Where the Light Falls

by Allison Pataki

  On the topic of Revolutionary justice, several points should be addressed. First and foremost, the use of the guillotine in La Place de la Révolution (now Paris’s Place de la Concorde, renamed by Napoleon) was certainly an important feature of the Revolution’s Reign of Terror. Depending on which source you go by, it is estimated that as many as 20,000 people were executed by guillotine (approximately 2,500 of those individuals in Paris), and nearly 30,000 would be enacted by other means throughout France. The Terror was state policy, organized and enacted by the Committees of Public Safety and General Security. These officials oversaw every aspect of government from economic policy and formulation of laws and special courts to military policy and taxation.

  The Revolution began in earnest in the summer of 1789 when the “Third Estate,” or the class of common and bourgeois individuals of the Estates General Convention (by far the largest portion of the population), decided to oppose the much more powerful and tax-exempt First and Second Estates: the clergy and nobility, respectively. Starving and strapped by crushing taxation, the representatives of the common class used the gathering of the Estates General Convention in Versailles to demand greater representation and legal rights. King Louis XVI proved intransigent in the face of these demands, reluctant to compromise and thus appear to diminish his “divine right” authority.

  In response to these events at Versailles, located just outside Paris, the outraged population of the capital rose up against the government of the monarchy and took down the formidable and reviled Bastille prison on July 14 (now celebrated as Bastille Day). Over the course of the next three years, a growing feeling of patriotic and revolutionary fervor was inflamed across the country, and the unpopular king and queen—along with their aristocratic allies—became increasingly isolated and threatened by the likes of ambitious young men such as Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Danton, Jean-Paul Marat, and Camille Desmoulins. Spreading their pamphlets across cities and giving speeches to enthusiastic crowds, these popular revolutionaries demanded more concessions from the king and more power for the people, especially those with like-minded political sensibilities.

  In June 1791, amid growing hostility toward the very idea of an all-powerful monarchy, King Louis XVI and his family tried to flee the country. This action, known as the failed Flight to Varennes, sealed the king’s fate. In the eyes of the people, Louis and his Austrian-born queen had abandoned their country and were clearly in league with foreign dictators to crush the new liberties won by the people. Thus, they no longer had the authority to rule. Louis would be executed a year and a half later, and the Reign of Terror would truly begin in the winter of 1793.

  Our story begins in the winter of 1792. By then, the king and queen had already tried to flee, and the country had passed into the third year of its Revolution. However, the Reign of Terror, as history has come to call it, had not yet begun. In fact, the guillotine was not permanently moved to La Place de la Révolution until May 1793, so we took a liberty in having tumbrils transporting condemned prisoners there at the start of our story.

  The Terror was halted in the Thermidorian Reaction of July 1794, during which time Maximilien Robespierre and twenty-one of his political allies were executed. (It is referred to as the Thermidorian Reaction because the month in which it occurred was Thermidor by the Republican calendar.) Intermittent violence and war would continue to affect France for many years to follow.

  What would follow was known as the Period of the Directory. This government replaced the Revolutionary government, and it consisted of an upper and lower house and an executive body of five members. It is the lower house, the Council of Five Hundred, to which Gavreau intends to nominate Jean-Luc. It was also this elected body that Napoleon Bonaparte would overthrow in 1799, conferring onto himself the title of First Consul.

  Before he was First Consul of France, however, Napoleone Buonaparte was a young Corsican officer in the French army whose career prospects looked anything but extraordinary. With the outbreak of violence in Paris in 1792, which a young, horrorstruck Buonaparte witnessed firsthand, the future was clearly going to bring change to everything and everyone in France. In 1794, outside of the southern port city of Toulon, Napoleone—then known simply as Captain Buonaparte—would first make his unusual name famous. Using the personal connections he had made with Maximilien Robespierre’s younger brother, he was asked to assist in the siege of Toulon, which had been blockaded and occupied by the British and Spanish navies with help from sympathetic royalist French citizens. Assuming command of French forces in the region, young Buonaparte requisitioned supplies and reinforcements from the surrounding countryside and systematically dismantled the British hold on the city, eventually liberating it in the name of the French Republic. This event catapulted a poor, obscure young captain to nationwide fame, and the rank of general. And this was the famous “boy general” to whom Remy refers when he asks André if they might get to see him—an ambitious twenty-four-year-old from Corsica who would rise to staggering heights and change the course of world history.

  In 1795, after a period of restlessness and desperation, General Bonaparte, having by then Gallicized the spelling of his name, again threw himself into events that would bring him even more fame—and infamy. The episode in Chapter 17 where Jean-Luc flees from a macabre street scene in horror and runs into a crowd chanting for General Bonaparte in Paris is based on a real event known as the episode of 13 Vendémiaire (using the Republican calendar for October). General Bonaparte took charge of a situation in which royalist sympathizers were attempting to storm the government buildings and overthrow the government. With ruthless and devastating effect, Napoleon turned cannons on the mob and butchered hundreds, saving the government and winning acclaim across France. The meticulous reader will note that this event occurs a year earlier in our novel than it does in the historical record. We ask your forgiveness if this caused confusion; it was, we determined, a necessary use of the artistic license afforded to us as writers of fiction, in order for this significant scene to work within our fictional plot and with our many characters and events.

  After a year of stunning and unlikely victories with his “Army of Italy” against the Austrian empire and their allies, Napoleon Bonaparte had officially risen to the prominence he had coveted his entire life. His extortionist treatment of conquered Italian cities led to a steady flow of gold, silver, and all manner of treasure into the French coffers. The desperate financial situation France had found itself in since the years leading to the Revolution was now over. The popular general quoted his hero Alexander the Great when he stated that “fortune favors the bold,” and he was now in a position to act boldly in charting the course of his own grand destiny. After the failure of his plan to sail across the English Channel and invade France’s greatest enemy, Napoleon set his sights on a new prize, one that would challenge Great Britain’s naval supremacy and threaten their colonies as far abroad as India. Napoleon would conquer Egypt.

  With André Valière in exile, we pick up his story off the coast of southern France where he is serving as a deckhand on l’Esprit de Liberté. Soon after, we learn that he is to join General Bonaparte’s expedition to the ancient kingdom on the Nile. The Egyptian campaign unfolded much as it does in the novel, with a two-week march across blistering sands during which hundreds, if not thousands, of French soldiers would perish. Much of the blame has to be put on a young General Bonaparte, who many believe underestimated the logistical and human toll a march across three hundred miles of North African desert would take on his army. The Battle of the Pyramids was a great victory for the French over the superior numbers of Mameluke warriors. However, in history, the French army would then be stranded without ships after a losing battle against the British navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson. Most of the surviving soldiers would not arrive home until they were captured by the British and returned to France in 1801.

  One note on our use of French names and an accompanying decision we had to make on style: in
French, generic words denoting squares, streets, names, and the like are written in lowercase, whether used alone or with a specific name as part of an address. For instance, one would read about la place de la Révolution. We have elected to refer instead to La Place de la Révolution, as that is likely the more familiar style for readers of English, and, we felt, would be less likely to cause confusion. With the heavy burden we are already placing on the reader to wrangle this complex history and occasionally slip with us into French phrases and names, we figured this small stylistic decision to make things just slightly less complicated might be appreciated.

  This is a tale that feels very significant to us, not only as lovers of history but also because of our family’s deep roots in France. Allison has lived in Paris and Owen has lived in London (where he made use of the short “chunnel” train ride to Paris). We have many relatives still living in Paris and throughout France, so we consider this history to be a part of our own heritage and family tapestry.

  Like the American Revolution, this was a conflict that, at times, brought out some of the highest ideals of humanity. Many of the most celebrated aspects of French culture today—the national anthem of France (the Marseillaise), the tricolor flag, and the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”—all originate from this seminal and tumultuous period. However, we also see the events in France spiral into chaos, fear, and outright butchery.

  In our story we hope to convey both extremes, the better angels of human nature and the horrifying excesses of violence and extremism. The light and the dark, the hopeful and the hopeless. And we hope that this novel of historical fiction can be educational and enlightening for readers while also providing a compelling story and worthwhile experience. After all, it’s through history that we might better understand not only the past but also our present and future.

  To our family: Mom and Dad, Emily and Teddy

  For encouraging our imaginations and believing in big dreams.

  Acknowledgments

  We are so grateful to the many family, friends, and colleagues who have helped us to create this novel. Special thanks go to: our literary agent Lacy Lynch and the team at Dupree Miller & Associates; our editor Kara Cesare, as well as Susan Kamil, Avideh Bashirrad, Leigh Marchant, Loren Noveck, Sally Marvin, Maria Braeckel, Andrea DeWerd, Emma Caruso, Michelle Jasmine, Samantha Leach, Allyson Pearl, Gina Centrello, and the entire team at The Dial Press and Random House; Lindsay Mullen, Katie Nuckolls, Jordan Dugan, Alyssa Conrardy, and the whole Prosper Strategies crew.

  To the numberless historians, curators, translators, and biographers who have helped to make sense of and shed light on (pun intended) one of the most dramatic, volatile, and complicated periods in modern Western European history: our perpetual admiration and gratitude are yours.

  We have generous and supportive friends in abundance, as well as loving family members who have urged us on at every turn. For those who have been interested and supportive of this project, especially those from the very beginning, you know who you are, and we are eternally grateful. It also feels appropriate, at the conclusion of a book considering the idea and nature of light, to say: Lilly, you shine brightest of all for your parents.

  While the following does not comprise an exhaustive or proper bibliography, we did wish to provide the curious reader with a list of books and works that proved particularly inspiring and helpful to us during our research of French history and culture:

  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

  Danton by Andrzej Wajda (film)

  French Revolutionary Infantry: 1789–1802 by the Osprey Men at Arms Series

  Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

  La Révolution Française: Les Années Lumière (film series)

  La Révolution Française: Les Années Terribles (film series)

  Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

  Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life by Alan Schom

  Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaigns: 1798–1801 by the Osprey Men at Arms Series

  The French Revolution, A History by Thomas Carlyle

  The French Revolution and Napoleon by Leo Gershoy

  The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

  The Origins of the French Revolution by William Doyle

  By Allison Pataki and Owen Pataki

  Where the Light Falls

  By Allison Pataki

  The Traitor’s Wife

  The Accidental Empress

  Sisi

  About the Authors

  ALLISON PATAKI is the author of the bestselling novels Sisi, The Traitor’s Wife, and The Accidental Empress. Her novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. A former news writer and producer, Pataki has written for The New York Times, ABC News, The Huffington Post, USA Today, Fox News, and other outlets. She graduated cum laude from Yale University with a major in English and spent several years in journalism before switching to fiction writing. A member of the Historical Novel Society, Allison Pataki lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. To connect and learn more, please visit:

  AllisonPataki.com

  Twitter: @AllisonPataki

  OWEN PATAKI graduated from Cornell University in 2010 with a degree in history. He served as a first lieutenant in the United States army, with one deployment to Afghanistan. Following his service in the military, he attended film school in London. He has also worked for the Weinstein Company and assisted on several film productions. He now lives in New York City, where he is working as a screenwriter and filmmaker. This is his first novel.

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