Where the Light Falls(9)
Jean-Luc leaned closer; he hadn’t heard this news.
“Everything we have fought for could soon be lost, if we don’t look to what’s happening less than a hundred miles to the east. The enemy is close,” Gavreau explained. “The Duke of Brunswick has assembled an alliance of forty thousand Prussians, Austrians, and Hessians and is marching toward our city at this very moment.” Gavreau spoke softly, but he no longer competed with any stray voices; the entire room was hushed, all eyes fixed intently forward. “Since we plucked Louis and Marie-Antoinette from their plush palace prison, the Habsburgs and their friends have seen just how serious our Revolution is. And they don’t like the look of it. The crowns of Europe are shuddering in fear, and now they’ve decided to bring their hired swords across our borders.”
Jean-Luc felt his chest tighten at the thought of foreign soldiers marching across their land, into their city.
“This foreign duke…Brunswick…has declared, no, he has vowed”—Gavreau picked up a pair of glasses from his desk and began to read from a parchment—“to put an end to the anarchy in the interior of France, to check the attacks upon the throne and the altar, to reestablish the legal power, to restore to the king the security and the liberty of which he is now deprived, and to place him in a position to exercise once more the legitimate authority which belongs to him.”
At this, the room erupted in outraged groans and roars.
“Let the bastards try!”
“Death to the Habsburg tyrants and their foreign mercenaries!”
“We’ll take their crowns next! We’ll march right into the Habsburg throne room and show them what we free Frenchmen think of—”
“You’re a fool, Pierrot, if you think it will be that easy,” Jean-Luc interjected, turning to the loud man beside him, a brash colleague who generally seemed to prefer speaking to listening.
Gavreau nodded at Jean-Luc, allowing him to continue. “What do you think, Citizen St. Clair?”
Jean-Luc paused a moment, clearing his throat. Crossing his arms, he ventured: “Citizen Capet and his Austrian wife were rich and have many powerful friends. The kingdoms of central Europe will not stand idly by as a Habsburg princess is forced to sit behind bars.”
“That’s right, St. Clair,” Gavreau agreed.
“So what is happening?” Jean-Luc asked his supervisor, wondering whether he ought to return home to Marie and take her and the baby from Paris.
Gavreau lifted his chin as if in defiance. “It’s come to war.”
The room now filled with curses and mutters, boasts and declarations, but the supervisor continued over the din. “Fifty thousand brave Frenchmen stand between us and those promising to wipe out all the liberties we’ve won these past three years.”
Jean-Luc let out a long, slow exhale. Many of those soldiers, he knew, had joined the ranks of the French army only within the past few months or even weeks, as the threat of invasion by the united monarchs of Europe escalated from whispered rumor to bona fide peril. They lacked discipline, training, and, in most cases, proper uniforms. Jean-Luc hoped they might somehow make up for their deficiencies of skill with patriotic fervor and democratic zeal, but he, like everyone else, was unsure.
Gavreau looked straight into Jean-Luc’s eyes as he said: “You are all good citizens here. I am honored to work with each and every one of you, and I know we shall all do our part for the republic. If we should hear the tocsins or the bells, it means the enemy stands at our gates. Every man in this city…hell, every woman, too…will be expected to take up arms and defend our home. We must not forget: it was a band of patriots, women and men alike, who conquered the great Bastille fortress. It was a band of starving mothers and daughters who marched on Versailles and took the Bourbons off their gold piss pots. We will be France’s last line of resistance. We will shed every last drop of blood in her defense.”
The men offered replies to Gavreau’s battle cry with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Jean-Luc considered the possibility in silence. Would he take up arms if the enemy marched on Paris? Against this new force that threatened the safety of his family and his nation? Yes, he supposed he would.
Beside him, Pierrot was red-faced and appeared as though he hoped the enemy would make it to the Parisian barriers, so he’d have the occasion to shed his blood. Or perhaps he was simply fuming that Jean-Luc had called him a fool.
Gavreau stuffed his hands into his pockets as he continued. “Right now our thoughts go out to our brothers to the east. Our generals Dumouriez and Kellermann have marched their brave soldiers to meet the enemy near the forests outside Valmy. Very soon or perhaps even this very day, the victory or doom of our Revolution could be decided out in those meadows.”