My brother offered them fear. I had to offer them something better: the truth, weaponized.
Robespierre's challenge—Let him speak!—still echoed in the vast, silent hall. Every single eye, from the most radical journalist to the most conservative bishop, was locked on me. They were waiting. Judging.
I didn't move to the podium. That was my brother's stage, a place of pronouncements and decrees. I stayed on the floor, shoulder to shoulder with the men in simple black coats. It was a silent statement, clearer than any speech. I am not above you. I am with you.
My gaze met my brother's across the hall. His face was a mask of cold fury, his trap spoiled.
"My brother, the Comte de Provence," I began, my voice calm and clear, letting it fill the silence without shouting, "speaks of a mob. He speaks of chaos." I slowly turned my head, addressing the entire room. "He is a man of the old world. He sees only the fire. He does not see what the fire is cleansing."
Provence was a born politician, a predator in these halls. He recovered instantly, seizing the offensive. "Cleansing?" he scoffed, his voice dripping with aristocratic scorn that was meant to shame me. "You call the murder of the Bastille's guards a 'cleansing'?"
He took a step forward, his voice rising, becoming an indictment. "I call it anarchy! Anarchy that you, my king, my brother, have willfully unleashed with your bribes and your poisonous rumors!"
He raised a hand and pointed a single, trembling finger directly at me, a prosecutor cornering his witness. "Did you or did you not incite this?" he thundered. "Answer the representatives of France!"
The air crackled. He had me pinned. A simple denial would sound weak, a lie. Admitting it would make me a monster. The delegates leaned forward in their seats.
This was the pivot point. The moment where the entire revolution could turn against me. I needed to do more than answer the question. I had to tear up the entire page and rewrite the test.
I took a deep breath. "In my former life," I said, letting the strange, inexplicable phrase hang in the air, "when a company was suspected of deep-seated corruption… of stealing from its shareholders for decades… we didn't just write a polite letter of inquiry."
A ripple of confusion went through the hall. They had no idea what I was talking about. Perfect.
"We performed," I said, my voice dropping, pulling them in, "a hostile audit."
I let the phrase sink in. Then I turned away from my brother, away from the nobles and the clergy, and I spoke directly to the Third Estate. To the lawyers, the merchants, the men who understood contracts and numbers and betrayal.
"My brother calls the events in Paris a riot. He is wrong." I raised my voice, infusing it with a conviction that was absolute. "It is not a riot. It is the first People's Audit in the history of France."
The phrase landed with the force of a physical blow. You could almost hear the gears turning in six hundred minds at once. A riot was mindless chaos. An audit… an audit was a legitimate, methodical investigation into wrongdoing. It had purpose. It had righteousness.
I had given their rage a name. And that name was Justice.
A low murmur of understanding, of dawning, fierce excitement, began to spread through the black-clad delegates. They were no longer the accidental leaders of a mob. They were the board of directors, overseeing a necessary, if brutal, accounting.
I pressed my advantage, my mind racing, building the argument piece by piece. "An audit requires the seizure of evidence," I continued, my voice ringing with authority. "The people of Paris stormed the Bastille not just for blood, but for proof. For the records of illegal imprisonment. For the account books of tyranny."
I turned back to my stunned brother. "Just as I was forced to conduct an audit of the army this morning."
My voice rose to a command. "Captain De La Tour! Bring it in!"
On cue, the great doors to the hall swung open. Captain De La Tour, his face as grim and solid as granite, strode into the chamber. He wasn't carrying a sword. He was carrying the massive, iron-bound paymaster's ledger from the morning's confrontation, holding it in two hands like a holy text.
He walked to a table in the center of the hall and heaved the ledger onto it. The boom echoed through the chamber like a judge's gavel. It was a physical fact. A ton of data in a room full of hot air.
I walked to the table, the eyes of France following my every step. I placed my hand on the book. "This ledger is the evidence," I said, my voice sharp. "It proves that the brave soldiers marching on Versailles were not traitors. They were employees. Employees whose wages had been stolen by their officers for seven straight weeks. Officers who took their orders not from their King, but from my brother's faction."
I flipped open the heavy book to a page full of names and numbers. Then I looked up, my eyes locking onto Provence. The time for defense was over. It was time to prosecute.
"You speak of my 'bribe,'" I said, my voice dripping with ice. "I call it 'paying a dangerously overdue invoice.' But let me ask you, brother. You are a man of finance. You sit on the Royal Council. You oversee the military budgets. Did you know these men were being robbed? Were you complicit in the theft," I paused, letting the accusation land, "or were you merely incompetent?"
The trap was sprung. He was impaled on the horns of a dilemma.
Provence stared at me, his face pale, his jaw working silently. He couldn't admit he knew; that would make him a traitor and a thief. But to admit ignorance, to claim he had no idea such a massive fraud was happening under his nose, would make him look like an incompetent fool, unfit to govern.
He stammered. "This is… this is an outrageous slander… I…"
He had no answer. And everyone in the room saw it. The murmurs from the delegates grew louder, more hostile. They were no longer directed at me. They were directed at him. He had lost the room. He had lost the argument. He had lost.
Cornered, he made one last, desperate stand. He abandoned reason and went for pure fear. "This is madness!" he shouted, his voice strained and cracking. "You are legitimizing anarchy! This mob you call an 'audit' will burn Paris to the ground! You are destroying France just to save yourself!"
"You are right about one thing, brother," I said calmly, closing the great ledger with a definitive thud. "Order must be restored in Paris. Anarchy serves no one, least of all the people."
I turned my back on him completely, dismissing him, and faced the Assembly.
"But order cannot be restored by the old army, which has proven itself vulnerable to the corruption of the old world," I declared, my voice resonating with purpose. "It must be restored by the people themselves, acting as the arm of this National Assembly."
This was it. The final move. The hostile takeover of the entire revolution.
"Therefore," I said, my voice ringing with the weight of history, "I propose the National Assembly authorize the immediate creation of a new Citizen's Militia. A National Guard, commanded by officers chosen and approved by this Assembly, to secure Paris in the name of the Nation, and in partnership with the King."
I let the words settle. I was proposing to create a new, revolutionary army. And I was handing the keys to its command directly to them. It was a move of either breathtaking trust or suicidal insanity.
"We will give the people's audit," I finished, "an official seal."
Provence stared at me, his face a mask of utter, bloodless horror. The delegates of the Third Estate stared at me, their faces lit with a kind of ecstatic, terrifying disbelief.
I hadn't just won the argument. I hadn't just defeated my brother.
I had just armed the French Revolution.