I had a mob, a general, and an idea. Getting any two of them to work together felt harder than stopping a civil war.
Our new headquarters was a commandeered tavern just a block from the smoking ruins of the Bastille. The place stank of stale wine, sweat, and revolution. We sat around a single, sticky table: me, the impromptu CEO; Lafayette, my idealistic new COO with a pedigree; and Fournier, the hulking, silent butcher who was the undeniable head of street-level operations.
In a dark corner, a fourth man watched and listened. Robespierre. He said nothing, his arms crossed, his expression a mask of cold, analytical judgment. He was the revolution's auditor, and he was taking notes.
The conflict started immediately.
"The first priority is discipline," Lafayette began, his energy boundless, his French crisp and aristocratic. "We must establish a clear chain of command. We will organize the men into companies, issue proper uniforms—a blue coat, to start—and begin daily drills. An army without discipline is merely a mob."
Fournier, who had been cleaning his fingernails with a large knife, let out a short, contemptuous laugh. "Uniforms? Drills?" He looked at Lafayette as if he were an exotic insect. "The men need pikes, not fancy coats. They need a list of traitors. We should be searching the houses of every aristocrat in this city before they can run and hide their gold."
The chasm between them was a thousand years wide. Lafayette, the noble who had fought for liberty as a grand ideal in America, saw a citizens' army. Fournier, the butcher who had lived his whole life under the heel of the nobility, saw a righteous tool for vengeance.
"We cannot descend into a witch hunt!" Lafayette countered, his face flushing. "We must be a force for order, to protect the rights of all citizens!"
"An aristocrat's 'rights' are paid for with our hunger," Fournier growled, leaning forward, his massive frame making the table creak.
I slammed my palm down on the sticky wood. Hard. The sound cut through their argument. "Stop."
They both turned to look at me, surprised.
"You're both right," I said, "and you're both uselessly wrong. You are arguing about philosophy when we are facing a logistical crisis."
I grabbed a piece of charcoal from a nearby hearth and a ripped piece of parchment that had been used to wrap cheese. I drew a crude line down the middle. This, at least, felt familiar. A problem to be broken down into manageable parts.
"Problem one: Food," I said, scrawling the word on the parchment. "An army, even a citizens' army, runs on its stomach. We have thousands of people in the streets who have left their jobs. They are hungry now, and they will be hungrier tomorrow. How are we feeding them?"
Lafayette and Fournier stared at me, then at the parchment. They had been thinking about fighting. They hadn't been thinking about catering.
I pointed the charcoal at the butcher. "Fournier. You and your men control the streets. You know this city better than anyone. I am giving you the most important job. You are now the Quartermaster-General of the Paris National Guard."
He blinked, confused by the title.
"Organize foraging parties," I commanded, giving him a mission that played directly to his strengths. "Secure the city's bakeries. Seize the municipal grain depots. I want a full inventory of all available flour, bread, and salted meat by sundown. And Fournier," I leaned forward, my voice dropping, "no looting. You are not thieves. You are securing assets for the National Guard. Any man caught stealing from a citizen answers to me. Understood?"
He looked at me, a flicker of something—grudging respect?—in his dark eyes. I had given him a title, a critical mission, and clear rules. He grunted. "Understood."
"Good," I said, then turned to Lafayette. "Marquis. You are a soldier. You know how to build an army from scratch. You will be its General."
Lafayette's face lit up.
"Your mission is different," I continued. "Forget uniforms for now. Find every man in that crowd who has prior military experience. The old French Guards, city watchmen, anyone who knows how to handle a musket and follow an order. Organize them into proper squads. Your mission is not to attack anyone. It is to secure key intersections, bridges, and the city gates. Prevent looting and arson by common criminals who are using this chaos as a cover. I want a map of your patrol routes and a list of your new NCOs. By sundown."
I had given them separate, vital missions that wouldn't overlap. I had turned their argument into a division of labor.
They looked at each other, a silent, wary truce passing between them. Then they both stood up and left the tavern, shouting for their men.
I finally allowed myself to lean back, the adrenaline draining away, leaving me exhausted.
"A butcher and a marquis," Robespierre said from his corner, his voice soft but clear. He had moved to stand beside the table, looking down at my crude parchment. "You believe you can make them work together?"
"I don't need them to like each other," I said, rubbing my temples. "I just need them to work. One secures the supply line, the other secures the perimeter. It's just project management."
Robespierre gave a small, thin smile. "A revolution as 'project management.' A fascinating, if dangerously simplistic, perspective, Your Majesty."
I left him to his thoughts and stepped outside. The Paris air was still thick with tension, but the chaotic, angry energy of the mob was changing. It was becoming something else. Men were forming rough lines, listening to bellowed orders from Fournier's lieutenants. Others were being drilled in a nearby square by a stern-faced former sergeant under Lafayette's command. The chaos was getting a skeleton of order.
As I watched, I saw a woman at a market stall. She was tearing a long strip from her red apron. Next to her, a man tore a strip from a white linen sheet. Another man pulled the blue cockade from his hat and handed it to her. With nimble fingers, she began stitching the three colors together. Red and blue, the colors of Paris, with the royal white of the Bourbon monarchy held between them. The Tricolore.
It was a spontaneous, beautiful act of creation in the middle of all the destruction.
I walked over to the stall. The small group of people fell silent, looking at me with a mixture of awe and fear. The woman, her face smudged with dirt but her eyes clear, held up one of the simple, hand-stitched cockades. An offering.
I took it. The fabric was rough in my fingers. In front of everyone, I unpinned the golden Fleur-de-lis from my coat and pinned the simple, revolutionary cockade in its place.
The crowd saw it. A cheer went up, spreading from the market square down the street. It was a small thing, a piece of cloth. But symbols matter. In that moment, I wasn't the King of the Bourbon dynasty anymore. I was the King of the Tricolore.
Just as the sun began to set, a rider pushed his way through the crowd. It was Captain De La Tour, his face grim, his uniform immaculate despite the chaos. He had been quietly shadowing me, my loyal, one-man security detail.
"Your Majesty," he said, his voice a low, urgent murmur. "A message from our agents in Versailles. It's urgent."
My stomach tightened. "What is it?"
"The news from Paris," he said. "The fall of the Bastille, and... your presence here. It's been the final straw. They're running."
"Who's running?"
"The high nobility," De La Tour said, his eyes dark. "Hundreds of them. The Comte d'Artois's entire inner circle. Many of Provence's key allies. Military commanders, courtiers, financiers. They are packing their carriages, gathering their gold. They are fleeing Versailles. They are fleeing France."
I stared at him, the implications crashing down on me. This wasn't just a few cowards running away. This was a strategic retreat. An exodus of my most powerful, most ruthless enemies.
They weren't just escaping. They were going to regroup. To meet with my brother Artois in exile. To plead their case to the other kings of Europe, painting me as a captive radical, a traitor to my class.
"They are going to incite a foreign invasion," I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
At that moment, Fournier and Lafayette returned to the tavern. Fournier overheard my last words. He slammed his massive fist on a nearby table, his eyes burning with a cold fire.
"Good," he growled, a predatory smile spreading across his face. "Let them run. We'll audit their estates when they're gone. Seize everything they own for the Nation."
I was caught. Trapped between two new, impossible choices. Let my enemies escape to build an army to destroy me from the outside, or unleash Fournier and his new National Guard in a wave of property seizures that would be seen as pure theft, horrifying the rest of Europe and making a foreign war absolutely inevitable.
The audit was no longer just about Paris. The revolution was about to go international.