by Iain Gale
It threw him a little. He could almost, well, very nearly, imagine a world without the great monster of Europe. And then what? A return to the Europe of the Ancien Régime? A return to Europe before the Revolution? Before Robespierre and the terror? Before Madame la Guillotine and Boney the bogeyman? It was impossible that the world could ever return to such a state.
Grant spoke again. ‘In fact we need to maintain Bonaparte’s regime. It will be easier to defeat France with Bonaparte in power.’
Archer and Keane stared at him and Keane spoke. ‘Keep him on the throne, sir? Surely that’s madness. Surely the whole reason that I’m here, that I was sent here, was to establish a plot to get rid of Bonaparte?’
‘Yes, absolute madness. But as you well know, James, we adapt to our circumstances. Hard as it might seem to you at this moment, we now have to keep Bonaparte in power. And now I should be gone.’
‘Where will you go, sir?’
‘Why, back to Spain. Did I tell you that Silver arrived in one piece, with his news. And what news it was. You did well with that. Wellington is enormously pleased. I see a promotion, James. I’m damn sure I do.’
Archer spoke. ‘To Spain? Will you have to ride all the way, sir?’
‘From Salamanca, with changes of horse. I had to come myself; I could not send a messenger. You had to hear this from my mouth to understand just how important a matter this really is.’
He moved to the door and before opening it turned back to them.
‘Remember my words, James. Wellington is adamant. To stage and to be seen to support an insurrection is certainly a good thing. It will unsettle Napoleon’s regime. But it cannot be allowed to unseat him. That will simply replace one form of dictatorship with another. When the emperor is defeated it must be on very specific terms. And those must be imposed by the allies and in particular by Wellington and his faction. You understand my meaning?’
‘I have it exactly, sir.’
‘Very well, James, Archer, until we meet again, wherever that may be, let there be no mistake about this: victory, when it comes, must come on the battlefield.’
12
General Malet had a plan and it was infallible. That at least was his opinion. To Keane, however, Malet appeared the least likely-looking conspirator he had ever seen. He was of small stature, had huge eyes set in a pale face, a feminine cupid’s bow of a mouth and long sideburns. Keane knew that he had served with distinction in the early campaigns of the Revolution, but the place of their meeting said more about the man who was to lead the coup than any citations or medals ever could.
He had taken against Napoleon when he had proclaimed himself emperor and had resigned from the army. For the last two years, ever since he had been suspected of plotting against the emperor and being a member of an order of republican Masons, Malet had been in custody. More importantly, for the last four months, his residence had been a maison de santé, or asylum, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, to which he had been transferred at the intercession of his wife.
Ironically, thought Keane, it had been Savary, Fouché’s inept successor as head of the police, who had agreed with her entreaties and so it was here in the early evening of 13th July that Keane and Archer found the disgraced hero, living among the demented, the erotomaniacs, the melancholics and the megalomaniacs of Paris.
As Keane approached Malet across the tree-shaded courtyard of the asylum, the general shot him a pleasant smile. ‘Ah, Captain Williams, isn’t it? I was informed that you were coming. How are the Irish today?’
‘As well as might be expected, sir. It’s an honour to meet you.’
Looking at his face Keane noticed that Malet’s right eyebrow was twitching. It was an unfortunate stigma and not one which would have lent gravitas to any political or military leader. Watching him more closely as Malet began to talk to the director of the hospital, the renowned Doctor Pinel, and another of his visitors, Keane noticed too that the third finger of his right hand did not stop twitching. Looking around him at the other inmates, all of them preoccupied with their own imaginary worlds, Keane noticed that many of them demonstrated similar twitches and involuntary movements.
The other visitor, a captain of the National Guard named Rateau, who to his dismay had overnight been unexpectedly promoted from corporal, brought Malet across to Keane. ‘Captain Williams, I have arranged for the release of General Malet. Will you kindly escort the general from here to the house near the Place Royale. You have the address?’
Keane nodded. ‘Very well, sir. General, shall we go?’
Malet nodded and with Keane and Archer on either side began to march towards the entrance gate, which stood open. It cannot be this simple, thought Keane. But to his dismay, it was. Clearly Fouché’s bribery, Talleyrand’s influence or Macpherson’s trickery, or more probably a combination of the three, had done their work. The three men walked clear of the gates into the street and entered a carriage, which took off as soon as the door was shut.
They drove through the darkening streets to the address which lay just off the Place Royale at rue Saint-Gilles. It was curious, thought Keane, that they should be so close to his aunt’s old house. To Keane’s slight surprise the door was opened by a man wearing clerical garb, who spoke to him with a Spanish accent.
‘You have our friend?’
Keane replied in Spanish. ‘We have the package, father.’
‘Excellent. General, sir, what an honour. Your uniform is in your portmanteau. Through there, sir.’
The priest directed them through to a small sitting room at the rear of the apartment, and within a few minutes Malet had swapped clothes, exchanging his everyday civilian dress for the splendid uniform of a general of the French army.
He turned to the priest. ‘Now, father, we need some punch. You have some?’
The priest looked askance. ‘No, general, I’m afraid not. I do have wine. Good Rhenish.’
Malet shrugged. ‘That will have to do.’ He turned to Keane. ‘Captain, join me and I will explain my plan, after this sad news.’
‘Sad news?’
‘Why, the death of the emperor. Have you not been told? That is why I am here. I have just been informed. He is dead in Russia. Killed in action leading his men on 28th June. We must act.’
Keane shot Archer a glance that needed no explanation. Malet was clearly insane. With large glasses of wine before them, he began.
From the portmanteau he produced the papers on which Archer had been working for the past fortnight. ‘Here, gentlemen, are the papers. As you see, I have been appointed governor of Paris in the interim government. And here is a note for 100,000 francs to be drawn on the bank. And here is an order for the replacement of all Imperial bodies by bodies of the new government. It is all in order, is it not?’
Keane and Archer pretended to look and both nodded. ‘Yes, of course it is, general.’
There was a knock on the door and Rateau, the young ex-corporal of the National Guard, appeared and with him another young man in his late twenties.
‘General, you remember my friend André Boutreux, the poet. You may recall he’s a student of law, from Rennes.’
‘Yes, of course, the poet.’
Malet stood up and embraced Rateau. ‘Dear friend, here, look, put on this.’ From the portmanteau he produced another uniform, the light blue of an aide de camp to a general, and handed it to the astonished youth.
‘General?’
‘Rateau. You’re as of this moment promoted to my aide de camp. Come on, put it on and then join us for wine, more wine.’ To the other man he handed a tricolour sash. ‘For you, monsieur poet, I have this. Put it round your waist.’
The poet tied the sash as directed. It gave him a look of a slightly tawdry but vaguely dignified local official. Like a law student or a failed poet, thought Keane, doing his best to look as much like a commissioner of police as he
could.
Over the next four hours Malet expounded his plan and motive with admirable clarity. This, thought Keane, was the true extent of madness. The ability to convince yourself, utterly, that you were right. All of those years languishing in prison had paid off. Malet had thought long and hard and had gone over every failing, every loophole. His own escape; the announcement of the emperor’s death; the support of the generals; the perfect forgery of the documents of the death. Everything had been planned meticulously. He had drawn up minute-by-minute orders and knew where everyone was to be at the specified date and time.
Now even the damned royalists had come around to join him, and the word on the street and in the maison de santé had been that they had even gone so far as to scupper a plan of their own, sacrificing two agents in the process. For his part, Malet said, he had agreed to work with them and had agreed to take with him on his crusade some of their own men. He smiled at Keane and Archer.
‘Welcome, gentlemen, to the future of France and the new provisional republican government. General Moreau, Lazare Carnot, Marshal Augerau, Count Frochot, myself of course, Vice-Admiral Truguet. I have also made provision for some of our royalist friends in the new council. The necessary forces for the coup will be found from the Gendarmerie of Paris and the 10th Cohort of the National Guard.’ And so it continued.
It was almost one o’ clock in the morning before the general finally left the priest’s house. With the newly elevated Corporal Rateau by his side and Keane and Archer in front with the poet Boutreux, all of them armed with swords, the party walked back eastwards through the dark streets to the Popincourt barracks on the rue Popincourt in the Faubourg, close to the maison de santé where they had met Malet.
Arriving outside, Malet approached the sentry. ‘Open the gates. I have business with the commanding officer.’
The captain of the guard, summoned from the guardhouse, spoke to Malet. ‘I’m afraid that Colonel Soulier is unwell, general. He is not in his office. He is actually in bed with a fever.’
‘No matter, let me in. I shall see him all the same.’
In due course the gates swung open and the five men entered the barracks. Malet, knowing the layout, headed for Soulier’s bedroom, where the colonel, lying covered in sweat in bed, was taken entirely by surprise. He could though make out the figure of a French general and he sat up as straight as he could and straightened his sodden nightshirt.
‘General, sir, what commands have you for me?’
‘Has no one informed you, Soulier? We have had the most terrible misfortune to lose the emperor. In Russia on the twenty-eighth.’
With no warning, Soulier burst into tears. ‘No, general, it can’t be so. The emperor, dead?’
‘Yes, it is true, man. Pull yourself together. We must act fast to preserve order.’
Malet handed Soulier a piece of paper and then went on, to Keane’s astonishment, to pretend to be another general entirely. ‘General Malet instructed me to give you this order, colonel. As you will see, it instructs you to muster your men under arms and place them under my direction.’
This was a brilliant twist, thought Keane, knowing the content of the papers in Soulier’s hands which of course were all Archer’s work. They stated additionally that Soulier should do everything as instructed by General Lamotte, and was signed by Malet. So in one moment Malet had passed himself off as Lamotte. Soulier, seeing double as he attempted to climb out of bed, saluted Malet and began to call out his men.
Keane spoke quietly to Archer. ‘Remind me what else those documents say.’
‘That the 10th Cohort is to provide soldiers to arrest Savary, sir. And minister of war Clarke, and Cambacérès, and the commander of the Paris garrison General Hulin. Oh, and that Colonel Soulier is instantly to be promoted to the rank of général de brigade with a note made out to him for 100,000 francs.’
*
Malet waited for them on the parade ground and once all 1,200 men of the 10th Cohort of the Paris Guard were assembled, he read out his proclamation. Keane and Archer stood behind him and watched their reaction. There was the predictable shock at the reported death of Napoleon, and then what seemed to be relief as the men saw that, in Malet, one of their generals appeared to have taken charge.
Keane whispered to Archer, ‘Good God, man. You don’t suppose, do you, that this could actually work?’
*
Malet marched his men through the gates of the barracks and out into the streets, with Colonel Soulier at their head, now sweating out his fever into the thick serge of his uniform. Keane and Archer followed at the front, with Rateau and Boutreux, and the column began to make its way westwards through the very heart of Paris.
They passed by the Bastille, then along the rue Saint-Antoine. It had been planned well, thought Keane. This was a Friday, the weekly parade day for the Paris garrison, and now in the early morning the sound of marching feet and presence of a whole battalion did not excite any undue attention.
The column continued on its way, marching along the rue Saint-Antoine up to the gates of the prison of La Force. Here they halted and once again Malet himself took charge and called for the gates to be opened, which of course they were.
Entering the courtyard of the prison he found the captain of the guard, who failed to recognize him in his general’s uniform. ‘The prisoners Guidal and Lahorie – bring them to me.’
It didn’t take long to find the two disgraced generals whose prison quarters he had shared for two years, and once they were with him outside the prison Malet ordered the guard to shut the gates again.
He embraced the two men. ‘My friends, old friends, we have to act fast. The emperor is dead in Russia.’ He produced the forged documents he had shown to Colonel Soulier.
‘Do you see? The Senate has already reacted this very night. See the signatures – here and here.’
He was behaving, thought Keane, like an overexcited child. And now the frenzied commands began to pour out.
‘General Lahorie, you will now take immediate command of this regiment, the 10th, and will personally take a company to arrest Chef de Police Savary. General Guidal, you will take another company of these men. Arrest Cambacérès and the minister of war, Clarke. I myself will need just fifty men. We’re going to secure the prefecture.’
The two generals, who clearly had been forewarned of the plot and their parts in it during his incarceration, nodded to Malet, who turned and took control of his own detail of fifty men.
Keane watched Lahorie and Guidal take the remainder and was surprised to see that they did not separate their forces but left the barracks together. He thought that perhaps he should mention this to Malet, but the general was too preoccupied with his own force and Keane wondered what difference it might make. It was clear to him though that Malet was already losing control of the situation.
Things now began to move quickly. They marched up the newly built rue de Rivoli to the HÔtel de Ville.
Malet ordered the troops to take up battle positions across the Place de Grève and Keane watched bemused as the Parisians simply ignored them, as if this sort of event happened every day.
Malet turned to the commander of the detachment. ‘Summon Prefect Frochot and have him prepare a room in the HÔtel de Ville for the new provisional government.’
As the man hurried off, Malet carried on towards the Place Vendôme and Keane and Archer, as instructed, went with him. The man was unstoppable, thought Keane. Single-minded in pursuit of this dream of so many years of planning. Fetching from Rateau two paper packets, Malet gave these to two junior officers of the 10th and ordered them to be taken to two other regiments of the Paris Guard. They contained, he told Keane, the same proclamation he had read out as well as specific instructions for each regiment.
‘I have ordered one regiment to close the barriers of Paris; the other to occupy the bank, the treasury and all th
e ministries. Now it is our turn. Come on, captain, lieutenant.’
Following Malet and his fifty men with Rateau and Boutreux, Keane and Archer made their way along the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré past Macpherson’s house and turned into the Place Vendôme.
Placing twenty-five men in order of battle in front of the prefecture, Malet called over a young lieutenant and handed him another bundle. ‘You, take these to General Doucet.’
Keane turned to him. ‘May I ask, general, what that contained?’
‘The proclamation of the emperor’s death, as before, along with the commission of général de brigade for Doucet and a money order to him for 100,000 francs.’
Promotion and bribery, as before, thought Keane. The man was a professional. He wondered now how long he would have to let things run and began to think of means by which it could be brought swiftly to an end before it got out of hand.
*
The Place Vendôme began to fill with infantrymen – Lahorie and Guidal’s cohort, the bulk of the regiment. Lahorie reported to Malet wearing a smile. ‘We took Savary, sir. Found him still in his nightshirt and took him to La Force.’
‘And the others?’
‘We arrested the prefect of police, Pasquier, and we’ve turned the prefect of the Seine, Frochot. And also Desmarest, head of Savary’s security division.’ He looked pleased with himself.
Malet frowned. ‘What of Cambacérès and Clarke? Did General Guidal not arrest them?’
‘General Guidal came with me, sir. He said that he had a score to settle with Savary.’
Malet fumed. ‘This is not the time to settle old scores. We are taking power, not squabbling in a playground. Order General Guidal to arrest those men now. And, Lahorie, you are of this moment the new minister of police.’
*
It was now around 8.30 in the morning and the streets were filling with Parisians, many of them now becoming more inquisitive at the actions being played out in their capital. It was clear that something was going on. One of them, a man in his thirties, approached one of the officers of the 10th Cohort. Keane could see him asking a question, which when answered brought an extraordinary reaction. The man threw his hands up in the air and stared wildly before running off towards a crowd of civilians. Even at this distance it was not hard to hear his words, ‘L’empereur est mort. Napoléon est mort. Mort en Russe.’
