The Accountant Becomes Louis XVI to Save His Neck

The success of Louis's reforms was, for most of France, a cause for cautious optimism. The Assignat was holding its value. The treasury was stabilizing. A new class of landowners was tasting the fruits of their own labor for the first time. The great, lumbering ship of state, which had been sinking for a century, seemed to be slowly, miraculously, righting itself.

But to a small, effective, and desperate group, such success was the very worst thing that could have occurred. For the émigrés that had gotten out of France, and for their hard-line royalist followers still lurking about the court, a successful, popular, constitutional monarchy under a reforming King Louis XVI was a greater-than-republican nightmare. A republic would have foreign armies ride over it, its rulers hanged as traitors, but a successful, reformed, constitutional monarchy was a permanent, ultimate defeat of their vision of France.

From their safe havens in the German city of Trier and the Italian court of Turin, the King's brother, the Comte d'Artois, and the Prince de Condé grew more desperate. They saw their window of opportunity closing. They had been trying to convince the other monarchs of Europe, particularly the Austrian Emperor—Marie Antoinette's brother—to launch a great crusade to restore the Ancien Régime. But the other kings were hesitant, wary of Louis's surprising strength and popularity. The émigrés realized they needed a catalyst, a dramatic event that would prove the King was not a willing partner in the revolution, but its helpless prisoner.

A new plan was hatched, a plot far more audacious than their previous attempts at political sabotage. They could not turn the people or the Assembly against the King. So, they would "rescue" him. The plan was a modified version of the one Artois had urged upon Louis before: a royal escape. They would arrange for the King and his family to be "kidnapped" from the Tuileries Palace, where they now resided in Paris. They would be spirited away to the eastern border, to a fortress garrisoned by loyalist troops under the command of the royalist General de Bouillé. From there, backed by an Austrian army gathered just across the border, they would issue a proclamation. They would declare that the King was now free from his "captivity" in Paris, that the National Assembly was a treasonous body, and that all true Frenchmen should rally to their King to liberate France. It would be the spark that ignited the counter-revolution.

The plot involved a small circle of loyalist nobles remaining at court, a loyal lady-in-waiting among Queen's staff, as well as a surreptitious flow of Austrian gold to finance the plot. It was a standard 18th-century court plot of clandestine letters, ciphered epistles, and furtive encounters.

What the plotters did not, and could not, account for was that they were no longer operating in the chaotic, porous state of the Ancien Régime. Unbeknownst to them, they were now moving within the new, data-driven state that Louis was meticulously constructing.

The new bureaucracy Louis instituted, designed to administrate the Grand Cadastre and sales of the nationalized properties, had a side benefit that no one anticipated. It created tremendous quantities of data, a continuous flow of reports of money transactions, travel authorizations, and supplies requested. For Louis, through his HUD, that flow of data offered a revolutionary new form of intelligence service.

One afternoon, as he sorted through a batch of mundane administrative reports, his HUD sprang to life, flagging a line of tiny, unrelated-looking abnormalities. Taken separately, they meant nothing at all. But the HUD, as it had been endowed through 21st-century processing, had the capability of searching for patterns amidst the white noise.

A green flag, an anomaly.

FINANCIAL ANOMALY REGISTERED: A huge, mysterious transfer of gold from one well-known émigré banking house of Vienna to the private account of the Duchesse de Tourzel, the royal children's governess.

Louis frowned. The Duchesse was a devout, famously loyal traditionalist. He mentally filed that away.

A few hours later, another flag.

LOGISTICAL IRREGULARITY SPOTTED: An exceptionally large, private acquisition of coach horses—sixteen prime horses—by the Comte de Fersen, an ardent Swedish admirer of the Queen. The horses are housed at relay points along the chief route to the eastern city of Metz.

Metz. General de Bouillé's loyal troops were located there at the time. The coincidence gave Louis the shivers.

The last part of the jigsaw fit into place the next day.

MILITARY ANOMALY DETECTED: The Royal-Allemand cavalry regiment, which consists of German mercenaries that had the reputation of remaining loyal to the old dynasty, has had its regimental paymaster put in a requisition for three months' pay, advanced, in gold coin. This is extremely unusual. The regiment happens to presently be quartered close to the eastern frontier.

Louis looked at the three points of data, the parts falling into place in his brain with chilling clarity. The hidden gold. The relay of new horses. The loyal troops receiving pay beforehand. It was an obvious and undeniable trail of an evacuation plan. The HUD tied the points together, its message a grim verification of his fears.

PATTERN ANALYSIS COMPLETE.

PROBABILITY of Abduction/Escape Plot targeting the Royal Family: 75% and RISING.

Projected Route: Paris to Metz.

Likely Instigators: Émigré leadership, in cooperation with internal court faction.

His initial response had been a burst of violent anger. His brother, his wife's friends, they plotted to cause destruction, to plunge the country into civil war, simply to satisfy their own egos, pride, but the anger gave way quickly to cold, clinical calculation. He would not panic. He would make no public scene; that would cause an enormous scandal, play into the radical paranoia of Paris. He would shut down the plot, step by step, as quietly as an accountant closes a false set of books.

He moved with remorseless haste. He called in Lafayette, the commander of the National Guard, to a private conference. He wasn't revealing his entire intelligence—he couldn't reveal his source, anyway—but he gave him enough to make his request credible. "Marquis," he said, his tone bleak, "I have a basis for believing that some members of the court, misdirected by their affections for my brother, might actually be thinking of indulging in some rash and perilous action. I want your most reliable men to put the Duc de Fersen and the Duchesse de Tourzel under discreet but continuous watch."

Then, as commander-in-chief, he acted. He drafted an order for the Minister of War. The Royal-Allemand cavalry regiment, he told them, should at once be redeployed. Citing a "sudden and alarming increase of Spanish contraband activity," he ordered them to march south, into a solitary, tiresome outpost on the edge of the Pyrenees, for "protracted anti-contraband maneuvers." Their advance pay was approved, a gracious concession for their discomfort. The armed part of the plot had just gotten a 500-mile side trip.

He immediately approached Necker. "Minister," he told him, holding before him the document of the transfer of Austrian gold. "This appears really suspect. I think that it may well be involved in some unauthorized capital export from the kingdom, which at such a time of difficulty is treasonable. I want you to place that account on hold immediately, subject to full-scale tax audit."

In a matter of hours, through three easy, administrative orders, Louis had foiled the whole plot.

The evening of the supposed "flight," the conspirators set about executing their frantic scheme, only to find themselves entangled in a silent, intangible net. The Duchesse de Tourzel, dressing up the royal children for a "late-night ride in the carriage," was politely told by Lafayette's soldiers that there was a curfew for the grounds of the palace. The Comte de Fersen, bringing the removal carriage, found the street barred by a patrol of National Guards on a "routine identification check." Their money to bribe the palace guards was out of reach, locked in Necker's accounting. Their military escort was en route to Spain.

The plot collapsed in on itself, a silent implosion of confusion and failure.

The following morning, Louis called for the Duc de Coigny, one of the senior courtiers he knew to be at the core of the plot at court. The Duke walked into the study of the King, his coloring pale, anticipating that he would be seized and thrown onto the scaffolding.

He found Louis sitting calmly at his desk, reviewing a document. The King did not look up for a long moment.

"Good morning, Duke," Louis said at last, his voice a soft, comparatively pleasant whisper. "I hope you slept well. I hear you had a long, rough night planned. I do hope my administrative moves recently did not catch you off guard... inconveniently."

The Duke gazed at him, his face a mask of cold, awakening terror. He understood, in that one, paralyzing moment, that the King knew all about it. He had not only prevented their attempt; he had been amusing himself at their expense, observing their every step. The picture of the feeble, bound captive king they had hoped to release gave way to the truth of a nearly all-seeing lord of the state, a man who knew everything, controlled everything.

Louis had demonstrated that he was no captive of the revolution. He himself, if anything, was its undisputed lord.

Counter-Revolutionary Plot: AVERTED.

Royal Authority: CONSOLIDATED.

Faction Power: Émigrés - CRUSHED.

New Challenge: What do you do when your revolution is so successful it makes you the most powerful, and therefore the most feared, man in Europe?