The Radiant Republic

At the Electorate of Saxony, in the royal palace of Dresden.

In the luxurious reception room, Basseville set down his Meissen porcelain coffee cup once again. He rose and continued to admire the German princely palace in its Baroque style. The Saxon elector’s residence lacked the sheer grandeur of Sanssouci, yet in refinement it more than matched it.

The collections within the Dresden palace could even be compared to the treasures once displayed at Versailles. The entire western wing was divided into the Silver Chamber, the Heraldry Chamber, the Jewel Chamber, the Ivory Chamber, and the Bronze Chamber. Each held more than 3,000 works of art made between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries—crafted from gold, silver, ivory, amber, gemstones, bronze, and porcelain. It was the largest royal treasury museum in Europe. Among the most prized items were an ivory-carved sailing ship and a cherry pit engraved with 185 human faces. And this still did not include the more than 1,000 treasures plundered during the Seven Years’ War by barbarous Prussians and never returned.

All of Europe knew that Saxony’s wealth depended, to a great extent, on the prosperity of Meissen—the “porcelain capital of Europe”. In earlier years, August II had been tricked by an alchemist named Böttger, who demanded vast sums to manufacture gold. Instead, the swindler stumbled—by accident—upon the secret of Chinese porcelain: kaolin. Before long, when that “white gold”, once produced only in the ancient East, began appearing in Europe in great quantity, the fortunate elector grew rich overnight.

The full set of coffee and tea service at Basseville’s side was Meissen porcelain painted with cobalt blue; the crossed-swords mark was itself a badge of royal luxury in Europe. If offered at an Amsterdam auction house, it would not be valued at less than 20,000 francs. Had Basseville not come as the private envoy of Marshal André, bearing an extremely important secret mission, he likely would never have been served with such costly tableware.

In truth, Basseville was not a commoner in the strict sense. He was the illegitimate son of a Marquis. Abandoned in childhood, he spent his years before the age of fourteen in a narrow, dim, muddy church quarter of Paris, and all his learning came from the instruction of a kindly cleric.

That upbringing gave him more practical skills than most men of his age. He could earn his living as a clerk in Paris’s grain and wine markets. In dealing with merchants, Basseville learned how to get along with all sorts of people. Tall and imposing, with heavy sideburns and a dignified face, he made a habit of listening to people’s complaints, understanding them, and thereby winning their trust.

Twelve years earlier—when Basseville was twenty—he accidentally learned his true identity. A man who claimed to be his elder half-brother, the heir of that Marquis, found him at the Paris exchange. He said he was willing, in accordance with the late Marquis’s wishes, to give his younger brother an inheritance worth 100,000 francs, on the condition that he restore the family name. Basseville refused and kept his mother’s surname.

Even so, the half-brother still offered the stubborn young man a chance to escape the common estate. He wrote a letter of recommendation to a friend in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Basseville was appointed a third-grade attaché at the French embassy to the Electorate of Saxony. In Dresden, over eleven years, he began at the lowest level and rose step by step to become the embassy’s First Secretary. By contrast, for the current British ambassador, Marquis de Chauvelin, it had taken only one year to rise from an attaché to First Secretary.

Not until 1792 was Basseville appointed minister-counsellor at the French mission in Rome. That was the beginning of his rapid ascent. When the Papal court interfered in France’s internal affairs, Basseville disregarded threats from fanatics, went alone to the Curia, and from the debating stand rebutted the slanders of reactionaries one by one, winning dignity for France. It was then that his name entered André’s sight. After that, Basseville served in turn as acting ambassador to Berlin and as plenipotentiary ambassador to Amsterdam.

In January 1793, Basseville received a letter from André. It ordered him to resign at once as France’s ambassador to the Netherlands and report to the administrative palace in Brussels. Without the slightest hesitation, the bastard son of a nobleman handed the embassy over to his assistant and sent the National Convention in Paris a letter of resignation.

In Brussels, the northern dictator gave Basseville a secret mission: as André’s personal representative, he was to go to Dresden—where he had worked for eleven years—persuade the Elector of Saxony to ally with André, and open a road to Leipzig for the 100,000-man Elbe Army Group preparing to attack Prussia.

Based on his deep understanding of Saxony’s current situation and of Elector Friedrich August I, Basseville judged that the man styled “the Just” was in fact a double-dealer, wavering between both sides. Although he inherited the traditional Saxon dislike and distrust of Prussia, that did not prevent Dresden from maintaining a tolerable level of cooperation with Berlin.

During the War of the Bavarian Succession, from 1778 to 1779, Saxony had leaned toward Prussia and helped prevent its ally Bavaria from being swallowed by Austria. In 1785, Saxony joined the League of Princes initiated by Prussia to restrain Habsburg ambitions in southern Germany. Yet in the Austro-Prussian dispute of 1790, August I turned his ship about once more and maintained a neutral posture favourable to Austria, allowing the Habsburgs to recover an advantage in the Imperial Diet and thereby counter Prussia’s swelling ambitions.

“So, Marshal,” Basseville said frankly after laying out Saxony’s political condition in detail, “if we wish to win the Elector’s friendship, offering Dresden an empty assurance of security is meaningless. And as a wealthy German elector, August I has no interest in industrial support from the joint consortium, nor in commercial-bank loans.”

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When he sensed the superior’s attentive gaze, Basseville continued, “However, August I—no, rather, the greatest weakness within the Saxon court—is the absence of a true heir. Although August I dearly loves his wife, Princess Maria Amalia, the sister of King Maximilian I of Bavaria, the couple have had only one child in twenty years of marriage: a daughter, Princess Maria Augusta of Saxony, sixteen years of age. As I understand it, they are no longer capable of having more children.

“Under the traditional laws of the Holy Roman Empire, an elector cannot be a woman. As the first in line to inherit the duchy, August I’s brother, Anton Clemens, also has no heir, and likely never will, because his Spanish princess wife, Maria Theresa, suffers habitual miscarriages. One can easily foresee that, in years to come, a Saxon succession war may well erupt.

“Therefore, in my view, rather than exhausting ourselves to secure Saxony’s unreliable friendship, it would be better to bind it directly by marriage: arrange a betrothal with Princess Maria Augusta of Saxony, whom the Elector dotes upon. In theory, that would continue the Saxon royal bloodline, win the full support of this great electorate, and also gain the friendship of Bavaria in the south.”

Basseville deliberately stressed the words “in theory”. It was a phrase that demanded attention. What he meant, in truth, was the continuation of August I’s line—not the line of the Elector’s siblings, such as Anton Clemens, the first in line to inherit.

For André, he did not object to a dynastic marriage with a German state, especially one among the eight electorates. Yet Princess Maria Augusta of Saxony was not an ideal match—not because she was ugly. In fact, the Saxon princess was well formed and good-looking, and her temperament was gentle and considerate.

Her sole defect—and it was fatal—was a grave illness in childhood. It not only left Princess Maria Augusta of Saxony incapable of bearing children, but also burdened her with a serious heart condition; any violent emotional shock could prove dangerous. For those reasons, no European heir apparent dared to marry a sickly woman who could neither bear his offspring nor become the Electorate’s heir in her own right.

Yet on reflection, none of this posed a true difficulty for André. First, he had no shortage of illegitimate children under his name. He could simply bring one forward, have Princess Maria Augusta of Saxony raise him, and treat him as an adopted son with inheritance rights—there were precedents in German history. André’s army of 200,000 was enough to silence opposition within the Empire. Second, André’s strength could ensure that Saxony need no longer fear armed interference from Prussia or Austria, and could even, by sheer force, remove internal claimants so that André’s own line could take the throne. Finally, the existence of a Saxony aligned with André could support Poland on the spot as it faced partition, keeping the Russians beyond the Vistula.

With that in mind, André accepted Basseville’s choice for his marriage. Selecting a spouse for a monarch was part of a professional diplomat’s trade; the House of Habsburg was especially adept at it. As a political creature, André had long understood that he could not choose a wife by feeling. The rational choice was an exchange of interests.

“I have no objections to either marriage or alliance,” André said. At once, the stone in Basseville’s heart dropped away. He continued, “But there are conditions. The betrothal ceremony must be conducted by secret proxy, and for eighteen months neither side may make it public. In addition, please inform August I that so long as I exist, France will have no ambitions whatsoever for German territory east of the Rhine. Even the lands Prussia must cede after this war will belong to the German nation. Tell the Dresden court this is André’s solemn pledge.”

A proxy ceremony meant that a plenipotentiary envoy would perform the betrothal or wedding rites in the sovereign’s place, a common practice among European monarchs in the eighteenth century. The reason for postponing the wedding until the second half of 1794 was, on the one hand, to blunt domestic Jacobin opposition; on the other, to support the Polish uprising. André understood that once he accepted this match, Russia would become an enemy directly in front of him, not one two thousand kilometres away.

Moreover, André’s final words carried an implied message to Saxony: if the French achieved a great victory in the strike at Berlin, Dresden would not only recover lands once seized by Austria and Prussia, but might also gain Silesia—rich in grassland by the Oder, fertile in soil, abundant in goods.

Several days later, when Basseville conveyed André’s terms to August I, the Saxon ruler fell silent for most of a day. Then, disregarding diplomatic decorum, he took the alliance document signed by André, abandoned the suitor’s envoy without a word, and left the reception chamber. Clearly, August I went to the inner court to consult the Queen, Princess Maria, and his cabinet ministers.

Two hours passed. When it was time for afternoon tea, August I emerged again, his face worn with fatigue. He dismissed the servants from the reception room, and then, facing Basseville as the envoy of Marshal André, he spoke with solemn gravity:

“I, Friedrich August Joseph Maria Anton Johann Nepomuk Aloys Xavier, Duc de Saxe, ruler of the Electorate of Saxony, protector of the princes’ federation of the Thuringian Forest, accept the marriage and alliance proposed by Marshal André. As allies, we will provide guides and supply food and wine to the French army on the march. This shall be the first part of the Saxon royal dowry. In addition, the Saxon army will assist the French forces in war against Prussia…”

In fact, during the two-hour debate in the inner court, the ministers’ votes for and against were broadly equal. Those in favour had witnessed the French army’s striking power in the War of the Republic’s Defence and on the Austrian Netherlands front, and they were willing to accept French protection so as not to be carved up by Prussia and Austria like unfortunate Poland. André’s promise to restore lands Saxony had once lost was another reason the Minister of War strongly supported the alliance. Besides, since André stepped onto the political stage, he had never trampled his own word.

Those opposed were concentrated mainly in the foreign affairs ministry. Accepting André’s armed protection would certainly enrage Prussia and Austria—and perhaps even the Russian bear far away. In the future, a trivial incident might trigger a succession war. And there was enormous uncertainty in a Franco-Prussian war; if France suffered defeat, Saxony, whose fighting strength was not great, would be the unluckiest of all.

When the cabinet could not settle the matter, the ministers returned the decision to their sovereign. When August I turned to ask the Queen’s opinion, the sister of the Bavarian elector nodded her agreement. She had just asked her daughter, and the princess had gladly consented. Having read too many German romances, Princess Maria Augusta of Saxony had long dreamed, in naive innocence, of a “French prince” coming to rescue her from the Dresden palace.

Fortunately, at the last moment August I agreed to the request from Northern Command Headquarters for passage, and he promptly dispatched court envoys and marching guides. If there had been another delay of twenty-four hours, the French advance force approaching the Thuringian Forest would have launched a fierce attack on the Thuringian princes’ troops that refused to cooperate with the French.