On Christmas Eve, André at last seed to rember that the Archbishop of Reims—felled by an “accidental stroke” and lying insensible—was in the church hospital. He drove over to pay a call, spoke with showy regret at Bishop de Talleyrand’s misfortune, and insisted the physicians rouse the archbishop for even an hour, if it could be managed.
Thereafter, the man who had beco Reims’s de facto ruler—military and civil—told the priests that he would, on behalf of the Reims authorities and the Marne, write to the National Constituent Assembly’s Committee on Religious Affairs to request an early appointnt of a new Archbishop of Reims. As for the Roman Curia, long beaten down by the Habsburgs into a toothless tiger, André had no intention of paying it heed.
Naturally, Paris could not take André’s posture at face value. He knew perfectly well that a new archbishop would not be installed anyti soon. Inside the Assembly, the recently passed Decree on the Clerical Oath had already sparked internecine strife; the Religious Committee was beset daily by indignant clerical deputies. The chaos would not abate—rather, it would worsen. When Ro and the Pope at the Vatican finally broke their silence to denounce both the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the Decree on the Clerical Oath, the crisis reached its height, triggering the sans-culottes’ brutal persecution of non-juring clergy in Paris.
Thus, while the episcopal seat in Reims stood vacant, and even the vicar—set to serve ad interim—lay sick in bed, effective power passed to several priests of the city’s churches. Two days later André, with scant ceremony, recomnded—out of course—his orphanage friend, the cleric Marey (fifth grade), to serve as curé of Reims Cathedral. Such appointnts properly belonged to the Religious Committee. But André first bartered terms, guaranteeing that clergy of Reims would duly accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and carry out the Decree on the Clerical Oath. Within two weeks Paris agreed to André’s nomination.
…
Northeast of Reims lay Bacourt, a small French town of scarcely over a thousand souls. Like neighboring villages, it lived chiefly by vineyards, with so stock-raising besides. Beyond Reims, 15 kiloters distant, Bacourt’s people seldom traveled; contact with the wider world was little. Though the town sat on a road to the Ardennes border, it had but a single inn.
A month earlier, a French force—ford mainly of n from Bordeaux and Versailles—had moved to a point southeast of Bacourt. There, an old 17th-century Baroque château, once held by the Catholic Church of Reims, together with every structure within a radius of 5–8 kiloters—houses, windmills, mills, forests, hills, adows, streams, and ponds—was taken over for military use.
Soon soldiers drove boundary stakes and set up conspicuous warning boards. An officer, Captain Petiet, inford townsfolk that the tract—ringed by ditches, walls, wire, redoubts, and barriers—was henceforth a military exclusion zone not to be trespassed.
At first the townspeople were uneasy at the strangers’ arrival. But the regint—under the colors of the Champagne Composite Regint—kept good discipline; there were no outrages. Compensation, notably, was punctually paid. For the next 3–5 years, the army would remit 30,000 livres annually in land compensation; each Bacourt household would receive a little over 100 livres a year—so 3–5 months of a family’s earnings.
In exchange, residents were strictly forbidden to enter the restricted zone without leave to graze, gather firewood, fish, or idle about—else they would bear the consequences. The quartermaster also told the mayor the camp would outsource certain services to locals—laundry and cooking, cleaning, camp repairs, and the like.
According to Colonel André, the Champagne Composite Regint might be raised next year to the Champagne Composite Brigade and would garrison this camp for 2–3 years—perhaps longer.
On the fifth day after Christmas Eve, with the New Year of 1791 at hand, André, business in Reims at last in order, ca for the first ti to the newly fitted Bacourt camp. Here Colonel André ant to ring in 1791 with 1,500 officers and n.
Captain Chassé and Second Lieutenant Penduvas of the gendarrie, and Ouvrard, André’s receiver of church assets, remained in Reims. Two days earlier, however, the chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Berthier, had requested a fortnight’s leave; when it was granted, he left camp for Paris.
“At a guess, the summons of the Comtesse de Provence,” André had joked at first. Soon a report from Paris made him furious. It seed Berthier had accepted a secret instruction at the Luxembourg Palace—from Louis XVI—to assist the King’s aunts in leaving France for Italy.
Among the regint’s officers—Colonel André included—nearly all were staunch republicans or inclined that way. Even Major Senarmont of the artillery and Second Lieutenant Davout—nobly born, perhaps of lower degree—were so. Alone the chief of staff, Berthier, clung to Royalist Party loyalties to the Bourbons. André, for his part, cared little about noble versus common birth—provided no one preached extremism in his camp or engaged in radical agitation.
But that his own chief of staff had taken direct orders from Louis XVI (though the fact was not yet proved) André could not tolerate. Were he not mindful of displeasing General Lafayette—who had recomnded Berthier—André would have thrown the double-dealing staff officer out of the regint at once.
Swallowing his anger, André turned again to building the camp. After a little over 20 days’ labor, the neglected château blood anew. A classic Baroque ensemble—grand massing and imposing lines—stood amid gardens, pools, woods, and lawns. This would serve as the command center and emblem of authority for the Champagne Composite Regint (or, soon, Brigade).
At the regular officers’ eting, André approved Captain Petiet’s comprehensive plan for Bacourt. A tract west of the camp, near the town, would hold the garrison hospital and the dependents’ quarter; artillery posts and drill-grounds and ranges would lie largely in the hills to the east; the cavalry would mass at the south end, able to reach Reims within 30 minutes of an order; the nurous infantry would disperse to the northeast and southeast sectors alongside the engineers.
In the central precinct centered on the château would stand the headquarters of the regint (or brigade), the staff, and intelligence; and nearby, the gendarrie, the provost and military court, and the quartermaster and ordnance depots. By André’s order, a separate three-story pavilion north of the château would be refitted as a regintal officers’ school. In peaceti, every promotion in rank within the Champagne Composite Regint (or future Brigade) would require completion of the school’s coursework for that grade and passage of comprehensive examinations—written, oral, and, where applicable, practical.
Under instructions from the Assembly and General Lafayette, once the Champagne Composite Regint entered Reims it was to be expanded to brigade strength within 6 months. As before, every franc of future brigade expenses—arsenal and pay included—would be raised locally under André’s authority in the Reims district. Church property in Reims was rich; with the slightest stroke of Ouvrard’s pen, André could cover the brigade’s budget for a year.
Just before adjourning, Colonel André announced a rule: from this day, when the colonel was absent from camp, the chief of staff, Berthier, would no longer act as deputy regintal commander; Major Moncey would assu that duty, while the officers’ council would continue to take collective decisions on camp affairs.
André had spoken privately with Moncey beforehand. The others were plainly taken aback at first, but no one questioned the order, and André offered no explanation. When the eting broke up, Hoche hesitated at the door, then decided to wait for the colonel on the ground floor.
“Walk with in the back garden,” André said coolly, giving Hoche a single glance and moving on at once, leaving the captain to follow.
Unlike the château’s main block, the back garden was wholly for leisure—open and indulgent. A small but finely wrought country garden, its clipped round lawns and natural-feeling groves played off each other; a pond and fountain murmured with running water. Statues of great figures stood like tutelary spirits, companions of the estate through two centuries of weather.
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Hoche—André’s earliest Paris friend and first subordinate—was loyal, brave, and keen to learn. He was also warm-hearted; that feeling was both a virtue and a flaw. From his manner in the eting, it was clear he found André’s handling of Lieutenant Colonel Berthier unjust, and he felt for his compatriot from Versailles.
Before a bronze statue greened by age, André stopped, and two paces back the cavalry captain halted as well. The statue was of the iron cardinal, the first Duc de Richelieu—the political strongman who laid two centuries of French hegemony. André’s gaze remained reverent: a thunderous statesman, cold and pitiless, yet masterful in strategy and far-sighted—Machiavellianism made thod, and pushed to its limit. If André were to rank France’s statesn, Richelieu would be in the top three—above Napoleon and Louis XIV, for in André’s view those two rely continued Richelieu’s continental design.
After a ti André spoke, unhurried. “My friend, do you know why the National Constituent Assembly would tolerate a prosecutor—high-handed and ard with command authority—returning to his ho ground to set up in Reims a regi bordering on a personal dictatorship?”
Hoche started, then caught on. “Because you bring in revenues for the state, consistently and without hesitation, and you carry out the Assembly’s decisions to the letter; because, in the scale of France, both Reims and the Champagne Composite Regint are weak—hardly worth reckoning; and because…”
“And because I oppose Louis XVI and the Bourbons, openly and without deviation,” André smiled. “In a France riven by faction—where politicians pull each other down—such deep political division will not vanish through majority votes or a rousing speech. It will sharpen into an irreconcilable breach and end in the sword. There is nothing more important than staying politically correct. Mark that.”
He glanced at the uneasy Hoche. “If you do not understand, so be it. Few in France do—five at most, besides . Do as before: support my decisions without reserve. Marching and fighting—I may be a layman. In the play of politics and the use of law, my foresight is the equal of the Duc de Richelieu.”
Hoche lowered his head and listened in silence; at the end he nodded. He still worried. If the colonel revered Richelieu, would he not imitate the iron cardinal’s cold severity—blood and terror to make all opponents tremble?
André sighed and spoke plainly to his trusted aide. “Be at ease, kind soul. I will give Lieutenant Colonel Berthier a chance to explain. If he is unfit to serve as chief of staff, at worst I shall expel him from Bacourt and send him back to the Versailles National Guard.”
Having soothed Hoche, André turned to the Ardennes. Though he had posted the cavalry toward Reims, the present target remained the several hundred mounted bandits roving the Ardennes. On Christmas Eve they had struck at smugglers moving among Reims, Charleville-Mézières (capital of the Ardennes), and Brussels—a reprisal for City Hall’s surrender without a fight. Fortunately the bandits wanted goods and money, not lives, and there was little harm to the smugglers’ persons. No one made much of the affair.
Mayor Basile and Prosecutor Hubert were stunned when they learned of it. After reporting to the Deputy Chief Provincial Prosecutor, they resolved to send a Reims City Hall envoy to protest to the bandits’ supposed patron, the Marquis de Bouillé. André knew it was useless—rely an invitation to contempt. He ordered Captain Hoche’s cavalry to turn closer attention to the forest brigands 50 kiloters off.
“I have sent out three reconnaissance parties in succession, and still we cannot find their lairs,” Hoche admitted. The Ardennes woods lay in Ardennes territory; without an invitation from the Ardennes Commune, the Champagne Composite Regint could not enter, much less operate openly. Reconnaissance had to be clandestine, without local guides—lest quarrels break out between the two provinces.
“Damnable autonomy,” André muttered. There was little he could do. Under the constitution, France’s 83 departnts were autonomous in local administration, with public order entrusted to each departnt’s National Guard. From its formation the Champagne Composite Regint belonged to the Paris National Guard; it entered Reims at the warm invitation of the Marne Commune, whose own guards had been routed by a handful of bandits. In the Ardennes, where the brigands troubled the local people little, the Commune saw no reason to welco a battle-hardened regint into its jurisdiction.
André had therefore set the intelligence officers, in concert with Paris, to bait the brigands into Reims; and Second Lieutenant Penduvas—helped by Father Marey—had planted a capable agent inside the band. But this was only a beginning; it would take a month or two for the plan to ripen. It was deep winter; half the Composite Regint were southerners and not yet hardened to cold-weather campaigning.
In the end André had one more question for Hoche—whether he was seeing Joséphine, wife of the Vicomte de Beauharnais—for Chief Inspector Javert’s report from Paris had hinted as much. He held his tongue, however: it was the man’s private life, and he would not rouse suspicion in his most loyal subordinate. Besides, Joséphine was rely a society beauty—lovely and well-placed.
…
In a corner of camp, a private nad Bertrand stood on a ladder, stringing wire onto the posts around the quartermaster’s warehouse. At first light Captain Petiet had set Bertrand and two others to this construction job. Near midday, the others slackened, lying on the grass in the winter sun, trading idle chatter. Only Bertrand worked on, swinging the heavy sledge with one hand, and with the other—thick in asbestos gloves—hauling at the wire.
“Hey, you hear? In the next town over, a Black sergeant is commanding the local National Guard. They say he’s a white nobleman’s bastard,” one bored companion offered—the gossip he had caught while helping the quartermaster shop in town. The na escaped him.
“What was his surna? Odd one—sounded like what we call a slave.”
“Dumas,” ca a familiar voice.
The two soldiers on the ground looked up in a hurry. Colonel André.
They scrambled to their feet, slapping grass from their tunics, drew in their bellies, set their chests, and saluted, faces solemn. “Respectfully reporting to the colonel, sir!”
“At ease,” André returned the salute with a smile, then called up to the man on the ladder: “Don’t move—hold that post tight!” Even so, the ladder wobbled and the soldier fell—luckily onto his backside; the winter uniform was thick, and he was not hurt.
André laughed aloud. Behind him, Second Lieutenant Suchet stepped in and hauled the man up.
“You enlisted at Versailles, didn’t you? What’s your na?” André asked, affable as ever before the ranks.
The young private was thrilled. He flung off the gloves and all but leapt as he answered: “Reporting to the colonel, sir—my na is Henri-Gratien Bertrand—from Châteauroux in the central provinces, 18 years old. I enlisted at Versailles and now serve in Captain Petiet’s transport and engineers company.”
André nodded, satisfied. The voice rang, the answer was ordered and clear—no fluster. Rare in a private before the commander. His workmanship, too, was careful and tireless.
A good impression—and a lucky day for Private Bertrand.
“Second Lieutenant Suchet, when does the next NCO course begin?” André asked off-hand. The NCO school, by plan, would occupy a row of huts near the cavalry lines on the south side.
“The fourth day after New Year—Friday next,” Suchet replied. In camp he served as the colonel’s aide-de-camp.
“Add his na—Bertrand—to the list,” André said, pointing to the lucky man.
When the officers had gone, the two mates ca over, green with envy, knocked Bertrand flat, and the three rolled about in mock battle, their oaths and laughter ringing together.
…
On January 1, 1791, New Year’s Day, André brought two important gifts to the whole garrison at Bacourt.
The first was football—the world’s foremost sport in later tis.
By the early 12th century, England had matches of a sort. When the master of ceremonies tossed a blown ox bladder aloft, “football” began. Sides surged together—shouting, kicking, grappling—and whichever side could drive the ball into the other’s market square won. Plainly, this was no true football but a barbarous English rugby. Though rugby likewise prizes teamwork and fierce contest, its lack of elegance made it ill-suited to French taste.
In a forr life André had been a fair-weather supporter of Paris Saint-Germain; even so, he knew modern football’s standards well enough. Under his own instruction, the modern ga and its codified rules ca a century early—and then so—at the Bacourt camp in Reims. It leavened the tedium of garrison life with fun and trained cooperation and perseverance.
Before long, matches were held on every patch of grass. Within marked rectangles, sides attacked and defended to the later standard—10 outfield players and 1 goalkeeper, 11 a side…
The second gift was cigarettes—ever controversial.
The French Cigarette Company, proposed by André and founded in Bordeaux, had worked on developing rolled tobacco. At first, like cigars, every cigarette was handmade. Engineers in Bordeaux then spent months building a semi-manual, semi-chanical assembly line. Dried tobacco was machine-cut into fine shreds; certain essences or aromatics were misted on; then workers hand-rolled the paper—about 120 mm in length and roughly 10 mm in diater—into tubes around the fill.
Unlike pipe tobacco, a paper cigarette needed only a light at one end and a draw at the other—convenient and quick. Cheaper than dear cigars, it still cost sothing. For easier lighting André later paid from his own pocket to have the Academy of Sciences develop a white-phosphorus match—never altogether safe to transport or use.
At first, costs were high: a 5-livre packet confined the novelty to the well-to-do; handwork choked supply—only two or three chests a month reached the Versailles camp to give the officers a taste. Once the line was running, costs fell sharply and output multiplied—by several tis, then tenfold, then a hundredfold.
Cigarettes’ effects, like spirits, were compelling. Their sharp stimulus helped restore vigor and sharpen n up. On campaign, a smoke could ease a soldier’s stress, clear his head, focus attention, palliate anxiety, and blunt hunger. As for nausea, dizziness, headache, and the long train of chronic harms—those were not André’s concern. Once war began, battle casualties would drown the sins of tobacco.
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