The Accountant Becomes Louis XVI to Save His Neck

While the negotiators haggled in the perfumed boudoirs of Versailles, the physical embodiment of the victory was finally on its way back home. The French expeditionary army, the veterans of the American campaign, arrived at the port of Brest to a hero's welcome. The entire city was a cheering sea of waving flags and improvised triumphal arches fashioned from sailcloth and beachwood.

Louis himself went to Brest to meet them, the proper and necessary thing for the triumphant monarch. He was on a high-viewing stand to observe the troops disembarking. He had expected the pride, the look of the well-organized, subservient troops of the French monarchy. But he was instead consumed with a profound and disturbing sentiment as he saw them walking down the gangways.

They were not the men he had sent away years ago. They were still his soldiers, wearing the white dress of the Bourbon army still, but something fundamental had occurred to them. They moved with a different step, loose-limbed and cockily confident; they were more American than French. There was the look of lightning-shocking assertion in their eyes; the look of men who had stared into a different world and were irreparably altered. They sang as they marched, but they sang not the serious, formal parade choruses of the French army. They sang raucous, improvised ballads to the air of "Yankee Doodle," ballads about whipping British lobsters and the fair maidens of Philadelphia.

They were not just soldiers. They were carriers of contagion, an idea. And Louis knew, with a definite conviction that brought goose bumps to his spine, that the idea they carried with them was liberté.

The center of this new, aggressive energy was the Marquis de Lafayette. He was not the young, aspiring idealist who had importuned Louis for a place to fight. He was the genuine war hero, the man seasoned by his experience. When he stepped onto French soil there was a yell from the crowd. They called him "the Hero of Two Worlds." He was good-looking, charming, and radiated an almost messianic glow. He was more popular than any general, any minister, more popular even than the King himself, Louis now realized with dismay.

Lafayette spoke to the gathering crowds, and every word was fuel added to the dry kindling of French society. He spoke not of the glory of the King nor the grandeur of the House of Bourbon. He spoke of the "sacred fire of liberty," an immortal flame kindled long ago back in the American woods. He didn't depict the American army as common rebels, but as "citizen-philosophers with muskets," men that had built new Rome in the wilderness, not by right of conquest, but by the rights of man.

"I have lived to see a nation where a man is not judged by the name of his father, but by the strength of his own will!" declared Lafayette with enthusiasm. "I have lived to see citizens rather than subjects! This holy flame, my friends, this beacon of liberty—no sea can contain it. It is destined to enwrap the hearts, to illuminate the understanding, of all men!"

The crowd melted into rapture. Louis, on his dais, shivered with chill fear. Lafayette was not just a hero; he was a political menace, the very figure of the new and radical spirit that menaced the foundations of the absolute monarchy Louis worked so hard to uphold.

That evening, Louis summoned Lafayette to a private audience in his own apartments. The audience was strained, a clash between the practical king and the idealistic idolized subject. Lafayette came up, flushed with the ardor of the day, and bowed low. "Your Majesty. It is the pride of my life to return victorious, having served you and France."

"You have fought with tremendous courage, Marquis," Louis said, his voice carefully neutral. "Your courage has brought great honor to this kingdom, and I am greatly beholden to you. We all are indebted to you."

He waited for the flattery to take hold before giving the warning. "I have to talk with you not just as your King, but as one concerned about the security of this kingdom. What you just stated.... it was very powerful. Perhaps more powerful than it should have been."

Lafayette looked surprised. "Your Majesty?"

"This 'sacred fire of liberty' you speak of so boastfully," continued Louis, his eyes flashing at the Marquis. "It is a fire to warm the house with, but it will also set it on fire. The ideals you cherish so much are for a republic of farmers and merchants, for a new nation with none of the heritage, none of the old institutions. They are not for an old kingdom like France, built on heritage, built on hierarchy, built on the holy compact between the King and his peoples. You are playing with fire, Marquis. And I must exhort you to moderation. You are one of the grands hommes of France. Each one of your words carries enormous weight. Do not use that weight to shake the foundations of the very kingdom that you sought to defend."

Lafayette listened with respect, but it was not the appearance of remorse on his face; it was one of abiding, stubborn conviction.

"With all due respect, Your Majesty," he said, his voice firm but low. "I have seen with mine own eyes the strength of a nation of free men. I have seen farmers overcome regular soldiers. I have seen a government based not on divine right, but on a piece of paper signed and written by the people. I cannot erase my memory. To exhort me not to speak of it would be to urge me to deny the greatest truth I have ever lived." He challenged the King with his eyes. "The fire of liberty lit cannot help but be contained by borders or seas. My hope is to help steer it, so it might warm and enlighten rather than consume."

The two men stood opposite one another in silence, between them the ideological void that could not be spanned. Louis saw a violent, naive cultist purporting to bring about chaos. Lafayette saw a well-meaning but weak king, terrified of the grand tomorrow. He was not a revolutionary, but he was not loyal to the King; he was loyal to something greater.

The HUD that was inert when they were talking sprang to life with the significant update.

NEW FACTION DETECTED: "The American Faction."

Leader: Marquis de Lafayette.

Ideology: Constitutional Monarchy, Natural Rights, Limited Suffrage.

Core Support: Army veterans of the American War, educated bourgeoisie, progressive aristocrats.

Popularity (Army): +30%.

Popularity (Educated Bourgeoisie): +20%.

Relationship to Crown: LOYAL (for now).

Potential for future alliance or major conflict: HIGH.

The Marquis was dismissed with a nod of icy approval by Louis. Seeing the hero off brought with it the sense of irony. He had brought the foreign war to victory over his main enemy, but the winning of it brought into the very middle of his kingdom a new, and potentially more lethal, conflict. The cannons and the muskets he had shipped to America to achieve its independence had given it liberty. But the ideas the men brought back with them might, eventually, prove the weapons to defeat his own world.