The Accountant Becomes Louis XVI to Save His Neck

The fragile peace bought at such great political cost in the court room lasted for barely more than a day. The triumphant jubilation in the palace was lost the moment the word from London arrived in the palace, the negative contents injecting a new and deeper cold into the anterooms at Versailles. The danger was no longer from within, a matter of rebel nobles and court intrigues. It was from the outside, existential, the feared and despised specter of British avarice.

Art called for a special meeting of his Royal Council the next morning. Tension in the council chamber was thick with foreboding which made the earlier fracas at the bar seem little more than a quarrel. Men at the great gleaming table were the aggressive factions of the French state, old beliefs fixed on a collision course about some half-world-away crisis.

At the opposite end of the table was Charles de Vergennes. Once chastened in the extreme by the ordeal of the trial, the foreign minister now appeared rejuvenated. The world was once again in the subject in which he was skilled: not commerce, but grand strategy, the classic game of chess against France's mortal foe. His eyes had a hawklike gleam.

Facing him was Jacques Necker. The Director-General of Finance seemed to have lost sleep. His desk was piled high with ledgers and crudely sketched charts of naval expenditure and the ruinous rates of interest on war loans. He viewed the British dispatch as little more than a sentence of death on his beloved budget.

And between them was a new, crucial voice. The Marquis de Lafayette was a young, extremely solemn aristocrat with passion in his eyes. A bit over a teenager, he was amazingly wealthy, well-connected, and inspired by a sentimental idealism that was rousing and, in Art's opinion, quite perilous. He was the very model of the young progressive aristocrat, the type who read Rousseau and had dreams of glory.

Art allowed the silence to linger for a moment before he spoke. "Gentlemen," he started out in his steady voice, "you've all read the dispatch. The British are mobilizing. Conditions in their American colonies are getting worse. I'd like the advice on France's response."

Vergennes spoke first, his voice booming with the zeal of a man whose hour has finally arrived. "Your Majesty, this is no crisis. This is a gift from the very Hand of God," he said, his hands on the table. "This is the opportune break we prayed for since the humiliating peace at the end of the last war. Our old enemy, Britain, is mired in a colonial revolt three thousand miles from home. Their treasury is exhausted, their people are at war with each other, and their army over-stretched. This is our moment to strike!"

He leaned over, his eyes aflame. "By providing decisive help to the American colonists, we can rob England of its strength. We can push them into a costly war of attrition lasting years and meanwhile see our own fleet replenish itself. We can regain our lost Caribbean and Indian colonies. We can in a single stroke undo the humiliation of the Seven Years' War and once more see honor and prestige return to France as the great dominant power in Europe. We have got to act, Your Majesty. Decisively and immediately."

His idea was the traditional 18th-century realpolitik: grand opera in national passion, retribution, and the hard realities of international power.

Before Art had the chance to respond, Necker released a sound between a scoff and a sigh of desolation. He got up and began unrolling one of his charts, a chilling latticework of statistics and projections.

"The Minister speaks of honor," said Necker tightly with monetary anxiety. "I am obliged to speak of bankruptcy. A war? A war on Great Britain, the master of the seas, the wealthiest kingdom on earth? That will be a financial cataclysm on a scale we cannot even imagine."

He extended a trembling finger toward a figure on the chart. "Our national debt is already over two billion livres! The interest on it by itself cost us near half our state revenue in one year. The reforms we have instituted, the funds we have recovered from the pension racket—these are naught but a drop in this ocean of debt. A grand war would embroil us in new loans at usurious rates of interest, new taxation which the people will not stand. Minister Vergennes is calling for retribution for the last war; my word on it is this will get us into the next one in hot pursuit—not in some distant land but right back home! It would void all the sacrifices we have made and embark this kingdom on a pit from which it may never extricate itself. We should hold steady in neutral, Your Majesty. We had better! Our very lives depend on it."

It was the hard, irrefutable fact argument, the appeal for stability and solvency above all other considerations.

Then, Lafayette, who had listened with rapt, almost sacramental attention, got up from his chair. "Men, you speak of honor and of business," he said in a voice that was full of passion and cut the other two men speechless. "And both of you are missing the whole point of the occasion! You are not discussing a mere wrangle over colonies or a figure for the ledger books. You are discussing a battle for the soul of the world!"

He looked at Art, his eyes shining. "The Americans are not mere rebels, Your Majesty. They grapple for liberté! For the very ideals our own great philosophers—Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu—have committed to paper! The rights of man, government by the people's will! The more we assist them, the more we assist the enlightenment itself. What more glorious page in the annals of France would there be than to act the role of the midwife at the birth of a new republican state on the ideals of freedom? What is the price of glory? What does glory cost? That is where we have the chance to lead the world in strength, yes—but in ideals too!"

It was a purely ideology-driven speech, a call to arms inspiring in the name of chivalry, glory, and intellectual trends of the times.

Art sat at the head of the table as the three competing visions for the future of his kingdom were explained. His mind, the mind of a 21st-century accountant, went through it all not in the language of honor or ideals but in the hard multivariable cost-benefit analysis.

Vergennes is right in the strategic opportunity, he argued, but intentionally neglects the catastrophic monetary cost. Necker is right about the cost, but all-neutral approach neglects the long-range threat in the form of an unbalanced, victorious Britain on our own doorstep. And Lafayette... Lafayette is a great, sentimental poet who knows little about the cost nor the threat.

He needed data, a clear focus. He cleared his head, running the scenarios on the hard-eyed logic of the HUD. The result churning through his head was a multifaceted nightmare, a lattice of chances and outcomes drawing no definitive response.

SCENARIO ANALYSIS: FULL-SCALE MILITARY INTERVENTION.

PROBABLE PROS (IF SUCCESSFUL): Geopolitical Power Index: +40%. National Pride/Prestige: +50%. Key British colonial assets (sugar islands) potentially acquired. British naval and economic power crippled for a generation.

PROBABLE CONS: Estimated Direct Cost: 1.5 - 2 BILLION livres. National Debt Increase: +150%. INTERNAL REVOLUTION RISK (DUE TO STATE BANKRUPTCY): +30%.

CHANCE OF MILITARY VICTORY: 55%.

SCENARIO ANALYSIS: STRICT NEUTRALITY.

PROBABLE PROS: Treasury remains stable. National Debt remains controllable. INTERNAL REVOLUTION RISK: -10% (short-term). Focus remains on domestic reform.

PROBABLE CONS: Geopolitical Power Index: -20% (France perceived as weak/cowardly). National Pride: -30%. Britain, unburdened, crushes the rebellion quickly, emerges wealthier and more powerful than ever, and is free to focus its full attention on containing France. LONG-TERM BRITISH THREAT: SEVERE.

The HUD set the option out in clear relief. One was a perilous bet on a large scale that would yield triumph or immediate self-destruction. The other was the path of prudential safety which led almost irresistibly toward long-range decadence and servitude. Both paths were strewn with peril.

Art stared into the face of his broken council: the hawk, the dove, and the idealist. Each was offering him a piece of the truth but could not see the whole. The decision could in no way be turned over. It was on him and he alone.

"Thank you gentlemen," he said finally, his voice revealing no hint at his inner struggle. "Each one has given me much to consider." He got up, and the meeting was over. "I must consider the question on my own."