The Accountant Becomes Louis XVI to Save His Neck

The rains of autumn traversed Normandy's coast, turning the cobblestones of Le Havre into black mirrors polished to a high sheen. At his bustling port, the clandestine mechanism of Roderigue Hortalez and Company was springing into action. Behind the flamboyant, indefatigable leadership of Beaumarchais, the King's secret war was taking shape, not in the gold settings of Versailles but in waterfront grime and shadow.

The operation was a logistical nightmare, an ongoing tightrope walking on the brink of exposure. Beaumarchais, as flashiest of heads of the fictional Spanish trading house, was merrymaking. A whirlpool of charm, of lies, of forgeries, he flitted from royal armories to shipping offices to sailors' taverns. He purchased with Art's smuggled money tens of thousands of additional Charleville muskets and hundreds of tons of gunpowder from the French army—weapons technically considered "obsolete" and given away cheaply. And he had them smuggled in anonymous containers, labeled as everything from Caribbean sugar to Portuguese textiles.

The docks were thick with spies and Old Guard informants of the British, and each step involved delicate manipulation. Some curious port official loyal to the Old Guard needed to be invited into a lengthy, expensively indulgent dinner with some of Beaumarchais's beautiful actress friends. Mutinous dock workers needed to be bribed with wine flowing freely and cash. It was a chaotic, thrilling, and hugely dangerous business.

As Beaumarchais attended to logistics, a new, more delicate mission arrived in Paris. Desperate for assistance from abroad, the Second Continental Congress sent its best-known and most respected statesman to widen its appeal for the American cause. Dr. Benjamin Franklin, his name well-known throughout Europe as a man of science, as a philosopher, as a wit, had arrived.

The appearance of Franklin created an immediate sensation. He was as unlike a Versailles courtier as you could well imagine. In his unstylish brown greatcoat, his unstarched, unpowdered hair, his spectacles perched on his nose, he was a human embodiment of his republican ideals. He was an immediate success in the salons, a man of country sense and humble dignity.

Art understood a public audience was out of the question. France was technically neutral. A private, unofficial audience was, however, a necessity. Secret arrangements were made. Before dawn one night, an unmarked, undecorative carriage drove Dr. Franklin out of his Paris suburb lodging. He was brought, not to Versailles, but to a private home of Necker.

The meeting of the young French king with his septuagenarian American sage was an interesting clash of universes. Franklin was ushered into an unsophisticated library, his expectations being a pampered, perhaps well-meaning but fundamentally naive young monarch. He was about to launch a very well-rehearsed appeal for help, with appeals to liberty and national interests of France.

He found instead a young man with tough, analytical eyes, who did not greet him with royal pageantry, but with a business-like, firm handshake.

"Dr. Franklin," began Art, abandoning all courtesy of address. "We value your permission to this unusual meeting. We've read your writings about electricity for an exceedingly long period of time. It's an honor."

Franklin was taken aback for a moment by the bluntness. "The honor is mine, Your Majesty. I come in the name of a young country fighting hard to be born."

"I understand," said Art. "And you must understand my position. The Crown of France is bound by treaty, bound by prudence. We have, for a Continent's peace, a formal obligation to be neutral in this war of Great Britain with her colonies."

Frank's face fell somewhat. This was the polite rejection he had dreaded.

"Now," said Art, a quiet smile of understanding on his face, "my government of course will have to be neutral, but personally, I am a very great admirer of… free enterprise. Trade must be free to flow, must it not?"

He moved over towards a globe, following an imaginary line across the Atlantic with his finger. "Rumors, Doctor, pure rumors, of a new Spanish trading firm. Roderigue Hortalez and Company, if I am not mistaken. Progressive-minded men, they supposedly are. My impression is that they would be willing to extend a very liberal line of credit to selective American purchasers for select merchandise. Farming implements, for instance. Heavy-duty textiles for work clothing. That sort of item."

Franklin stood rigid, his bright old eyes fixed on the young King. He was a master diplomat, a man who for a lifetime had negotiated stormy seas of politics on a sea of delicacy and of suggestion. He knew in a flash. He wasn't being offered a formal alliance. He was being offered a back channel. A deniable, practical, and far more useful lifeline. The King wasn't offering help; he was offering a conspiracy.

A slow, wide smile covered Franklin's face, furrowing wrinkles about the outer edges of his eyes. He knew he was not dealing with a romantic boy-king like Lafayette, nor with a vengeance-driven hawk like Vergennes. He was dealing with a hardheaded, realistic collaborator who understood the nature of the game.

"Your Majesty," he answered, his voice laced with newfound respect. "I too am a strong believer in commerce. I shall certainly instigate inquiry with this… Spanish corporation. I am assured that my compatriots will be exceedingly appreciative of any funding they would be willing to provide."

A deep, silent understanding was reached between the veteran revolutionist and youthful monarch. Two hardheaded men, bred in different worlds, were brought into an immense, illicit business.

Weeks later, the fruit of all this scheming was at anchor in Le Havre harbor. A robust merchant vessel, its name hastily lettered on its aft, the Amphitrite, was having its first cargo from Roderigue Hortalez and Company loaded aboard. In its cargo hold, under a thin facade of legitimate cargo, were twenty-five thousand muskets, two hundred cannons, and tons of powder and uniforms—enough to equip an entire army, enough to quite well turn about the stumbling American war effort.

Beaumarchais oversaw personally on the last load, a whirlwind of nervous energy. Art, back in Versailles, experienced a sense of overwhelming satisfaction and control reading the last report. He did it. He threaded the needle, initiating a proxy war that would drain his enemy without bankrupting his realm. He found the third path.

His moment of jubilation did not more than an hour in duration. A rider, his horse foaming and steaming, rode in with a letter of great importance. It was not from Paris or London. It was from the French naval patrol in the Caribbean, off the key sugar island of Martinique.

The seal was broken for Art, his own heart gone chill. The telegram was short, harsh. A squadron of British cruisers, under a notoriously aggressive captain, had boarded a French merchant vessel, the Concorde, under false pretexto of a search for contraband. Overruling the objections of the French captain that they were in a neutral sea, the British forcibly boarded her.These words were used. A musket shot—it was not quite clear which—had been fired. Snowballed in a flash had the "misunderstanding". A full cannon broadside into the side of a French merchant ship had given a British frigate.

The Concorde had sunk in minutes. Only twenty of its thirty-two crew were left alive. A dozen of its French sailors were dead.

The paper was shaking in Art's hand. This was no subtle pressure on diplomacy. This was a naked act of war. Not only were the British preparing for war, they were going out of their way to provoke one, to thrust his hand. His carefully constructed, deniable, low-budget strategy would be blasted out of being by the rumble of British cannon.

The HUD flashed a furious red, its display simple and frightening.

DIPLOMATIC CRISIS: ACT OF WAR DETECTED (BRITAIN).

British Aggression Meter: +70%.

Faction Update: Vergennes's War Faction - VINDICATED. Influence +20%.

CRITICAL DECISION REQUIRED: The Martinique Incident.

Option A: Retaliate Militarily.

Option B: De-escalate via Diplomatic Channels.

Warning: The choice may no longer be yours.