In the corridor leading to the kitchen, the incoherent Father Pansmon was matching the swine-butcher Legendre drink for drink. Disdaining the servers’ small goblets, they simply raised the bottles to their lips. Nearby, General Dillon shook his head and tossed a server a 5-livre silver coin to keep watch over the two shiny-scalped drunkards.
Lucile’s family remained together chatting. Monsieur Claude kept urging his wife, Annelette, again and again to see that their dearest elder daughter, Adélaïde, be married off soon. Mada Anne-Françoise Boissière said nothing; she watched her daughter and son-in-law brazenly kissing in the bedroom. Adélaïde gazed longingly at Robespierre’s back, sincerely hoping he would honor the promise he had made to her six months earlier.
In the afternoon, André entered the comrcial courtyard and, before going upstairs, ran into Danton and Brune.
Seeing André in a Colonel’s uniform, Captain Brune, likewise in uniform, drew himself up, tightened his abdon, and gave a regulation salute. André returned it, though his manner felt decidedly irregular.
Danton, half-squinting, gave André a once-over and quipped, “My dear deputy prosecutor, Colonel—there’s a General upstairs. Do rember to make that salute proper.”
“Damn it, I’ll change and co back.” With that, André strode into a nearby tailor’s shop, to Danton’s roaring laughter. Brune, less free to indulge himself, only suppressed a grin with so pain.
Seizing the mont, Danton turned to his follower with a grave face. “I’ve spoken to André about you. He agrees that once you finish your further course at the Paris military school next year, you can report to the Reims camp. Perhaps by then he’ll already be General of the Champagne Composite Brigade. But rember this: André is not that high-handed dullard Lafayette. He demands that every subordinate—from private to officer—obey without condition any order from a superior. So the radical stuff Marat and Hébert peddle must not enter the camp, Rousseau included. From what I hear, André has publicly executed several officers and n for spreading extremist ideas.”
Brune nodded hard and held to his view. “Paris is too comfortable now—practically a grave for soldiers. In the Champagne Composite Regint there may still be chances for rit.”
Indeed, that lucky fellow Hoche had risen from a worthless private to a cavalry Captain in less than a year after following André. And Brune’s distant cousin in the Champagne Composite Regint—Henri-Gratien Bertrand, who had transferred in from the Versailles National Guard—had written to recomnd that Captain Brune serve under Colonel André: “The benefits here are enough to drive a man mad, and there are regular live-fire exercises.”
Seeing Brune’s mind was set, Danton said no more. When André reappeared in a crisp black tailcoat, the three went upstairs together.
In the hall, André offered a few words of congratulations and an expensive, slender gift to the newlyweds, the Desmoulins, then turned his attention toward Danton, Robespierre, Brissot, Pétion, and General Dillon.
“My Champagne Composite Regint moves for Reims tomorrow,” André said to his Paris allies without much concealnt. “I will make every effort to enter the city peacefully, but I will not rule out force. I therefore hope our operations will have the understanding and support of the Constituent Assembly and the Paris Commune.”
“I and the Commune have always stood with you.” Danton spoke first without hesitation, and Brissot and Fréron chid in. Of the Commune’s nine mbers on its General Committee, three—Danton, Brissot, and Billaud-Varenne—were close to André; Fréron, though only an alternate without a vote, could, together with these four n’s influence, sway three more committee mbers, securing six votes to push the Commune to support any of André’s military actions at Reims.
As a rising star at the Ministry of War, General Dillon, close to Danton and Desmoulins, cared little that two weeks earlier André had forced his own superior, the Minister of War, the Comte de Tour du Pin, to submit his resignation twice. In fact, should Tour du Pin be ousted, Dillon expected a fine post in the ministry; and André had promised that Church assets seized in Reims would be reserved for his many Paris allies. Dillon declared he would watch cabinet attitudes toward Reims and the Marne and pass word to André at once.
“The only premise,” Robespierre stressed, “is that there be no mass civilian casualties.” André nodded. He knew the deputy’s threshold ant fewer than 300 deaths—a figure taken from early 1789’s bread riots in Paris, which Robespierre deed a cruel massacre.
“Suspects must stand before a court and receive the impartial judgnt of the law,” added Pétion. He feared André might enlarge the list of cris and, with his power, arrest opponents at will. Months earlier, rely as the prosecutor of the Special Fiscal Court, André had been able to control Bordeaux; now, as deputy prosecutor and volunteer Colonel, his power could let him do as he pleased in Reims, even the whole Marne.
If you co across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
To his friends’ cautions André had no objection. As fellow lawyers, they all knew the essence of law: it safeguards not abstract fairness or justice but the social order required by those in power. The vocabulary of justice is re lip service—take it too seriously and you lose.
Monsieur and Mada Duplessis, noting André and learning his identity from their son-in-law, urged by Annelette, considered presenting their elder daughter to the deputy prosecutor of the Marne. Desmoulins and Lucile hurried to stop them: leaving other matters aside, André’s amorous character—children scattered here and there—was sothing Adélaïde could never abide.
André stayed only half an hour, then took leave of the Desmoulins and the others—his regint was to march at dawn.
…
On the day the Champagne Composite Regint left the Versailles camp, the conservative leader Cazalès, after requesting leave from the rotating president of the National Assembly, set out in the afternoon from Paris for Reims, 150 kiloters away.
As before at Versailles, the regint advanced neither fast nor slow, maintaining roughly 10 hours and about 40 kiloters of marching per day, making camp early to entrench when it rained. Unlike the diterranean’s mild damp, the north of France was colder: in December, temperatures ranged from 5°C at night to 12°C by day. On the advice of the two dical officers, André forbade marching in rain or snow until the n acclimatized to the cold, and had the quartermaster issue mulled red wine with ginger to reduce influenza in the ranks.
Even so, on the third day out, dical Officer Larrey reported 25 cases in the Composite Regint—diarrhea and influenza still within control. Per plan, the sick were to be sent in stages to the Catholic hospital at the town of Oulchy-le-Château in the Aisne and kept in a new isolation ward for two or three weeks.
A “Catholic hospital,” formally a hospice, was a charitable institute run by a convent. In Paris the conditions were passable; in the provinces, a convent’s best might be a simple bed—two layers of straw over a plank. Even that “benefit” had been secured by Larrey’s promise to perform two free surgical operations daily for the convent’s other patients.
To Colonel André’s eye, everything in the hospital was filthy, chaotic. Poor housing was tolerable; the sisters’ devotion admirable; but clean drinking water was not assured, and their fingernails were dirty—no concept of washing hands or body. Though Larrey had repeatedly instructed the sisters who assisted him, the results were ager.
“We must establish a dical-nursing system directly under regintal headquarters, not continue relying on the convent,” André told Larrey after inspecting the squalor. Doctors had long emphasized cure over care; even when André had proposed a nursing system at Bordeaux, household servants pressed into service lacked training. As for the convent sisters, “married to God,” they would not accept the regint’s hygiene precepts, which ran counter to Catholic notions.
“But I am a doctor,” Larrey muttered—the work of tending the sick could hardly fall to him.
“Then find a head nurse who can do it—and do it well!” André barked, so loudly that soldiers and sisters nearby scattered in alarm.
Noticing he had overstepped, André stepped to a young sister, said “I’m sorry,” and stooped to help her gather the patients’ clothing she had dropped.
Handing the bundle back, André turned to Larrey. “Lieutenant, you have 24 hours. Be ready.” The lagging dical officer was to reach Fiss, 30 kiloters away, by tomorrow evening to attend the live-fire exercise.
“Yes, sir,” the regint’s second dical officer said, resigned.
After André left, Larrey told the young sister—still frozen in place—to prepare the instrunts for the morning’s surgeries. Her na was Charlotte-Lavel, just over 20, from the town of Soissons, 18 kiloters away. Likely well educated at ho, she was among the few in the convent hospital able to accept the ideas of disinfection and microbes.
Strictly, Charlotte was not “married to God”; her habit was a cover. She was the eldest daughter of the Baron of Soissons. Having survived smallpox in childhood, she bore many pockmarks on her right cheek, which blighted her chances of marriage.
…
Two years earlier, after being rejected repeatedly, the heartbroken Charlotte had left the warm family that had given her joy and shelter and entered the convent at Oulchy-le-Château, so 5 leagues away. The convent, built in the late 15th century—said to commorate the Maid’s return escort of Charles VII to Reims for his coronation—had founded a charity hospital at its outset to aid the suffering.
With its dense piety and strict rule, the convent hospital served as a shield against worldly slander, preserving both the nurses’ reputations and the convent itself intact through the storms of 1789 and the Great Fear.
In 18th-century eyes, dealing with patients of any sort was filthy and dangerous. “Hospital” and “nursing” were words people avoided—frightful, shaful things. With poor dicine, chronic deficits, and frequent war, the 18th-century French church hospital was a byword for misfortune, squalor, and confusion.
Charlotte, however, volunteered to be a probationer nurse rather than a professed sister. Unafraid of filth or hardship, she gave her ti and heart to the patients. Seeing many lacked clothing and food, she secretly channeled dicines, money, provisions, sheets, blankets, and garnts sent by her mother and sister to relieve the needy nearby.
When all the sisters shrank from serving as assistant to the “demon surgeon” who split bellies open—dical Officer Larrey—Charlotte stepped forward, living daily amid blood, mastering fears that would unman many a man. She had sensed that this young, handso doctor, apart from his patients, was the first man not to despise her.
Thus, when Colonel André harshly scolded Larrey, Charlotte cleverly dropped a stack of linen to draw the commander’s attention and defuse the scene. She ant also to help solve the next difficulty.
The following morning, after the last operation, Charlotte sought out Larrey. She was willing to serve as matron of the regintal infirmary and had already contacted several probationer sisters wishing to leave the convent, along with older girls unable to afford a dowry.
“I have only one request—that I may remain your first assistant,” said Mademoiselle Charlotte, now back in her chemise and youthful attire, with a blush.
Reviews
All reviews (0)