The Radiant Republic

After André’s impromptu address, the review and decoration ceremony finally began.

Under ordinary circumstances, André would never let anyone else handle such a perfect instrument for winning hearts and stirring morale. As early as the first great victory at Valmy, he had already been impatient to award collective decorations to the Army of the Meuse and the Army of the Moselle, which were about to march north to another theatre. These were chiefly the 1792 War of National Defence decorations. The moment an infantry division or a cavalry brigade finished receiving its medals, the soldiers would set off for the northern front in high spirits, amid the resounding slogans, “Long live the Republic!” and “Long live André!”

It must be said that the weather today was excellent. There were only a few scattered clouds, and the weak winter sun was genuinely comfortable on the skin. From seven in the morning onward, more than thirty thousand men of the Army of the North had already marched out of camp in perfect order. With the military bands playing, regiment after regiment converged on the broad plain beneath the walls of Liège. On the side nearest the rising ground, the engineers had built a review platform the day before, three metres high. It was ringed with colourful flags that snapped in the wind. On the left and right, two stairways led up to the platform; to prevent slipping, each slanted stair was covered with a red carpet. The carpet too was a trophy—once laid in the quarters of the Bohemian Corps commander.

The platform itself was a broad stage of more than fifty square metres: the shared stage of the Command Headquarters, the General Staff, and the Army of the North headquarters. In front of the seats reserved for the Marshal-Generals stood several long tables covered in blue velvet. Upon them lay several large trays, each neatly arranged with rows of gleaming golden decorations: the Iron Cross, the Knight’s Order, and the Legion Order. As for the War of National Defence commemorative medal, it had already been distributed to the Army of the North and the Army of the Rhine in late October. Weeks earlier, in the Sedan camp, André had awarded decorations to the generals of each army, including General Kellermann and General Hoche, both of whom had come in person.

Under regulations issued by the Northern Command Headquarters, the “Honourable Warrior’s Decoration”—the Iron Cross—was awarded only to those who had shown bravery on the battlefield, including non-commissioned officers of every grade. For junior and middle-ranking officers, the principal decoration was the traditional French “Order of Honourable Knighthood.” For senior commanders in the army—Colonels, and Generals of Colonel rank and above—the formal honour was the “Order of the Legion of Honour.” Besides the Iron Cross, which was divided only into First Class and Second Class, both the Knight’s Order and the Legion Order were divided into three grades, with First Class the highest.

As for the dictator André, he refused almost every kind of decoration. From beginning to end, he kept only a single medal: the 1792 War of National Defence commemorative medallion, a large gold piece numbered “000001.” He had worn it only briefly when meeting the Duc de Brunswick, and afterward it remained on his general’s uniform.

Several hundred paces from the platform, the ground had been levelled into a slope, forming a circular amphitheatre. The soldiers stood upon the incline as if in a stepped theatre. The gendarmerie permitted two thousand observers from the city of Liège—officials, notables, urban nobles, and ordinary citizens—to attend, but they were placed on a rocky height three hundred metres to the right of the stage. All spectators had to rely on spyglasses to see clearly. Under the security regulations, from the previous evening onward, the entire venue—inside and out—and every major approach road had been taken over by the Gendarmerie Command.

At ten in the morning, after finishing his remarks to the two meritorious formations at the river dock, Marshal André—surrounded by more than twenty generals—rode towards the decoration platform two kilometres away, with the rest of the General Staff and the gendarmerie command elements following behind.

A few minutes later, amid cheers and the deafening thunder of drums, trumpets, and salute guns, André reined in before the platform. He dismounted, then climbed the steps with a bright, vigorous air. The generals and his attendants took their seats on either side of the Commander-in-Chief.

At a single command, the main review formation—eighty company-columns wide across the front—advanced towards the platform. It was an imposing sight. The soldiers wore neat gaiters and tight breeches; as their legs swung forward and back, the movement was like cloth passing through a loom. Sunlight flashed off their muskets, polished to a bright sheen, and off their white crossbelts, throwing dazzling reflections.

Only six or seven minutes passed. With the drumbeat driving them on, that moving wall pressed close to the spectators. When they reached a point only thirty metres from the platform, the drumbeat ceased abruptly, and the entire field fell into absolute silence. At André’s signal, Hoche issued the order. A clear trumpet call rang out, and the reviewed soldiers—more than ten thousand—re-formed into marching columns by regiment and battalion, preparing to pass the platform.

Regiment after regiment marched past Marshal André and the assembled generals. At the head of each, the colonel raised his sword high; the colour-bearer followed close behind. The soldiers strode forward with lifted chins, following the direction of their standards. Each time the drums resumed, the formations passing directly before the platform would shout slogans in chorus.

Two minutes later, when the spectators looked for the reviewed men again, the formations had already scattered silently into the semicircle of the soldiers’ ranks. On the platform, Marshal André rose and applauded. He was plainly pleased by the effect—for it was a symbol of discipline and victory. In the black-powder age, without machine guns or automatic rifles, a well-trained infantry formation was still the most effective answer to cavalry shock. A battlefield did not always offer wire entanglements, trenches, breastworks, or gun emplacements to shelter infantry in advance.

To achieve such precision, the parade uniforms had to be cut tight and made dense. Merely dressing correctly took real labour. Worse still, a vast machine made of thousands of men required every gear to turn with perfect accuracy, without the slightest error. This owed much to André’s long-standing demands since the first days of the Champagne Composite Regiment: in training new recruits, officers at every level were to strengthen rapid transitions between different formations.

After that display, the formal awarding of decorations began.

This round of honours was directed chiefly at ordinary soldiers and junior-to-middle officers. As for the general officers of the Army of the North, their decorations had already been conferred in advance aboard the gunboat on the Meuse. Under the usual procedure, a staff adjutant would read the list of those to be decorated. The named men would then assemble and stand at attention on the right side of the platform. Under the guidance of ceremonial ushers—gendarmerie on duty—they would ascend one by one by the slanted stairs.

On the platform, the Chief of Staff, General Berthier, presented each recipient with his certificate. Then André, taking from the hand of the Army of the North commander, General Hoche, the Iron Cross or Knight’s Order assigned to that recipient, personally pinned it on the warrior’s left breast.

As each group of recipients neared the end of its turn, the men on the platform would shout together, twice over, the ringing slogans: “Long live the Legion!” “Long live the Command Headquarters!” and “Long live Commander André!” Marshal André and the generals answered with a salute. At the same time, more than a hundred drums below began to pound like rolling thunder, shaking the earth. As more than two hundred newly decorated men stepped down in sequence, the three hundred musicians of the massed band struck up the lively March of the Decorated Returning to the Ranks, and tens of thousands of officers and men roared again with cheers.

The decoration ceremony began at ten in the morning and did not conclude until two in the afternoon.

…

Throughout the review and decoration, Scharnhorst stood three hundred metres away on the civic viewing stand and watched the entire process. In his eyes, Marshal André seemed even taller than Frederick the Great, whom he had once seen: evenly built, long-limbed, lean but strong; deep blue eyes; thick golden hair; a high nose; a firm, prominent chin. His movements were light, yet his posture remained graceful and solemn.

As expected, the Hanoverian soon noticed that the lustful ladies beside him stared at the young Marshal with an infatuated intensity. They were captivated by those beautiful, deep, sensitive eyes—calm and gentle at once. At every high point, they could not help cheering and leaping with excitement, entirely indifferent to the feelings of the husbands and lovers standing near them.

André’s review and decoration ceremony was plainly modelled on Frederick the Great, copying many details: the cut of the uniforms, the transformations of formations, the uniformity of the soldiers’ step. Even the warrior’s decoration issued to the men—the Iron Cross—took its design as an imitation of the Prussian army’s “Blue Cross.”

Of course, André had the strength to dare such imitation. His four armies, during the War of National Defence, had all but destroyed one hundred and forty thousand troops of the Prusso-Austrian Coalition. If one counted from June to late November, in these six months the French had destroyed and captured nearly two hundred thousand soldiers of the Holy Roman Empire, while their own total casualties remained under forty thousand, including those killed, grievously wounded, or missing. The Prussians and Austrians were therefore forced to sue for peace. In fact, they had already abandoned the Austrian Netherlands and German lands west of the Rhine.

After defeat and capture, the penniless Captain Scharnhorst—born a peasant—could not ransom himself. As a Hanoverian, he was only a senior mercenary in Austrian service; the House of Habsburg would not pay the “vast sum” of four thousand five hundred thalers for him. Fortunately, the French agreed to take him in.

On the day after Scharnhorst submitted his transfer request, the gendarmerie branch of the Army of the North issued a clear reply: he was accepted into French service. As for his future post and rank, that would be decided by the Gendarmerie Commander, General Chassé—or, more precisely, by Marshal André himself.

At the close of the War of National Defence, André had given the Gendarmerie Command a confidential list, not to be disclosed. He required the gendarmes to search for three men within the prisoner camps of every army: Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst, Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher.

Before long, Clausewitz was ordered to be set aside, because André finally realized he had mistaken the author of On War’s real age: the boy was only about twelve. As for the Prussian general Blücher, the gendarmerie were instructed that if he was captured he was to be shot on the spot, and a pretext found afterward.

Regrettably, that fanatical Blücher was as skittish as a rabbit. At the slightest alarm he fled at once. During the great counteroffensive, Blücher was the only one who successfully escaped the French encirclement, gathered several thousand remnants, and withdrew east of the Rhine’s right bank as a Prussian general.

Scharnhorst, on the other hand, was found in the Army of the North’s prisoner camp. Unexpectedly, he himself submitted a transfer request, which was therefore approved at once. His record was soon forwarded to General Chassé at the Gendarmerie Command.

1755: Scharnhorst was born to a peasant family in Bordenau, Hanover, in Germany.

1777: After graduating from the Schaumburg-Lippe military academy, he served in the Hanoverian army.

1786: He began teaching artillery at the academy. During that period he edited a military journal and wrote a number of military essays.

1792: He joined the Austrian army and garrisoned the Liège fortress, serving as an artillery company commander with the rank of Captain.

In November of the same year, he was captured at the Lantin battery he had defended.

…

To be frank, from this sparse résumé General Chassé could see nothing substantial. Why would Commander André value such an unremarkable artillery captain? As an aide-de-camp? Plainly Scharnhorst was far too old for that. André habitually selected officers under thirty, not a foreign “old fellow” of thirty-eight.

When the gendarmerie commander raised his doubts, André shook his head, smiled, and explained, “This Hanoverian officer’s future duties will be placed in the General Staff.”

General Berthier’s General Staff already functioned with remarkable effect, yet compared with the general staff system André knew from a later age, he still felt something missing. That included imperfect sand-table exercises, and insufficient coordination in command and control—though the semaphore arms signals did make them somewhat more capable than the even worse Prusso-Austrian Coalition. In short, the French army under André had not yet made a successful transition from a “commander-decides” model to the modern “officer corps decision-making” model.

This book was originally published on NovelFire. Check it out there for the real experience.

Now, having found an ancestor-level figure of the future German General Staff, André believed that with time the French General Staff could be strengthened, and could even reproduce, ahead of schedule, the glory of the Prussian and German general staff in the second half of the nineteenth century—the Moltke era.

At bottom, André wanted to strengthen the General Staff because he knew his own limits. He had won the War of National Defence by exploiting the advantage of foresight, by preparing in secret for more than three years, by mobilizing everything he had and half of France besides—then adding a force advantage three to four times that of the enemy and several hundred heavy guns—so that, on a battlefield “designed” with care, he fought a beautiful annihilation battle.

In France, twenty-five million people finally had a great hero named André to worship. His portrait hung in shops everywhere. Verses comparing him to the ancient heroine Joan of Arc were passed from family to family. In Paris and other cities, theatre actors did their utmost to praise and celebrate Marshal André. The hundreds of captured enemy standards from the Prusso-Austrian Coalition—half of them replicas—went on touring exhibitions across France. Dispatches of victory from the Northern Command Headquarters, edited by the National Convention, were printed on the City Hall gazettes. In addition, poems, commemorative medallions, and even humorous cartoons imported from Britain added colour to André’s image.

But in the end, victories granted by luck could happen once, or twice, but not a third time. They could not be repeated indefinitely—because the future history itself was already being twisted beyond recognition by André. André the lawyer was not Napoleon the military genius. He could rely only on the collective power of an officer corps, not on the single mind of a commander.

As for whether Scharnhorst’s arrival would provoke a sharp clash of ideas with the Chief of Staff, General Berthier, André did not think much about it yet. Ever since the days of the Champagne Composite Regiment, the staff system had obeyed Commander André—or, at times, the collective decisions of the officer corps.

Before ending his conversation with General Chassé, André required one special note to be stamped on Scharnhorst’s record: within the next twenty years, if this Hanoverian officer chose to abandon the French camp and enter Prussian service or any other hostile force, the gendarmerie were to arrest him at once; within twenty-four hours, after a brief military trial, he was to be executed by firing squad.

Before entering the city, the busy Marshal André spent another two hours. First he went to the graves of the French dead of the Battle of Liège and laid a wreath. Then he hurried without pause to the Army of the North field hospital to visit several hundred wounded and sick men recovering there. In a second-floor ward reserved for senior officers, he even slipped a packet of cigarettes into the pocket of Brigadier General Oudinot, before the head nurse could turn around and notice.

Oudinot had been struck in the abdomen by shell fragments during the assault on the left-bank batteries. By good fortune within misfortune, beyond the gash torn by shrapnel and severe blood loss, no vital organ—intestines included—had been harmed. The fiercely brave brigade commander still had to remain in the field hospital for another week before discharge. Under repeated orders from the doctors, the heavy smoker Oudinot was forbidden to smoke.

Before leaving, Marshal André comforted his bravest “grenadier.”

“Listen to the doctors and the nurses. Smoke less. Recover as quickly as you can. When I return from Brussels, the Command Headquarters will form a Guards force—provisionally a composite division in strength—and your infantry brigade will be chosen for it.”

A Guards force meant the elite of an army. Europe’s guards had first appeared in the Roman Empire, but they gained their true fame in the Ottoman Empire. André wanted to rebuild something like the old Champagne Composite Regiment not only for the security of the Command Headquarters, but because he needed a loyal and reliable strategic reserve at his side. Under André’s plan, this force would be attached, for the moment, to the gendarmerie command’s operational order of battle under the Command Headquarters, yet the supreme command of the Guards would belong to André personally, and no department would be allowed to lay a hand on it.

In personnel and arm composition, the Guards division would initially consist of one or two infantry brigades, one cavalry brigade, and one artillery regiment, as well as various supporting arms, including combat engineers, and several future special operations battalions. As for middle-to-senior commanders, besides the already designated Oudinot, André was also considering Davout, Moreau, Pichegru, Suchet, Masséna, and Nansouty.

After a day of exertion, near dusk, André finally began his entry ceremony. Out of respect for the “unfortunate and brave” Bohemian Corps commander, the Comte de Latour, he ordered the traditional practice cancelled: the escorting of ten thousand prisoners of war into the city.

That practice had come down from Roman antiquity, but André no longer needed such a ritual—one that displayed the victor’s authority by deliberately humiliating the defeated. Yesterday, the sea vessel carrying Austria’s former chief minister, the Prince de Kaunitz-Rietberg, had already arrived at the port of Antwerp. He would soon proceed to Brussels to meet André for bilateral armistice talks. There was no need to seek a moment’s satisfaction and turn a “great patron” into a bitter enemy.

At the gate of Liège, the city’s archbishop—a man with a dignified face and a flattering grin—arrived to welcome “the great conqueror,” leading a mass of urban nobles and municipal officials. André dismounted, looking weary. Yet for safety’s sake he did not draw too close to the welcoming line; between them stood two tall armed gendarmes.

Throughout the proceedings, André maintained only a forced politeness, listening to the greetings and salutations of the “liberated people.” After the tedious, overlong ceremony of homage, onlookers quietly wondered how the young conqueror would reply. André pressed his lips together, then nodded, and finally spoke a single clear sentence in the northern French tongue:

“Great France sends its blessing. May the people of Liège be well!”

He mounted at once, saluted the welcoming crowd, and rode into the city under heavy gendarmerie escort.

In the final seven days of the Battle of Liège, General Hoche, commanding the siege, employed one hundred and sixty heavy guns. In total, ninety thousand shells were fired, reducing nearly half the city to rubble. It should be noted that the targets were mostly military; only a small number of shells fell, by misfortune, upon the field hospital and residential districts.

Even so, civilian casualties in Liège were very light. Before the bombardment began, French hot-air balloons had already dropped countless leaflets announcing that multiple civilian escape corridors would be opened, allowing civilians to take refuge outside the city. Thus, after the siege, out of more than fifty thousand residents, only a little over one hundred died.

Nearly half of those deaths were not ordinary civilians at all. They were deserters, rioters, thugs, and criminals who had been caught looting and arrested by the gendarmerie. After only a simplified procedure, a temporary military tribunal and a hastily assembled twelve-man civic jury had them collectively hanged in the city’s central square. It should be noted that although the guillotine in Paris had been operating successfully for more than half a year, the Northern Command Headquarters still carried out capital punishment without blood: death by hanging. As for firing squads, those were generally reserved for the battlefield.

As André rode through the streets, many buildings on both sides were battered and riddled with holes after the artillery’s punishment, yet large numbers of French-speaking citizens still poured out spontaneously to greet him. Men threw up their arms and shouted, “Long live André!” Women, jubilant, tossed flowers towards the great liberator. A few hours earlier, André had signed a decree: the engineer corps, leading three thousand Austrian prisoners from the POW camps, would be responsible for Liège’s reconstruction. Liège City Hall would, without doubt, bear the cost. As for the noble officers who had already paid their ransoms, they would regain their liberty once the Brussels negotiations were concluded.

Under directives signed by Commander André, beginning in October, any town in the Netherlands or Germany occupied by French forces would be placed under military administration for three months in predominantly French-speaking regions, or six months in Dutch- or German-speaking regions. In complex areas, the period could be extended by another three to six months.

During that time, administrative affairs would be handled jointly by City Hall and the local gendarmerie branch, but in practice gendarmerie orders would take precedence. Moreover, the Command Headquarters repeatedly warned commanders at every level: they were not to meddle in the civil administration of occupied areas. Violations would be punished by removal from office and investigation. By late November, more than twenty field-grade and general officers across the four field armies had already been stripped of all posts for interfering in local governance, then escorted to the Reims Gendarmerie Command for further review.

Under military administration, those feudal nobles and Catholic institutions that had truly resisted the Free French army would have their lands confiscated. Under gendarmerie supervision, those lands would be redistributed, for compensation, by the local City Hall to free men and semi-serfs who held little or no land. The proceeds would be shared by the local City Hall and the French army’s General Commissariat. If someone in the family volunteered to join the Army of the Belgium now being raised, then for each person, the redemption payment for one hundred hectares of land would be covered in half—or in full—by the Army of the Belgium, with the United Commercial Bank providing financial guarantees.

Even at the end of the eighteenth century, in the economically developed southern Netherlands, serfdom had long been shattered by the violent impact of capital markets, yet it lingered stubbornly. In many inland towns and villages, including the Liège region, a thoroughly outdated semi-serf system still remained. These exploited people not only lacked land of their own, but were also strictly restricted in their right to move.

Therefore, at the very beginning of liberation, André abolished this hated feudal serf system in law, completely and without exception. Also abolished were other religious obligations such as the tithe, which after the mid-seventeenth century the Catholic Church had largely kept as a bookkeeping entry and seldom collected in practice.

Naturally, these measures were welcomed by the vast majority of the population. As for the freedom to march and assemble, the freedom of the press, the freedom of administrative elections, and radical reforms in religious policy, the Northern Command Headquarters—citing military administration—decided not to implement the Jacobin domestic programme for the time being.

In particular, the policy of religious freedom without persecution filled nervous clergy with gratitude. Although French gendarmes confiscated church lands without ceremony, this had little to do with lower clergy. The French even provided living subsidies to rural priests who were far from wealthy.

As the Northern Command Headquarters stated in its proclamations to every liberated town and village in the Austrian Netherlands, André publicly declared:

“France abhors tyrants, but loves the people as her own flesh and blood. This principle is also faithfully observed by the French armies. For centuries, the German despotic tyrants who have long enslaved the people of the southern Netherlands have also harmed France… once the arrogant and brutal armies of monarchies achieve victory, they inevitably spread terror among the conquered and manufacture misery.

“But you may rest assured: the republican army of Commander André will fight to the death, strike back against our common enemies—the monarchs of every land—and the feudal lords who seek to continue enslaving you, and defend the democracy, liberty, and rule of law we have already obtained. Here, I honour my pledge. To the liberated people of the Netherlands, I offer friendship, and I respect the property of law-abiding citizens. I respect humanity and religion. These are our guiding principles…”

However, André soon turned the topic. He introduced the content of a letter not made public. He required the officials of liberated towns to repay fully the French army that had brought them freedom—an army that was also their brother. They were to use the surplus wealth of their cities to support the revolutionary forces and guarantee provisions.

After all, once the front had crossed the border, the republican army could not expect timely replenishment from its own supply lines. By right of conquest, France could demand provisions from the occupied territories. By friendship, the people of the Netherlands should supply, without delay, the French army that had brought them liberty, equality, and fraternity. In addition, gendarmes would levy a war contribution—ranging from ten thousand francs to one million francs—according to each city’s degree of wealth.

These were the rights of the victor. The difference was that André, trained as a lawyer, preferred to regularize and legalize the plunder of cities and the extraction of war contributions, fixing them in law. Moreover, he strictly forbade private looting by officers and men. Such lawless behaviour not only caused greater destruction and casualties, it also produced an appalling social effect. Another key reason was that looting was inefficient. Collecting “protection payments”—war contributions—was far easier. Everyone profits in harmony. How orderly it was.

Of course, effective taxation required the people of Liège to see the French army’s majesty and power: in seven days it had fired ninety thousand shells and annihilated the Bohemian Corps. That was the best proof possible.

Only when André had sunk his whole body into a hot bath did the deafening cheers on the streets outside the Bishop’s Palace finally cease to matter. Whether those cheers came from genuine feeling or from being swept along by others was irrelevant. Only the hot bath could truly wash away fatigue and loosen his nerves.

When snores rose from the bathroom, Major Kellermann the Younger did not wake him. He only instructed the servants to add more hot water, keeping the bath and the room at a steady temperature. Two hours later, Commander André was due to attend the welcome banquet and concert held by the Mayor of Liège.

Yet André’s rest lasted only one hour. A young and beautiful Belgian woman named Bellucci, with the tacit consent of the gendarme on duty and Major Kellermann the Younger, entered André’s bath chamber…

At about eight in the evening, accompanied by the Mayor of Liège and the city’s presiding magistrate, André—rested, refreshed, and restored—strode into the City Hall building with head held high. The first thing that met his eyes was a vast entrance hall, lavishly decorated. Countless multi-branched chandeliers and candle flames glittered, filling the space with brilliance.

Beneath André’s feet ran a long red carpet. On both sides of the hall, besides the male guests who bowed and scraped, eager to flatter the “conqueror,” sat more than a hundred women in bright cosmetics and finery: noble ladies with beautiful faces and sumptuous bearing, and young girls in dresses, fresh with youth and vitality. Every woman wore sparkling jewellery. As they posed and fanned themselves with folding fans and feather fans, the glitter of gems and gold dazzled André’s eyes.

But soon those women turned their looks—envy, jealousy, disdain, even anger and hatred—towards the Comtesse who held André’s arm. They had all been calculating how to compete inside the hall, and yet that beautiful widow had shamelessly seized the advantage first, attaching herself to Commander André ahead of everyone.

If one claimed André was merely chasing women, that would be unjust. In truth, this Comtesse Bellucci, since inheriting her late husband’s entire estate at the start of this year, had become the largest shareholder of the Liège armory. As for the Liège armory, from the eighteenth century into the twentieth, it was among the finest armaments factories in all Europe. Compared with the declining Metz armory, its level was not lower, but higher.

André’s purpose was simple: to provide the Comtesse, whose family line was dwindling, with a political and military umbrella—and then, by peaceful commercial means, to influence and control the Liège armory, so that it would serve the French army’s war effort.