as for Duc de Brunswick and his Prussian corps—at this very moment, they faced a crucial dilemma.

  Plainly, the Prussian Crown Prince had moved first, successfully persuading both Holy Roman Emperor Francis II and the Prussian king Frederick Wilhelm II. The two sovereigns jointly wrote to the coalition commander, Duc de Brunswick, ordering him to march south at once and unite with the Crown Prince’s forces, then strike west—toward Paris—and end the French war entirely before Christmas of 1792.

  There was another decisive reason: the Russians were again invading Poland on a large scale, and Austria and Prussia needed to seize and annex portions of Polish territory before Russia could fully take Warsaw and force a settlement.

  Poland’s problem had deep roots. Once a European great power with a territory larger than France—over 700,000 square kilometers against France’s 550,000—and a population of 12,000,000, Poland rapidly fell into a state where its neighbors could carve it at will. One major cause was its peculiar noble republic and elective kingship.

  Under the “liberum veto,” any parliamentary resolution could be blocked by a single dissenting voice. This made effective governance impossible: from the mid-seventeenth century onward, over roughly a hundred years, fifty-five sessions of parliament were held, and forty-eight produced no decisions at all. Political chaos weakened national power, making Poland an object of contest among stronger neighbors.

  Historically, France and Poland shared a special bond that was hard to sever. Not only because of the valor of Polish legions, the creation of the Warsaw Grand-Duc state, and the great musicians and scientists who lived in Paris—Chopin, and Marie Curie, twice a Nobel laureate—but more importantly because French historians, left and right alike, long believed that Poland’s desperate resistance against Russia, Prussia, and Austria in its final days helped, in some measure, to save the French Revolution.

  For that reason, beginning with last year’s Legislative Assembly, André had used his influence to persuade cabinet ministers to sell—by smuggling—several thousand old rifles and fifty artillery pieces to Poland. He had also secretly dispatched a military mission of a little over a hundred men to train Polish soldiers. Naturally, both the weapons and the personnel were paid for in gold or grain.

  From August 10 to August 20, with Louis XVI suspended and the new cabinet slow to form, André, as rotating president, effectively served as France’s head of state for ten days.

  During that period, André received an old friend: the new Polish ambassador, Comte de Grabowski, said to be the only son of King Stanis?aw II. André also accepted the ambassador’s credentials in his capacity as head of state. One regret remained: the beautiful Polish Comtesse named Julia Gabello did not accompany her husband—she was said to be ill, recovering at an estate outside Warsaw.

  In that same span, the Polish ambassador pressed relentlessly for French aid. A few weeks earlier, Russian forces had broken through the Bug line and approached Warsaw. Yet with the Prusso-Austrian Coalition’s 140,000 invading France itself, André and the Legislative Assembly had no leisure to concern themselves with Poland’s distant war.

  In late August, just as André, now supreme commander of the north, reached Reims and the Bacourt camp, Comte de Grabowski received a letter from King Stanis?aw II. The next day, the ambassador asked to withdraw the credentials he had already presented and prepared to return to Warsaw. The king had formally declared defeat, ordering Polish forces to cease resistance and submit on the spot to Russian review and reorganization.

  Before leaving, however, the ambassador left his private secretary in Paris: a lancer Captain, Józef Wybicki. A few days later, the Polish cavalry officer renounced Paris’s comfortable life and, together with three Polish soldiers then living in exile in France—Jasiński, Su?kowski, and Ko?ciński—traveled as a group of four to the Northern Command Headquarters at the Reims Bacourt camp.

  With a letter of introduction from Comte de Grabowski, Wybicki and the others met the supreme commander without difficulty. André refused their request to fight, but allowed them to remain as observers from a neutral state, to watch the glorious battle soon to come.

  …

  After the military conference of August 25 ended, Carnot and Fardel, Thuriot and Kellermann, returned to their respective army positions. Until the Army of the Meuse shattered the Prusso-Austrian Coalition’s great Prussian corps, the Army of the North and the Army of the Rhine had only one duty: organize defenses in place, and do not launch attacks.

  General Moncey had already departed to take over the Army of the Meuse at the Sedan camp. Under the plan, Moncey would lead 40,000 troops one hundred kilometers south by September two, marching to Suippes and uniting there with General Custine’s 30,000, arriving by a circuitous route from Nancy.

  As for Gensonné, commissioner of the Army of the Meuse, André sent him sixty kilometers away to the Soissons recruit camp after the meeting, to supervise training.

  Once concentrated, the main Army of the Meuse would carry more than one hundred guns and push thirty kilometers eastward, organizing defenses around Sainte-Menehould in the Argonne hills.

  The frontier between Lorraine and Ardennes–Marne was forest, plateau, hills, ravines, and rivers; only two low passes were suitable for great armies: Montmédy in the north, and Sainte-Menehould in the central-south. Thanks to André’s accurate foresight, Montmédy had been given sufficient attention before the war began.

  Beginning in April, the Montmédy fortress underwent major strengthening and repairs. Under its commander, General Augereau, the garrison grew from a single infantry regiment to an infantry division of nearly 10,000 by early August, including over sixty guns. By late August, the Prusso-Austrian Coalition had attacked Montmédy three times; each time it suffered losses and withdrew empty-handed.

  In the Sainte-Menehould sector, the Argonne forest had four exits to the west: Chêne-Popule on the left; Croix-aux-Bois and Grandpré in the middle; and Islettes on the right, the main road. Since the mountain roads from Montmédy toward Ardennes had already been blocked by the French, these four forest corridors at Sainte-Menehould were the only routes by which Duc de Brunswick’s Prussian corps could break through toward Reims and Champagne, and march on Paris.

  Because Suippes lay only twenty-three kilometers from Chalons-en-Champagne to the south, the latest headquarters plan was this: once the Great Army of the Meuse (after adding staff and resources) had taken shape, André would personally lead a strategic general reserve of 40,000 men, and move the Northern Command Headquarters from Reims to Suippes—forty-five kilometers away—rather than to Chalons-en-Champagne as originally intended.

  …

  In Paris, the Legislative Assembly, the cabinet, and the Paris Commune saw what they most did not wish to see: the Prusso-Austrian Coalition continued south. It was said that 100,000—perhaps more—Prussians and Germans were marching on Verdun.

  At the same time, André’s Northern Command Headquarters seemed—so Paris believed—to have been frightened by the enemy. It had thrown itself entirely into the eastern districts of Marne and Ardennes, organizing a purely passive defense.

  Therefore, Paris had to act.

  The great banner—“The Fatherland is in danger”—still flew above City Hall and Notre-Dame. Soon it spread to every bridge over the Seine, hung before each statue. Almost overnight, recruiting slogans, pushed by the Legislative Assembly and the Commune, covered the walls of streets and alleys throughout the city.

  The stirring strains of “La Marseillaise” were sung again and again, moving all who heard it. In Paris, among 700,000 citizens, nearly everyone now knew the song. In the opera house, on the boulevards, in the lanes, and in every corner of the city, the cry was the same: “Citizens, take up arms—march on, march on!”

  Under immense pressure, War Minister General Servan finally accepted the Commune’s proposal: to send an emergency reinforcement to Marne—an improvised force of 30,000 armed with pikes—raised within the city. But André learned of it and ordered it halted.

  The supreme commander of the north declared publicly in Figaro: the front-line armies would not accept men who had not undergone at least three months of regular military training. Any violators, he had authorized the gendarmerie to expel from the theater outright—Marne and Ardennes. Anyone who resisted would be treated as rebels.

  Since the arrogant parliamentary dictator did not want their pike army, the Commune organized the sans-culottes to build forts and earthworks in the northern suburbs and toward the northeast. Yet just as André had predicted, the undisciplined, unorganized rabble took their daily pay of forty sous and shirked their labor; in more than ten days they had not even managed to dig a single trench encircling a fort.

  War Minister General Servan saw this with his own eyes during an inspection. Furious, he wrote to the Commune in hard terms, demanding that they restrain the rogues of the sans-culottes detachments—otherwise, the War Minister, together with Interior Minister Roland, would slash the “national salvation” funds allocated to the Commune.

  At dusk, Chaumette, a member of the Paris Commune, came to the cabinet’s administrative building west of the Tuileries. In the office of the Minister of Justice, he met Danton—and Danton’s seal-keeper, Fabre.

  Danton wore a crimson long-skirted ceremonial coat. He lounged comfortably on the bench behind his desk, drinking champagne in great gulps. Ten minutes earlier, the bold Minister of Justice had just won a debate against his cabinet colleagues; the violent fury of his shouted gestures and his pounding fist had left five ministers shaken.

  “Do not worry,” Danton said with a laugh, gesturing toward the bar for Chaumette to help himself. “The cabinet will not cut the patriotic funds for the pike detachments.”

  Chaumette explained, “I only wish to ask, citizen minister—can Marat and Hébert be paroled early from the labor camp?” Then he added, “This is the unanimous wish of the Commune committee.” In truth, the Commune’s resolutions no longer dared to confront the Legislative Assembly and the cabinet directly.

  Danton burst into laughter. He signaled Fabre to take a document from a drawer—an order signed by the Minister of Justice himself. Danton handed it straight to Chaumette.

  “This pardon I signed two hours ago. Tomorrow morning, you may go to the Versailles quarry and bring Marat and Hébert back to Paris.”

  “Does Reims know?” Chaumette asked cautiously. After his leaders had repeatedly suffered at André’s hands, the young doctor’s former arrogance had been tempered.

  Danton only smiled without speaking. At his signal, Fabre closed the door and replied with a question of his own: “The prison guards at the quarry are Javert’s men. Do you think André will not know? Of course, as a trade, the Commune must accomplish two things.”

  “What two?” Chaumette demanded at once.

  Fabre continued, in accordance with Danton’s will:

  “First: transfer the Louis-Capet family from the main building of the Temple fortress to an adjacent tower. Remember—this transfer must be made with great pomp, so that Parisian nobles all learn of it. As the reason, say that someone is plotting a prison break, and the absolute security of the prisoners must be ensured. Yes—prison. From tomorrow onward, all official documents will refer to the Temple fortress as the Temple prison. Also from tomorrow onward, this ‘king’s prison’ will be jointly guarded by the National Guard and the Paris Commune.

  “Second: once Marat and Hébert return, the Commune’s Supervisory Committee must resume its work—take up again the zeal of the insurrectionary Commune—destroy the hidden Royalist Party forces in Paris, seize them, try them, execute them, and thereby consolidate the great gains of the Revolution of August 10.

  “These two matters require no regard for the Northern Command Headquarters’s opinion. Remember only one thing: do not touch André, nor his relatives, nor his friends in Paris. If you cannot tell, you may ask the Deputy Director of Police, Javert, for assistance—he will send experienced patrolmen to supervise from the side.”

  Fabre’s last sentence all but told Chaumette that the purge the Commune was about to undertake had André’s assent—or, at least, that it was a scheme he planned in the shadows.

  As for André’s motive, no one said it aloud. With Chaumette’s station and horizon, he could not read the answer from the air; therefore he went to the carpenter’s rented house to seek Robespierre’s help.

  After listening, Robespierre remained silent for more than half an hour. Then he opened his eyes and looked at Chaumette with a faint, enigmatic smile.

  “One must admit: André is most skilled at playing with political intrigues. Do not worry—André and his Northern Command Headquarters harbor no malice toward the Commune, at least not in these two matters. For reasons of secrecy, there is only one sentence I can give you: everything is for victory—for winning the war.”

  …

  At headquarters in Reims, André told the truth to Commander Chassé of the gendarmerie, and to Marey, head of the domestic branch of the Military Intelligence Office.

  “Gentlemen,” André said, “everything I am doing now is in expectation that a new Battle of the Three Kings will be reenacted after 214 years—around Sainte-Menehould.”

  The Battle of the Three Kings, the battle of the Wadi al-Makhazin—also called the Portuguese-Moroccan War—occurred when King Sebastian I of Portugal, seeking to conquer Morocco under the banner of crusade against unbelievers, landed at Tangier in June of 1578 with 25,000 mercenaries. The deposed Moroccan king al-Mutawakkil surrendered and joined the Portuguese, while the reigning king Abd al-Malik marched out with 50,000 infantry and cavalry to fight.

  During the campaign, Abd al-Malik lured the enemy deeper and conserved his strength, retreating inland. The inexperienced Portuguese monarch, overconfident and rash, advanced toward Ksar el-Kebir, deep into arid hills. Heat and long marching drained Portuguese strength. On August 4, Abd al-Malik seized the moment and launched a sudden attack with 50,000 men…

  The result was a sweeping victory: Portugal lost 8,000 dead and 15,000 captured, and King Sebastian drowned in the river as he fled. The battle not only freed Morocco from a perilous encirclement, but also ruined Portugal—the first ocean-going empire in human history—by destroying the national fortune it had accumulated over nearly a century, and it planted the seed for the Portuguese succession crisis two years later.

  “And now,” André continued, “the shape of this war is like the Battle of the Three Kings. The coalition is stronger than we are, and there are thousands of traitors helping them in the open and in the dark. To win in the end, we must imitate the Moroccan king: lure the enemy deep, conserve our strength, and compel the Prussian corps to advance rashly—then fight the decisive battle on ground chosen for our advantage. Moreover, the fog and rain of the Lorraine forest, the slick roads, the long and grueling supply line, and the many diseases of campaigning—these will all be our most faithful allies.”

  André paused, then went on:

  “Of course, the coalition commander is not a fool. By Duc de Brunswick’s past record, he is an excellent commander. I have no doubt he can see through my strategic purpose. But unfortunately for him, the Prussian prince is not the final decision-maker in this war. The na?ve and lovable Crown Prince has already done me a great favor. Now, I must use a series of vicious events in Paris to bring pressure from all sides to bear upon the coalition commander—pressure he cannot endure—until he is forced to walk, of his own accord, into the ambush I have designed.”