But it wasn’t death that darkened André’s world. He blinked, unsure of what he saw. Over him, a massive shadow loomed and he heard the sharp bite of steel on flesh. The large Prussian standing over him began to moan, taking one shaky step forward as he dropped his weapon and fell to his knees, his skull nearly cloven in two.
André looked up at his deliverer and saw a familiar face atop a horse, the man eyeing him as he pulled his sword from the dead man’s skull.
“Is that you hiding down there, Valière?” General Kellermann reined in his stallion, which was pawing the earth in an attempt to rear up on its hind legs. Panting, Kellermann lifted his hat and flashed a wild smile down at André. “Better get up. It’s ours if we’ll take it.”
André shivered on the ground, his fingers touching the place where blood seeped from a cut on his cheek.
“Up, Valière!” Kellermann roared now, offering a hand to the young captain and lifting him to his feet. “You don’t want to miss the sight of all those devils on the run, not after you and your men did such a damned good job of holding our center.”
With that, Kellermann turned his horse, allowing it to rear up on its hind legs. Calling out to the soldiers all around him, the windmill silhouetted on the hillcrest behind him, he raised his sword. “The day is nearly ours. Let’s finish this! Vive la Révolution!”
Kellermann spurred his horse, charging the ragged lines of Prussians and Austrians who still fought. It seemed to André as if the entire French army took heart, his own breast surging with his last reserves of energy and resolve in response to Kellermann’s rally cry. His weary legs found new strength as he stood tall. Around him, the bloodied, grime-soaked soldiers followed the general, racing forward to pursue the faltering enemy. André saw in that moment, his eyes stinging from dirt and sweat, that the soldiers of the Republic—and the Republic itself—would not be defeated that day.
December 1792
The evening’s rumors had changed everything.
The ball was to have been a festive occasion, celebrating the dissolution of the monarchy and the victory at Valmy. The survival of the nascent Revolution. But as the chill of night settled over Paris, the snow-flecked Seine glistening like a vein of molten silver, the citizens’ hunger for bread was surpassed only by their hunger to hear the latest reports circulating throughout the city: would the king face the guillotine?
Following Paris’s bloody summer and the imprisonment of the royal family, the Jacobins had grown in number and consolidated power within the National Convention. The victory at Valmy had, for the moment, halted the threat of foreign invasion, allowing a band of radical and ambitious young lawyers to grab the reins of government, promising expanded suffrage, abolition of noble privileges, and a sweeping new constitution to rival any document that had come out of the Americas. And on this night in late December, all of Paris was humming with the rumors that the Bourbon king himself might face France’s new justice.
André had followed the case of King Louis XVI with sharp interest, keenly aware of its resemblance to his own father’s trial—if either event could truthfully be called a trial. André had even stood inside the crowded galleries on the final days of the king’s prosecution. There he had observed it all in quiet horror: the hostile audience members, all wearing the same red caps and tricolor cockades, their dirty faces angry and their minds decided long before the opening gavel had rapped.
It had been nearly too difficult to watch. The king’s cheeks—once fatted from sweets and caked in rouge—hung gaunt and ashen beside trembling lips. His voice quivered as he told the assembly how deeply he loved his subjects—former subjects, he corrected himself—and how willing he was to compromise with the new government. The jeers of the angry crowd were so overpowering that there was little hope of mounting a true defense. As the members and audience of the tribunal had sniggered and ridiculed, Louis’s eyes had gone vacant. If one had cared to look closely, they would have seen two misty windows into a soul that had been broken. Louis, so coddled and misled since birth, had not seemed to understand such rough treatment.
It had all been too much for André. Through his blurred vision, the pale face of the king became the stony face of his own father, and André excused himself from the courtroom before hearing the verdict.
Several days after attending the trial, André had been startled to receive an invitation to the National Convention soiree, a celebration of the new, popularly elected government. André suspected that Kellermann had arranged the invitation. The general was, for the moment, the most celebrated man in the Republic; he was the man who had defied and repelled the Prussian-Austrian menace, the “Savior of the Revolution.” In this mood, even the most radical Jacobin could stomach the presence of a few aristocratic officers for the evening.