The Accountant Becomes Louis XVI to Save His Neck

The news of the King's trip to the tennis court and his shocking pledge of allegiance to the National Assembly caused ripples in Versailles like a tidal wave. To the Third Estate delegates, it was a glimpse of sublime, almost inconceivable ratification. Their King was on his side. Their revolution was not insurrection; it was now the Royal Policy.

To the First and Second Estates' representatives who had been boycotting the Assembly and plotting towards its demise, the news was catastrophic. It was betrayal on a scale they barely comprehended. Their own king, the apex of the whole social pyramid of theirs, the personification of the system that guaranteed them privilege, just openly teamed up with the commoners against them. Outflanked and alone and depicted as petty roadblocks while the King situated himself as the nation's hero.

Louis gave them little time to recover or catch their breath. He had acted and was bent on driving his initiative to its absolute limits. He announced the "Royal Session," the pretext the Old Guard had used to exclude the Assembly from its own assembly hall, would most definitely be held in three days' time. But its purpose, he signaled unmistakably, had changed. He was coming to ratify the new reality.

When the Royal Session occurred, the Salle des Menus-Plaisirs was again divided on the ancient triple model. The delegates of the Third Estate, who from this point onward proudly called themselves the National Assembly, entered their section with silent, triumphant smiles. The parish priests and constitutional nobles who crossed over and sat with them were a physical testimony to the new unity.

The delegates of the nobles and high clergy walked into the nobility and higher clergy branches respectively, eyes dark and foreboding. They walked as convicts to the gallows. They'd been directed to be there in person by the direct order of the monarch, but they resented and fumed. They'd arrived to witness the humiliation of nobility and higher clergy and the atmosphere was illuminated with repressed fury.

Louis entered the hall in the full, ominous finery of an absolute monarch. He was clad in a robe of ermine and velvet, the crown of France on his head, and he carried the royal scepter. This was deliberate. He was not coming today as co-revolutionary, as man among men, as he had come in the tennis court. He was coming as their King, their monarch, and pass judgment from which there would be no appeal. The power that he was to use was the very absolute power that he sought to eliminate, and the paradox was not lost on him. He was being a despot again in order to eliminate despotism.

He sat on the throne, the silence in the hall being absolute. He didn't invite Necker to speak. He didn't pramble. His speech was short, brutal, and utterly revolutionary.

"Gentlemen," he began, his voice cold and with not even the hint of warmth. It was the voice of pure, unadultered authority. "We have gathered today to put an end to the divisions that have plagued this kingdom and chilled this great body. The time of divided orders, divided privilege and divided interests is over."

He looked directly at the benches of nobility, his eyes sweeping over the faces of Vergennes, the Comte d'Artois, and the leaders of the opposition.

"These fractions among the three estates," he said the words definitively, "do not belong to the present era. They are thus and thus revoked. From this moment on," he said, "you are not the delegates of the clergy, or the delegates of the nobility, or the delegates of the commons. You are all, in a simple and equal way, delegates of the Kingdom of France."

A gasp ran through the privileged classes. This was a direct denial of a millennia of French social hierarchy.

He was still not finished. "I therefore require the surviving representatives of the First and Second Estates immediately to discontinue from individual, illegal meetings and to join the National Assembly. This assembly," he pointed his scepter toward the seats of the Third Estate, "which I swore to defend, is the only legitimate legislative body of our nation today and shall operate under my royal approval to draw up a new constitution."

He then delivered the ultimatum. "Any delegate who violates this direct command shall be considered to have abandoned his station and resigned his solemn duty to the nation. His seat shall be vacated, his electoral district shall be directed to elect a substitute, and he shall be stripped of all royal offices and pensions. The choice is yours: be a member of the nation, or be cast out from it."

He had caught them completely. To refuse was not only an act of disobedience; it became an act of betrayal against a direct order from the monarchy, with heavy and immediate individual financial costs. It was a statement that would make them outcasts, politically and socially irrelevant.

All sat frozen for an agonizing, long minute. The nobles and bishops sat frozen, eyes a mix of shock and impotent rage. They looked to leaders, to Vergennes and to Artois, for some signal, some prompt to rebel. But all was in vain. The King had put his support behind the overwhelming strength of the Third Estate, and he had underscored his demand with the absolute, uncompromising weight of his monarchy. Those nobles and bishops were utterly shattered.

Then arose one person. It was the Duc de Liancourt, an honored moderate. Bowing his head with a deep sigh, he raised his plumed hat and began the long procession from the benches of the nobility through the floor of the house to an empty seat among the commoners.

He broke the spell. One after the other, then in small, thoughtful groups, the spokesmen of the privileged orders rose from their seats. It was a parade of colossal historic ignominy. The great dukes and archbishops, the men who believed they alone knew the right to domineer over France, were compelled to stand up and modestly abandon their venerable dignity and stand on the same level with the lawyers and merchants whom they despised. The ancient orders of French society, the fabric of the Ancien Régime itself, were being stripped away in one silent funeral procession.

Vergennes was late to get up. He stood up from his seat, his face a mask of stone, and walked the procession his eyes staring directly ahead and never once looking in the face of the King who so utterly outmaneuvered him.

Louis watched the tableau unfold before him, not feeling moments of triumph but foreboding finality. He'd won. He'd completely gotten his way. But gazing out over the faces of the bitter, hateful men being pushed into his brand-new world, knew his enemy hadn't been eliminated. It'd just been shoved into the depths.

The HUD confirmed the victory, but also displayed a brand-new and highly alarming set of warnings.

Faction Power: Old Guard -90% (STATUS: BROKEN).

Political Structure: Absolute Monarchy - DISSOLVED. Transition to Constitutional Monarchy - INITIATED.

NEW FACTION DETECTED: "The Émigrés."

Key Members: Comte d'Artois, Prince de Condé, several high-ranking bishops.

Status: (FLEEING).

Analysis: Hard-line nobles and prelates who refuse to reconcile themselves to the new reality are even leaving France. They will gather in the courts of abroad (Trier, Turin, Vienna) to plot an armed counter-revolution and gather the support of the foreign monarchs.

THREAT LEVEL: LOW (but growing).

FACTION UPDATE: Army Officer Corps.

Loyalty to Crown: -20%.

Analysis: The officers mostly belong to the old school of nobility. To them the humbling of their class is personally disgraceful and a betrayal on the part of the commander-in-chief. Their loyalty is questionable.

He'd vanquished his internal enemies with a single, decisive blow . But in doing so, he'd created a deadly new external threat, a fifth column of exile fanatics bent on his overthrow. And he had possibly lost the allegiance of the very soldiers who governed his armies. He'd engaged the fight for the National Assembly and come out on top. But the war over the soul of France, as the nature of the battle became evident to him, was just beginning.