André unfolded the dispatch and scanned the seal. It bore the signature of the Haute-Vienne Commune Committee, not the provincial governor. That made sense—the leading officials of the southern provinces were still away in their home districts. The document requested that any commanding officer who received it should assist Captain Jourdain in a military operation against a band of marauders.
"Jourdain… that name sounds familiar," André murmured. He needed no further thought to recall who the man was. Born in Limoges, Jourdain had once apprenticed under a silk merchant from Lyon. In 1776, he had enlisted as a volunteer to fight in the American War of Independence, and on returning to France in 1781, he had gone into trade. Three years later, he married. When the Revolution began, he joined the National Guard, and his rise thereafter had been swift—first elected a captain, then promoted to lieutenant colonel within a year.
"Lieutenant Colonel Franck," Jourdain said, "our latest intelligence reports that the bandit numbers around ten—mostly former or dismissed naval sailors. Their leader is a ruined nobleman named Allemand, once an officer at the Brest naval base. They're planning their next attack along the border between Haute-Vienne and Dordogne provinces—within two hours. Their target is the Marquis de Fontenay—pardon, Citizen de Fontenay." Realizing his mistake, Jourdain quickly corrected himself; he knew the Parisian officer might take offense at aristocratic titles.
He had originally planned to mobilize the town's National Guard to intercept the robbers, but after witnessing the pitiful cowardice of the Chalûs militia, he abandoned the idea. Then, hearing from locals that a group of fierce, heavily armed cavalry had arrived at the roadside inn, he came running—with the town's prosecutor, Lussac, in tow. Only when he arrived did he discover that these horsemen were not common troops but a disciplined Parisian cavalry detachment, commanded by a young and proud Lieutenant Colonel.
Now Jourdain found himself in an awkward position. As a seasoned officer, he was unsure whether these arrogant Parisians would deign to cooperate with him.
André, before committing his men, asked for the opinions of his lieutenants. The order was passed from hand to hand between Hoche and Senarmont. Meanwhile, André paid little attention to the two provincial officials before him. Instead, he picked up two slices of bread spread with honey and offered them teasingly to the wide-eyed boy at Lussac's side. The child's self-control collapsed; he snatched the bread and devoured it greedily, earning laughter from André and his officers.
"Gentlemen," André said with a lazy wave of the hand, "make yourselves at home." His tone carried the effortless superiority of a Parisian host. To him, the idea that a provincial captain might request the support of troops from the capital was absurd.
Even in revolutionary France—where feudal ranks had been abolished—Parisians still regarded the rest of the country as a realm of ignorant peasants. As for this "Marquis de Fontenay," André had never heard of the man among Paris's nobility or the political elite, and thus cared little for his fate.
Jourdain's growing frustration went unnoticed; André simply ignored it, as any Parisian gentleman would. The town prosecutor sat meekly in a corner with his son, until Hoche signalled for a soldier to bring them food—bread with honey, meat stew, and a bottle of wine.
"My apologies, Sir," Jourdain said at last, saluting again. "I was too hasty." He sat beside Hoche, his anger gone as quickly as it had come.
André gestured toward the table. "Eat first. Then we'll talk."
Jourdain obeyed, draining his wine and tearing into the bread. André watched him with quiet amusement. A man who knows when to bow and when to strike—yes, he'll go far, he thought. In another world, Jourdain would indeed become a Marshal of the Empire.
Still, André had no immediate intention of recruiting him. Hoche was his comrade-in-arms and saviour; Augereau and Saint-Cyr were bound to him by gratitude and loyalty; Senarmont was a kindred intellect, a friend. But Jourdain—he had yet to offer any reason for trust. Money alone could buy cooperation, not devotion.
As for Captain Brune, André held a faint contempt for the man's character. Thinking of Danton's eventual fate, he saw in Brune the same flaw—an utter ignorance of gratitude. Though Brune had often sought André's favour, the prosecutor had remained unmoved. Jourdain, at least, was a man of potential; but André knew that in his present position, he possessed too few advantages to win such a man's allegiance. In politics as in war, money was only an aid—it could never replace loyalty or courage.
After the meal, André exchanged a few quiet words with Hoche and Senarmont, then rose to give orders. "Second-Lieutenant Hoche, take two men and accompany Captain Jourdain and Magistrate Lussac. Scout the brigands' position."
He checked his pocket watch. "The cavalry will follow in thirty minutes."
Before departing, Lussac urged his son to return home to his mother. But the boy—stubborn and bright-eyed—stamped his foot. He insisted on following the soldiers to "see the adventure." Amused, André laughed and promised the magistrate that the boy would be safe under his care.
As the tavern filled again with noise, André gently drew the child into conversation, teasing out details between spoonfuls of stew. The boy's full name, it turned out, was Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac—the future chemist and physicist who would one day succeed Lavoisier as one of France's greatest men of science.
Young Lussac had been born in Saint-Léonard, Haute-Vienne. His father, recently defeated in the election for provincial prosecutor, had relocated the family to this remote border town to serve as both magistrate and constable. The family's income had dwindled; his mother was again with child; Joseph had been forced to leave school for lack of funds.
When André casually asked what he wished to become, the boy replied with childish pride that he wanted to be a soldier—"as brave and commanding as you, sir." The answer startled the traveler. Laughing, André tapped the boy lightly on the head. "No, my lad. You'll return to your books. If your father agrees, I'll see you placed in the best lycée in Paris—the Collège de Saint-Louis-le-Grand. Later, perhaps, the Sorbonne."
Since his fallout with the Académie des Sciences, André had stopped relying on official channels to build his "technology tree." Meeting the destitute Fourier by chance had convinced him to begin gathering young talents himself. With growing authority and ample funds, the idea had already become a plan.
His effort to recruit English engineers and doctors was only a temporary bridge. When France and Britain inevitably went to war, those foreigners would never remain loyal to their "benefactor." The true foundation lay in nurturing native minds—France's own "little prodigies of science."
In his secret notebook, André had already written down names: a fifteen-year-old in Lyon named Ampère, and a nine-year-old in the Loire named Poisson. Before leaving Paris, he had even met Ampère's father, encouraging him to send the boy to Saint-Louis-le-Grand, promising support. For the younger Poisson, André simply kept tabs, sending agents to monitor his progress.
Now, meeting young Lussac felt like fate's reward—a "gift bundle," as he thought wryly. Once back in Paris, André would push to establish the École Polytechnique and the École Normale Supérieure—institutions that could forge the scientists France would need. Memory alone was too slow a weapon; he needed a furnace that could shape hundreds of minds at once.
Toward evening, the air cooled at last after a long, scorching day. On horseback at the outskirts of Collery, Allemand opened his eyes and frowned. Two roads diverged through the shabby little village—one to the left, one to the right—each mired in mud, lined with crumbling fences and tangled vines. The peasants had been forced indoors under threat; none dared step outside.
The sun was sinking, and the target had not yet appeared. If night fell, control would be impossible. Allemand called over his scout. "You're certain of the route?"
"I swear it," the bald man replied. "At noon, in the Oradour posting inn, I saw the Marquis de Fontenay and his young wife board their carriage. Their next stop was Chalûs."
Allemand nodded, though unease gnawed at him. That feeling had haunted him for months—ever since the Brest naval tribunal stripped him of rank and dismissed him from service. The charges—that he sympathized with Parisian radicals and had plotted mutiny—were false. His only "crime" had been to expose corruption among his superiors, who had embezzled sailors' pay for months.
When he was finally expelled, public petitions from fellow officers had spared him the gallows. Out of work and embittered, he gathered a handful of fellow ex-sailors and turned to banditry. Yet even as robbers, they clung to a soldier's code: never kill, never harm the poor, take only from the corrupt and wealthy.
Tonight's target was the returning Marquis de Fontenay, whose wife's jewels alone were worth a quarter million livres—enough to buy a privateer ship and return to the sea. One last raid, Allemand told himself. Then freedom.
A second scout galloped up. "They're coming! The carriage—two guards, one driver!"
"Good!" Allemand swung his tricorne in the air. "Gentlemen, remember our manners. First round empty, strike with the flat, and no harm to our noble friends—or their lady's nerves!"
The twelve bandits laughed, masked their faces, and rode toward the left fork.
From the woods on the right, Hoche and his cavalry watched silently, trailing them at a measured distance.
Ten minutes later, near an ancient stone bridge, the bandits met the carriage.
"Quick and clean!" Allemand shouted, firing a blank into the air. His men surged forward.
The driver panicked, swerving toward the riverbank. The wheels sank in mud. Without a word to his passengers, he leapt into the stream and fled. The guards wheeled their horses and bolted back the way they came.
Something was wrong. The marquis and his wife hadn't screamed, hadn't moved. Allemand's pulse quickened. He spurred closer—and froze.
"Damn it! Straw dummies! We've been tricked!"
"Retreat!" he roared, spinning his horse—but the trap had already closed.
Fifty meters behind, twenty blue-coated cavalrymen appeared in formation. Ahead, another twenty thundered across the bridge. The brigands were encircled, trapped between river and swamp.
"Drop your weapons!"
Allemand sighed. He was no fool. He threw down his sword and pistol, dismounted, and raised his hands. His men followed suit.
The prisoners were marched back to the inn in chains, the troopers singing triumphantly. But victory brought dispute.
"Lieutenant Colonel Franck," Jourdain said stiffly, "these men fall under my jurisdiction. They'll be held here until Limoges sends for them. They're not to be transferred to Bordeaux."
André's smile thinned. He wasn't after glory or reward—he pitied the men. From Lussac he had already learned their story: sailors turned robbers who had shed little blood, preying only on the corrupt and the rich.
He wanted them tried in Bordeaux, where his ally Judge Duranthon might spare them in exchange for service to the Republic. But to do that, he needed the magistrate's support.
So André revealed his true identity: Tax Prosecutor for the Kingdom of France, on mission to Bordeaux. In return for cooperation, he offered a different kind of bargain—he would sponsor young Joseph Lussac's education in Paris, covering every expense.
For the father, the offer was irresistible. Sending his son to Saint-Louis-le-Grand had been a dream beyond reach. Now the path lay open, if only he sided with the Parisian.
"I'm sorry, Captain Jourdain," Lussac said formally, "but I must agree with Colonel Franck. Our town is too small, too weak to guard such dangerous men. The victims, citizens de Fontenay, reside in Bordeaux—it's only proper they face trial there."
Jourdain's face reddened with anger. He pushed back his chair to leave, but Augereau stepped in front of him. Smiling thinly, he insisted that the captain stay for a celebratory banquet in honour of the victory. The invitation left no room for refusal.
By the next morning, as André's detachment boarded a merchant barge moored on the Isle River, Jourdain was released—humiliated, but unharmed.
The Isle, largest tributary of the Dordogne, wound through a landscape of tranquil beauty—verdant valleys, fertile fields, limestone cliffs, and vine-draped villages. The river's gentle currents, tamed by centuries of canals, made it one of France's "peaceful daughters."
Their vessel, the Éclatant—"The Braggart"—was a Dutch-built, twin-masted cargo ship, flat-bottomed and square-sterned, perfect for inland waters. Two years earlier, the Marquis de Fontenay had bought it from a bankrupt Rotterdam merchant and refitted it for transporting oak casks of wine.
Now, The Braggart served as a temporary transport: carrying the marquis, his wife, Colonel Franck of Paris, his cavalry detachment, and a handful of shackled prisoners—bound together, down the quiet river, toward Bordeaux.