My enemies were sending armies; I was going to send a financial report.
Lafayette and the Assembly delegates stared at the opening line of my letter—My Dearest Brother Leopold—as if it were a declaration of insanity. They expected a king's defiant roar. They were getting a family newsletter.
"Your Majesty, with all due respect," Lafayette began, his voice tight with confusion, "this is the Holy Roman Emperor. A formal protest requires a formal, diplomatic response!"
"He sent me a threat disguised as a family matter," I said without looking up from the parchment. "I'm sending one back."
I wasn't writing like a king. I was writing like a modern CEO reporting a hostile takeover attempt to a major, and very dangerous, shareholder. The language was simple, blunt, and factual.
I started by framing the revolution in terms he would understand: business.
...this is not a rebellion against the crown, I wrote, my quill scratching furiously, but a hostile restructuring of a bankrupt state. France was a company being driven into the ground by decades of mismanagement. The National Assembly and I are acting as receivers, to save the enterprise from total liquidation.
Next, I named the culprits. I reframed Artois and the émigrés not as wronged nobles, but as corrupt executives.
Your court has no doubt been flooded with appeals from my brother, Artois, and his faction. They will paint themselves as victims. The truth is simpler. They are the old management, a board of directors who embezzled funds, ran up catastrophic debts, and are now seeking a foreign buyout—an invasion—to cover up their crimes.
Then came the knife. The part that would transform this from a political dispute into a monstrous family betrayal.
They will tell you they are acting to protect their Queen, your sister. You should know, then, what kind of protection they offer. Three weeks ago, while under their influence, an attempt was made on the life of my son, the Dauphin. Your nephew.
I paused, letting the weight of that sentence settle in my own mind.
The boy's medicine was replaced with a fast-acting poison, a distillation of nightshade. The agent who delivered it was hired by a man in the direct employ of my brother, Artois. Had the attempt succeeded, they would have let Marie take the blame. They would have called her a hysterical mother or, worse, an Austrian monster who murdered her own child to put her daughter on the throne.
As I wrote, I motioned to Jean, who had been waiting. He stepped forward with a small, leather-bound portfolio. Inside was the written, signed, and notarized confession of the Comtesse de la Motte, the lady-in-waiting who had switched the vials. It was a piece of undeniable, ugly proof.
I finished the letter with an offer, a new deal for a new world.
Marie is safe. She is not my prisoner. She is my most valued partner in this restructuring. The émigrés crying for your help are the same men who tried to murder her son and destroy her name. Reject their bad debts. Let us, instead, forge a new alliance between France and Austria. One based not on the decaying bonds of the old regime, but on mutual prosperity and a shared interest in stability.
I signed it simply, Louis.
As I was melting the wax for the seal, Fournier stumbled back into the tavern. His usual boisterous energy was gone. His face was grim.
"We have a problem," he grunted.
"Another convoy?" I asked.
"Worse."
He led me out of the tavern and down a lavish, formerly tree-lined street. We stopped in front of the Hôtel de Galliffet, a massive, opulent mansion. Fournier's men stood guard outside, their faces unsettled.
"While my men were securing the premises," Fournier explained, his voice low, "they heard a noise from the wine cellar. The door was locked from the outside."
He led me down a set of stone steps into the cavernous cellar. The air was cool and smelled of damp earth and old wine. In the flickering torchlight, I saw them. A half-dozen people, huddled together in the corner like frightened animals. The servants of the house. Their fleeing master had simply locked them in the basement and left them to die. They had been trapped for at least two days.
They were gaunt, their eyes wide and terrified. They looked at us—at Fournier's bloody apron, at my Tricolore cockade—as if we were the monsters who had put them there.
One of them, a young maid no older than sixteen, was clutching a single, heavy, silver candlestick to her chest. It was the only thing of value she had.
I walked towards them slowly, my hands open. The girl flinched, holding the candlestick like a weapon.
"It's all right," I said, my voice soft. "You're safe now."
I knelt down in front of her. Her eyes were full of tears, her body trembling. "He... he didn't pay us," she whispered, her voice cracking. "He told us to wait here. This... this was all I could take." She thought the candlestick was her final wages.
I didn't make a speech. I didn't make a promise. I gently took the silver candlestick from her trembling hands. I walked back up the stairs, past Fournier, to the clerk who was inventorying the house's assets.
I placed the candlestick on his table. "Record this," I said, my voice cold with a rage I hadn't felt all day. "One silver candlestick. Marked as paid severance to the staff."
Then I turned to one of my own guards. "Get our food rations from the carriage. All of them. Bring them here."
The small, human act was witnessed by Fournier's men. They looked from the terrified servants to me, and then to their leader. I saw a flicker of something new in their eyes. We weren't just seizing assets. We were settling accounts.
Just as we returned to the tavern, Lafayette strode in. His uniform was still immaculate, but his face was deeply troubled.
"The patrols are working, Your Majesty," he reported, his voice stiff. "The looting has all but stopped." He hesitated. "But we are finding bodies. Not nobles. Shopkeepers. Moneylenders. A baker who was owed a great deal of money. It seems some citizens are using the chaos to... settle old debts."
The revolution was becoming a cover for a thousand petty, ugly crimes.
"We must impose martial law," Lafayette insisted. "Military tribunals. Swift justice, to make an example!"
"Absolutely not!" Robespierre's voice cut through the air from his corner. He stepped forward, his eyes blazing with ideological fire. "That is the justice of a tyrant! The people's justice must be done by the people's courts! We cannot replace one form of arbitrary power with another!"
The cracks in my command were already showing. The idealist versus the pragmatist.
"No military tribunals," I said firmly, siding with Robespierre, though for different reasons. My authority was fragile. I couldn't afford to be seen as a military dictator. "We are restoring civil order, not imposing a new one." I turned to Lafayette. "Double the patrols. Our presence will be a shield, not a sword. For now."
I turned my attention back to the letters. I quickly wrote a short, personal note to Marie, asking her to add her own postscript to her brother. A line about a childhood memory, a shared secret—a final layer of authenticity that no forger could ever fake.
The package was ready. A political bomb. But who could I trust to deliver it? Giving it to the Austrian ambassador was a fatal risk. He was a creature of the old court; he would burn it before letting it reach the Emperor.
"I may have a man," De La Tour said quietly from the doorway. "One of my most trusted sergeants. A former Swiss Guard. His family lives near Basel, in Austrian-controlled territory. He is loyal, discreet, and has a legitimate reason to travel across the border. He can bypass the official channels."
He was the perfect stealth messenger.
In a dark, quiet back alley, away from the noise of the tavern, I met the man. He was a solid, stoic soldier with honest eyes. I handed him the sealed oilskin pouch containing the letters and the confession. I also gave him a heavy bag of gold for his journey.
"There is no more important mission in all of France right now," I told him, my voice low and urgent. "The fate of two nations, and the lives of millions, may depend on this getting into the Emperor's hands, and his hands alone. Trust no one."
The soldier looked at the pouch, then at me. He nodded once, a solemn understanding passing between us. He secured the pouch inside his coat.
Then, he turned and melted into the pre-dawn darkness of the Parisian streets.
I was left standing alone in the alley, the cold morning air on my face. I had just fired my only shot in a war of information. A war I had started. I had no way of knowing if the bullet would find its target, or if it would turn in the air and come straight back for my own head.