In the fighting conventions of the age of Frederick the Great, whether a man was a Marshal General or a regimental Major, any front-line commander was expected, before battle, to ride a tall horse back and forth across the field so that every soldier could see, with his own eyes, that his officer stood at the very head of the whole formation. It demanded immense courage, and a willingness to be sacrificed.

  It was nothing like the method of war more than a century later, when mid- and senior-ranking officers could issue orders from cover and, at the very least, would not be the first wave of casualties. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the price paid by the weaker and smaller states of the continent for rising into the company of great powers was that their senior officers—sometimes even their kings—had to face enemy bullets and cannon-fire alongside their soldiers and play a grim “game of execution” together: Gustavus II the Great, Peter the Great, Frederick the Great.

  Roughly 1,000 meters beyond the French breastwork line (the effective range of heavy guns), the Prussian infantry regiment had already dressed into its attacking formation, awaiting the inspection of Colonel Ernst von Massenbach. Under the customary scheme of deployment, the First Battalion served as the main effort, stationed in the center and charged with the decisive assault. It would rush straight into the breastwork, destroy the French infantry within, drive off the gunners on the batteries, and then hold on the spot to the captured forward position.

  Because the fight was uphill, the Second Battalion formed 150 to 200 meters behind the First. Once the main battalion had forced its way in and secured a foothold, the Second would advance to continue the attack and probe the enemy’s second line; if the First failed at the breastwork, the Second could replace it at once. The Third Battalion remained the regimental reserve.

  Wherever Colonel Ernst von Massenbach rode, cheers rose in waves, and the band’s high, brassy tune only fanned the heat. When the commander dismounted and stood with his officers beneath the Black Eagle regimental colour (the single-headed eagle), the drumbeat turned brief and gentle—an unmistakable reminder to the soldiers to ready themselves: the battle was about to begin.

  Before long, Colonel Bach nodded to the courier who had been waiting, signalling that the plan could proceed.

  “Music—The Loyal Soldier’s Song!” the courier barked, issuing the procedural command to the band. At the same time, the colour-bearer moved the Black Eagle flag to the very front of the main battalion, aligning his position with the musicians and drummers.

  The commander began the song in praise of Frederick the Great, and officers and men joined in a loud chorus:

  I shall do my duty in full,

  My station is granted by you,

  I shall work with joy and courage,

  And by such work, I must succeed!

  After two minutes of marching music and singing, the order to advance finally came.

  At the commander’s shouted cadence, the colour-bearer lifted the Black Eagle high and tipped it forward; the captains of the First Battalion drew their sabres one after another; and as the drumbeats rolled, they took the first step. In the ranks, NCOs roared their calls—“Shoulder arms! Step off! Left, right, left!”—driving their men forward, files opening and dressing in sequence, until the formation became an armed human tide that surged toward the French breastwork.

  The Prussian army, famed since the Seven Years’ War, moved like a precise machine of war: once set in motion, it had to run to the end—victory or defeat. The flag was the soul of the unit, and the colonel its central mind. Now that mind walked at the very front, on the left of the battalion staff, eyes fixed straight ahead, listening to the NCOs’ shouts and the drum’s cadence, stepping forward one pace at a time—life or death.

  Within the First Battalion’s ranks, the newly promoted Corporal Wien Hans did not know whether to feel pleased or miserable. As a former Hessian mercenary, the scoundrel Hans had been taken into the regular Prussian army and even granted the rank of Corporal; those were, without question, two pieces of great fortune in the life of this twenty-seven-year-old German.

  Yet when it came to Hans’s experience in the coalition, it was far from pleasant.

  Because the Second Battalion of the First Hessian Infantry Regiment in the western detachment had carried out a massacre of civilians in a mountain village in Lorraine, the French Command Headquarters had listed the Hessians as unforgivable war criminals. On the battlefield, the French would not accept a Hessian surrender; they would execute them on the spot. Driven by fury, the French had placed all Hessian mercenaries serving with the coalition on a death list, outside the protection of the laws of war.

  A week earlier, in the siege and storming of Fort Meloncourt, two Hessian regiments, after failing in their assault, had been struck by a ferocious counter-attack from the French garrison. Once the French learned that these Germans were the butchers who had slaughtered their brothers and sisters, they surged forward in a rage, seizing their bayoneted muskets, leaping out from behind the breastwork, and charging the collapsing Hessian ranks while shouting slogans of revenge for the people of Damloup.

  After that bloody and brutal hand-to-hand fight, only 300 of 2,000 Hessians returned alive to the coalition camp, and Colonel Bach—the man who had led the massacre—fell dead beneath the breastwork. The French garrison, too, paid dearly: nearly 500 were killed or grievously wounded. Yet every Hessian prisoner, once identified, was marched to the forward line and shot in a mass execution.

  Afterward, the coalition Command Headquarters lodged a solemn protest with the French commander-in-chief over the slaughter of prisoners, but André rejected it outright. He declared that Hessian mercenaries who massacred innocent civilians, so long as they remained on French soil, were protected by no law, and that there was no place for humanitarian scruples on the battlefield.

  Knowing they stood in the wrong, the Prusso-Austrian Coalition commander then ordered the dissolution of the Hessian mercenary regiments and battalions, dispersing the remaining survivors as replacements among various Prussian infantry regiments. Hans, who had lived through the butcher’s work of that melee, was “fortunate” enough to be assigned to another regiment that also bore the name Bach—under Colonel Ernst von Massenbach.

  …

  When the Prussian line had closed to 700 or 800 meters from the breastwork, at a single command from the French artillery officer, five guns already laid and ready—three-pounders, six-pounders, and nine-pounders—opened one after another. Solid shot came shrieking through the air, tracing, in the sunlight, lethal arcs of deceptive beauty before plunging down to smash into Prussian heads and ranks.

  A nine-pound ball skimmed just over Corporal Hans’s head; the hellish roar of its passage nearly tore his cap away. The Hessian shook his head and muttered a rustic phrase no one understood, as if thanking the Virgin Mary. But ten meters behind him, another nine-pound shot burst a Second Lieutenant’s skull, and the remaining force, still enormous, “amputated” the lower legs of two unlucky men standing behind that officer.

  Even as a veteran, Hans felt his nerves tightening. He could hear scattered rifle fire—he knew that at 400 meters the enemy’s rifled muskets were already within effective range (with their best range at roughly 150 to 200 meters). He did not dare glance back; behind him there was only harsh breathing, and he could not show fear as a newly made NCO.

  At the colonel’s direction, the band, still marching in place, dropped toward the rear of the formation. Yet the steady drumbeat and the bright piping of fifes did not cease.

  At 300 meters, more than a dozen skirmishers peeled away from the Prussian attacking line and hurried forward, meant to test the French fire. In truth, a skirmisher screen was not the habitual manner of the eighteenth-century Prussian army; it was a practice Colonel Bach had borrowed from French field tactics. Though the commander-in-chief, Duc de Brunswick, remained noncommittal, the idea had won strong support from the coalition’s chief of staff, the Austrian Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg.

  The French defenders did not take the bait. The rifle fire remained sparse and dull. Two skirmishers went down—one shot through the head and killed at once, one struck in the belly, left to writhe and moan on the frozen ground. No one ran to help; not until the Third Battalion had moved would there be any attempt at rescue.

  When the Prussians were a little over 200 meters from the breastwork, they met the first concentrated artillery volley (until then it had been scattered fire). In the thunder of it, the front rank was raked by canister from five guns.

  In an instant, hundreds of iron balls formed a curtain of metal. Several officers at the front, and dozens of soldiers behind them, were slammed to the ground by the devastating blast.

  Flesh and blood flew; bodies piled and broke.

  Without the slightest hesitation, the second rank stepped forward two or three paces, filling the gaps where the first rank had been torn away. The breastwork was still 150 meters ahead—far beyond musket range—so the Prussians had to endure the next, and then the third, wash of canister.

  For a full five minutes, the dense Prussian formation fell as if a scythe were cutting wheat. The first three waves of the line had been replaced again and again; at least 100 men had dropped out of the ranks, nearly half already dead, the rest barely clinging to life. Many would bleed out long before their own stretcher-bearers could reach them.

  Only when the line had closed to about 80 meters did the French musketry suddenly thicken. Countless long barrels rose above the breastwork; white smoke billowed; lead balls drilled into the front ranks with a dull, dreadful thud, and more than a dozen Prussians fell in quick succession.

  Yet the First Battalion, tasked with the main assault, kept moving. Until the command to return fire came, every soldier could only clutch his musket tight, lean into the men beside him, and keep step, their strides nearly identical. Including Colonel Ernst von Massenbach, all were urging themselves on in silence, praying they would not be the next poor devil to meet God.

  Corporal Hans prayed as well. He had lost count of how many bullets had screamed past his ears and over his head. Most missed. But one ball tore straight through the neck of a Sergeant in front of him, severing an artery; blood fountained out, splashing across Hans’s throat and face—hot, nauseating. By grim luck, Hans had “earned” another promotion: from this moment, he was acting squad leader.

  Even so, he could not stop a shiver. He hunched slightly, trying to compress his head and neck into his body. His inner prayers to God and to the Virgin ran without pause. Every man was terrified—every man wanted to flee—yet not a trace of panic showed on their faces. They wore only blankness.

  From 800 meters down to 30, in just a few minutes, this one-sided beating had forced the colour-bearer to be replaced twice. Six officers were killed or wounded. Out of a battalion of 600, nearly one-fifth were gone. Even Colonel Bach’s arm was grazed, blood streaming. And yet Corporal Hans, now in the very front, remained unscathed; French bullets seemed to bend away from him, striking elsewhere.

  “All men—halt! Attention! Present arms!”

  After suffering enemy fire for more than 700 meters, the Prussians finally heard the order to prepare their volley. They meant to pay the French back and let them taste Prussian discipline. Before climbing the breastwork, the battalion would have only one chance to fire.

  “First Company—raise! Aim! Fire! Reload!”

  “Second Company—raise! Aim! Fire! Reload!”

  …

  “Fifth Company—raise! Aim! Fire! Reload!”

  It had to be said: Prussian battlefield drill was markedly superior to that of the French defenders sheltering behind the breastwork. After the five companies—fewer than 500 men now, having already lost more than 100—completed their rolling volleys, the defenders behind cover began to drop in clusters. Roughly 90 to 100 were hit, nearly one-fifth of the French force. The attackers, in this exchange, lost only fifteen.

  As the last company finished firing, the First and Second had already reloaded. Guided by the regimental colour and their officers, the soldiers leveled bayoneted muskets, shouted “Long live Prussia!” and surged into the French behind the breastwork.

  After taking such losses, the French lost the will to hold. With a commander’s permission, they abandoned resistance, grabbed their wounded comrades, and ran toward the second line 2,000 meters to the rear, preparing for the next phase of sniping and harassment. Soon the Prussian First Battalion, unopposed, climbed over the breastwork and held the captured position.

  When the Prussians were within 50 meters, the French gunners abandoned their batteries in turn. They did not have time to destroy every gun (only one nine-pounder had its bore blown), but they did have time to set the powder magazine alight. That disappointed Colonel Bach somewhat: what the Prussian army lacked most at this moment was gunpowder. It was also why his battalion had fired at 30 meters rather than the more usual 50.

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  …

  Lieutenant Colonel Masséna had placed his command post on the second line at the Islettes Pass, the highest ground in the defile. While the sound of firing rolled in from the front, this slovenly battlefield commander lay sound asleep on his camp bed. Masséna had previously told his orderlies that no one was to disturb him until the Prussians began their assault on the main position.

  Just as the Prussians took the first breastwork line, Lieutenant Colonel Suchet arrived at the pass headquarters on his mission. The orderly outside the commander’s room noticed the thin red stripe down the young lieutenant colonel’s breeches—the distinctive mark of a staff officer. After rising to salute, he let Suchet enter.

  “Damn you, you old bastard from Nice—get up!” Suchet shouted the moment he stepped inside, and then he swung a boot and kicked the camp bed crooked.

  “Could you not be quieter, you little fly from Lyon?” Masséna snapped back without even lifting his head.

  But in the next breath, the thick-faced, hawk-nosed man—with black, dense hair and an utterly unkempt air—sprang to the ground, embraced his old friend with warmth, and laughed. Since May, when Suchet had followed General Berthier to the Army of the North, the two had not met.

  Masséna poured his staff friend a cup of red wine and drank straight from the bottle himself. “I heard you refused to go down to an infantry division and take a regiment. What a pity. If you had, you’d be a Colonel by now.”

  Suchet snorted with contempt. “Just like you—drink your way through a battle and ruin the job. They told you to march to support General Macdonald, and you went the wrong way. So a Colonel becomes a Lieutenant Colonel—still only an acting regimental commander. If the gendarmerie reports your sleeping to General Moncey, you might end up as an acting Major.”

  “You won’t betray me, you little bastard!” Masséna glared, then burst out laughing again.

  Suchet privately thought that this man, for all his coarse habits, had a huge voice and a fine timbre; if he ever cleaned himself up, trimmed his edges, and went to sing at the Paris opera, he would probably be wildly popular.

  “Hm. Let the old bastard be a swindler, too—that works. Damn it, I was tricked by him into Bordeaux once; I ended up with nothing, and that’s when I enlisted in the Champagne Composite Regiment!”

  “Heh. Are you thinking of selling me to the opera as well? You’ll be disappointed. The line ahead of you includes Berthier, Moncey, Chassé, Macdonald, and Senarmont. Fortunately, Commander André only wants you to kick my backside as hard as you can.” Masséna laughed smugly, then shot Suchet a vicious look. “Now. Deliver your order. When do the chief of staff and lucky General Moncey intend to command me to abandon this pass?”

  Suchet was not surprised. He simply closed the door first.

  “No time limit. The commander says: when you judge it necessary. The only requirement is this—no guns of nine pounds or heavier, and no ammunition of any kind, are to be left to the Prussians. And do not let your soldiers take too many losses.”

  The regiment under Masséna’s command was not one of André’s direct troops; it was a reinforcement detachment from the Army of the Rhine. Because personal and camp hygiene had been neglected, many officers—including the regimental commander—had contracted dysentery and were convalescing in a rear hospital.

  As a capable commander, Masséna intensely disliked the replacement troops he had received from the old Army of the Rhine. These men had little more than hot blood and a refusal to fear death; they lacked real battle experience and drill. Compared with the Army of the North and the Army of the Meuse, General Kellermann had deliberately lowered enlistment standards in the Rhine army.

  At the same time, Masséna firmly believed in a passage Commander André had delivered the previous year at the Reims camp, when the Champagne Composite Brigade was being formed—words spoken to the reserve officers, including Masséna and Suchet.

  André had said:

  The clever and the lazy are fit to be Generals, because they decide well;

  The clever and the diligent are fit to be staff, because they plan well;

  The lazy and the stupid can serve as junior officers, because they obey;

  The diligent and the stupid—get rid of them early, because they only cause disasters.

  Masséna had always believed that his own blend of cleverness and laziness marked him as the ideal candidate for General, even for Marshal. The only regret was that he had not met a “God-Favoured” commander sooner; instead, every scrap of luck had been seized first by Moncey, by Berthier, by Hoche, and the rest.

  After the war began, Masséna had once thought he would rank behind Chassé, Macdonald, Augereau, Senarmont, and Lefebvre as the ninth commander to be promoted to General—Brigadier General. Unfortunately, this future French General was nearly ruined by the replacement troops from the old Rhine army; he had almost been dismissed a second time.

  A sudden downpour had soaked the orders Colonel Masséna signed for the forward units, blurring the route markings on the page. In itself, it was an error that could have been corrected in time; but the infantry Major leading the regimental vanguard was foolish enough not to confirm the instructions with the courier. In a muddle, he dragged the whole regiment—2,000 men—onto the wrong road, marching north from Vouziers to the fortress of Sedan, instead of northeast toward the fortress of Montmédy, some 60 kilometers away.

  Fortunately, General Moncey learned through the semaphore network that Colonel Masséna’s reinforcements had failed to reach the northeastern fortress line in time. He immediately ordered a nearby infantry regiment to reinforce General Augereau, and the matter did not end in catastrophe. The coalition force attacking Montmédy had also, by coincidence, taken a wrong turn in the rugged Lorraine hills and delayed its own assault.

  Afterward, the gendarmerie command unanimously ruled that Colonel Masséna, as the regiment’s senior commander, bore full responsibility. André intervened in time and vetoed Moncey and the others’ request to dismiss Masséna; he merely reduced the Italian-descended officer from Colonel to Lieutenant Colonel and changed his post from regimental commander to acting regimental commander.

  André knew that this unkempt, loud-voiced fellow was a skilled strategist and a talented tactician. Masséna’s temper ran like fire; in battle he charged forward and would pay any price for victory. At the same time, he lacked administrative ability and cared little for discipline. A measured lesson was enough; there was no need to crush his nature. Soon after, however, André accepted General Berthier’s suggestion and assigned the highly obedient nobleman Major Grouchy as Masséna’s assistant.

  While Suchet and Masséna spoke in private inside the regimental command post, Major Grouchy arrived with the routed defenders from the first line, withdrawing in shabby disorder to the main position. A single Prussian volley had already cost his breastwork battalion ninety-five men, and with more than twenty deserters who vanished outright, Grouchy’s unit had effectively lost an entire company.

  Suchet saw it through the command-post window. He turned back to Masséna and asked, “Why don’t you go and steady your men? They’ve just lost a fight. They look utterly dejected.”

  Masséna did not lift his head. “No need. Grouchy is brave, decisive, and obedient. Before the battle I said everything that needed saying—twice. It’s just that he has always lacked nerve and confidence. So Commander André wants me to temper this nobleman’s son a little. A few more setbacks will be good for him.”

  Suchet believed that André did indeed mean for Masséna to train Grouchy, but that last sentence was certainly Masséna’s own addition. Suchet did not expose the trick. He pulled a note from his pocket and pushed it into Lieutenant Colonel Masséna’s hand.

  “This is the commander’s order. Memorize it—and you must be able to sing it fluently,” Suchet explained. By “the commander,” he meant André.

  Masséna squinted, unfolded the paper, and found that it was a song—titled The Army of the Meuse Is the Mightiest. Musical notes were written above each line, set down by a musician according to melodies André had hummed. The first stanza ran:

  Hey—the Prusso-Austrian Coalition are black crows, trying to trample us underfoot;

  From the Ardennes woods to the banks of the Rhine—hey—our Army of the Meuse is the mightiest;

  Warriors of Commander André, polish your bayonets bright and grip your guns tight;

  We must grow tougher with every fight, and die with the enemy on the field—die with the enemy on the field.

  …

  This was, of course, André’s adaptation of an old march: he altered a few lines and, for the first time, inserted his own name, to cultivate reverence for the commander in the ranks. At root, the Army of the Meuse was the true core of André’s three great armies; most of its commanders had grown out of the Champagne Composite Brigade and then merged with the former Army of Moselle, the central group.

  Especially in this patriotic war, the Army of the Meuse—110,000 strong—carried the weight of the main front and the final decisive battle. To sing The Army of the Meuse Is the Mightiest was, in truth, no exaggeration. As for the lyrics themselves, that hardly mattered; anything kept pace with the times and was revised as needed.

  The Marseillaise, as France’s first military anthem and national song, had been altered countless times over more than two centuries; and the Russians’ famous Farewell of Slavianka had at least three major versions. Over a single century, its lyrics changed more than twenty times. One further note: it seemed that everywhere in the world, except perhaps in a few places, people hated crows.

  As a staff officer close to the Command Headquarters core, Suchet naturally understood André’s intent. Having Lieutenant Colonel Masséna and his team sing the Army of the Meuse war song first was a chance for the “old bastard” to redeem himself and regain his Colonel’s rank sooner.

  Besides, Masséna’s voice truly was excellent. He had once used operatic arias popular at the theatre to swindle more than a few wealthy young ladies out of affection and money. And since Masséna had never possessed much sense of shame, the task of praising Commander André shamelessly was exactly the sort of thing he would seize with tears, shouts, and eager competition.

  Sure enough, Masséna promptly switched from commander to musician, shutting himself in the command post to rehearse The Army of the Meuse Is the Mightiest again and again. Afterward he meant to teach the entire regiment to sing it—until they could sing it well. As for the direction of the troops, Masséna delegated it to the staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel Suchet.

  Suchet, clever enough not to overstep his place, went out at once to find Major Grouchy and returned regimental command to the front-line commander, adding only two points: first, preserve strength and avoid needless casualties; second, no nine-pound guns or heavier, and no ammunition, were to be left to the Prussians.

  “The heavy guns are too weighty,” Major Grouchy asked. “In the middle of a fight, the gunners may not be able to withdraw safely.”

  Suchet smiled. “Tell the gunners they can blow the bores in advance. In any case, they’ll be recast after the war. The Reims arsenal has already sent the Army of the Meuse twenty new guns—nine-pounders and twelve-pounders, the André cannon: lighter, longer-ranged, more powerful, more accurate, and simpler, safer, and more convenient to load.”

  …

  After the Prussians seized the first line at the pass, the Second Battalion of Colonel Ernst von Massenbach probed the French main position. But within roughly ten minutes, the Prussians were smashed back by a storm of solid shot from the French line, suffering dozens of casualties.

  Reports from the front stated that the French position held fifteen guns in total, with nine-pounders and twelve-pounders making up at least one-third. This time, Colonel Ernst von Massenbach did not arrogantly discard artillery support and try to fight alone. While reorganizing behind the breastwork, he waited with notable patience for his own ten heavy guns to arrive.

  Fifty minutes later, the Prussian gun line was fully deployed, and the artillery duel with the French lasted a full three hours. By sheer chance, a Prussian twelve-pound shot struck the French powder magazine and triggered a catastrophic explosion, throwing the French line into chaos.

  Seeing it, Colonel Ernst von Massenbach decisively ordered the whole regiment to attack again. Twenty minutes later, the Prussian infantry took the main line of the Islettes Pass at the cost of only single-digit losses, because the French had already fled the field. The ecstatic Prussian Crown Prince even ordered a soldier to climb to the highest point of the pass and plant the Crowned Black Eagle flag of the Prussian royal house and the Hohenzollern family upon the summit.

  The capture of the Islettes Pass meant that the Prusso-Austrian Coalition had fully opened the road into the rich Champagne plain; like floodwaters and beasts, it could now surge toward Reims or Chalons.

  Yet even as the coalition celebrated, that night Duc de Brunswick and his chief of staff, the Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg, summoned Colonel Ernst von Massenbach and required him to report, in detail, a particular point of the battle—no omissions, no carelessness.

  When the colonel left, only the Prussian commander-in-chief and the Austrian chief of staff remained in the room.

  “Heh. An explosion?” Duc de Brunswick mocked himself, then looked at the Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg with deep unease. “Ever since we crossed the French border, whenever the moment matters, some kind of luck we do not want suddenly descends—leading us by the nose from Longwy to this mountain pass.”

  The Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg nodded in full agreement. The French defenses at this vital pass had been absurdly weak—only 2,000 men and twenty guns. A single Prussian infantry regiment, in five hours, at the modest cost of a little over 200 men, had taken two defensive lines, destroyed nearly all the guns, and captured eight small-calibre pieces. It was hard to believe.

  A week earlier, at Fort Meloncourt, General Clermont-Clifford and his 20,000 troops, reinforcements included, had besieged the French for three days, lost more than 4,000 men in total, and still failed to take a fortress that was not even particularly strong. That failure had cut off Duc de Brunswick’s plan to march the coalition’s main force north to rest and reorganize.

  Both Marshals, clear-headed men, could already sense the French commander’s design: to keep drawing the Prusso-Austrian Coalition toward Champagne, stretching its supply line longer and longer without limit, and then…

  Even though Duc de Brunswick and his chief of staff had carefully considered the supply question and stationed large forces on key roads, at bridges, and near fortresses, this was still inside France. Everywhere there were hostile, furious eyes fixed on the invaders. After the massacre at Damloup, even the French émigré detachment—noble exiles and soldiers—demanded harsh punishment for the perpetrators, only to be rebuffed outright by the Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg.

  Before long, some émigré units slipped away even before reaching Verdun. With the tacit consent, even encouragement, of certain officers, many disguised themselves as peasants and deserted the Prusso-Austrian Coalition. With prior casualties added in, the émigré detachment, now fewer than 4,000 men, refused to cooperate actively in combat.

  …

  To retreat while matters still looked favorable was impossible. The enraged monarchs and nobles of Prussia and Austria would tear the two Marshals to pieces. Yet to stand still was equally impossible: the more than 40,000 coalition soldiers and horses at the front consumed a staggering quantity of food each day.

  “Try negotiations first. Keep probing the French for their final intentions,” the Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg said at last—less a suggestion than an inevitability.

  Had the same words come from Duc de Brunswick, his unruly nephew might have argued. But the Austrian chief of staff spoke as a neutral party, and Crown Prince Wilhelm III did not dare disregard his opinion.

  Then the problem became the envoy. The first staff officer, Goethe, had not even met André before being detained and placed under house arrest in Reims. The French explanation was that Goethe was from Hesse—born in Hesse—and time was required to determine whether the poet bore any guilt in the Damloup massacre. Thankfully, he still enjoyed the treatment due to a diplomatic envoy; he had merely lost freedom of correspondence.

  The coalition’s second envoy was sent to protest the French execution of Hessian prisoners at the forward line. André expelled him with blunt contempt, sending back only one sentence:

  “The prerequisite for negotiations is that you hand over every Hessian mercenary.”

  Fortunately, among the coalition’s 40,000-odd men there were now no Hessian mercenary units left in the order of battle. It barely met the condition André had set in advance.

  Just as the two Marshals were considering a third choice, the Prussian Crown Prince returned. This time, Wilhelm III, the coalition’s deputy commander, raised no objection to bilateral talks. He recommended his own secretary, Wilhelm von Humboldt, as chief envoy, and his aide-de-camp, Major Georg, as the military deputy.