The Radiant Republic

To lure the Prussian Army into launching an offensive, General Moncey even abandoned the idea of building defensive works on the south bank of the Beelitz River, because on enemy soil it was difficult to conceal the existence of breastworks, trenches, and wire obstacles. Although Prussia’s cavalry had declined rapidly and was no longer the elite arm it had been in the era of Frederick the Great, it still possessed the basic ability to reconnoiter and judge.

Thus, once the 20,000 Prussians under General Rudolf crossed the Beelitz River, they attacked at once, impatiently, against the understrength French Second Division. (Kant’s infantry brigade, which had taken 20 percent casualties this morning, had already withdrawn to the rear to refit.) Over the course of forty minutes, Moreau’s roughly 7,000 men, covered by artillery, fought a delaying withdrawal, abandoning position after position. In the end they shook off pursuit and shifted to the right wing of General Masséna’s Third Division line, though they still lost more than ten guns in the process.

Soon laughter and singing rose from the ground the Second Division had yielded. A yellow flag with a black eagle was planted at the highest point of the former French position. At General Rudolf’s insistence, all Prussians began to sing the “Hymn to Frederick the Great,” and the chorus quickly rang into the sky.

“...Our cannon are of the largest caliber,

Prussians are loyal forever.

The Swedes are the worst—they even ran from the battlefield...

Frederick the Great, our King, my hero— for you we dare to overturn the whole world!”

At this moment, General Rudolf—wearing a handsome waxed mustache—sat his tall horse and rode back and forth across the “rout” of the French, preening as he accepted the cheers of his men. His expression made it seem as though Prussia had already won a great victory in this “War of National Defense” (Berlin newspapers, imitating Le Figaro of 1792, were stirring Prussian soldiers and civilians), and had driven the French invaders out of the country.

A quarter of an hour later, an aide rode up to report that ten French guns had been captured on the battlefield; together with twelve taken on the north bank, it was nearly the equivalent of wiping out four French artillery companies.

“However, the French gunners spiked the vents with nails before they withdrew, and also blew up all the powder they couldn’t carry,” the aide added. In other words, the captured guns could not be used—at least not in this battle. As for French casualties—under one hundred—an aide who understood his General’s temper tactfully chose not to mention it.

General Rudolf, already seventy, frowned slightly. A familiar memory stirred: last year, when he followed the Duc de Brunswick in storming the fortresses of Viron and Versailles, the French had handled abandoned guns in exactly the same way.

But his unease did not last long before it was drowned in the roar of celebration. Then a group of officers, drunk on the illusion of victory, clamored to press on. In truth, once Rudolf and his Prussians had crossed the Beelitz, it was impossible to stop and dig in—like a shell leaving the barrel, they had to keep driving forward until they either shattered the French completely, or...

Two kilometres away, before the defensive line of the French Third Division, lay a wide open expanse. In two months, when spring returned in bright sunshine, it would become green pasture, scattered with wildflowers. Now it was only mud beneath patches of lingering snow—and soon enough, that mud and snow would be covered by musket balls, cannon shot, blood, and mangled bodies.

On the left, beyond a broad marsh, stood rows of dense oak and low scrub. General Macdonald’s First Division lay concealed not far away. On the right was a long, narrow lake. The Second Division, having fallen back, halted there briefly to recover; soon it would serve as the Third Division’s reserve, ready to reinforce the front at any moment.

Masséna had chosen this ground for several reasons. The terrain favored defense; the Prussian army could not easily turn either flank in a short time, with the lake and marsh blocking the rear approaches, and was forced into a frontal assault. Moreover, the land had once been common pasture; to prevent herds from escaping, villagers had built a stone wall two to three kilometres long and about half a metre high between the lake and the marsh.

That long wall—and a wooden fence seventy to eighty metres beyond it—became the Third Division’s excellent defensive position. On the lakeside, the fence and wall had been dismantled for a stretch earlier to allow the Second Division to retreat; afterward only the stone wall had not been rebuilt in time.

At first, General Rudolf intended to use two light cavalry regiments to attack the French position 1,600 metres away. But an old herdsman came to warn him that beneath the snow lay thousands of vole holes, large and small, which could easily break a galloping horse’s legs; and that the wooden fence eighty metres in front of the wall was two metres high, made of very hard old oak, and could not be jumped by burdened horses.

On that basis, Rudolf decisively abandoned the cavalry attack and shifted to infantry. Yet before sending his infantry in, he wanted a concentrated artillery bombardment to smash the French gun line, reduce his own casualties, and shake the enemy’s morale.

“Damn it—those cursed peasants.” The moment he saw the Prussians change their method of attack, General Masséna knew this was bad news. He lowered his telescope in frustration, plainly disappointed.

He had hoped the reckless Prussian cavalry would charge headlong, and then, under vole holes, wooden fencing, canister, and musketry, deliver hundreds—perhaps thousands—of heads. Instead the situation turned at once into an artillery duel. Fortunately, General Senarmont, who had come in person to command the position’s guns, had prepared for it. He gathered all the artillery of the Second Army and part of the First Army, deploying 110 guns on the forward line, with abundant solid shot and canister. As for the scarce and expensive shell, the artillery chief ordered that no gunner was to use it early without permission.

In the duel that followed, Prussia began at a clear numerical disadvantage; compounded by a string of crude command errors and inferior guns, the Prussian bombardment was lost almost from the first salvo. After forty minutes of exchanging fire, the thirty-five guns brought by two Prussian divisions were reduced to twelve serviceable pieces, and more than half their gunners were down, while the French lost only three guns. With no alternative, Rudolf had to send his aide to General Blücher, still marching down from the north bank, to request urgent reinforcement of more numerous and heavier guns.

Near 11:00 a.m., ninety additional Prussian bronze guns—six-, eight-, and twelve-pounders—joined the battle on the south bank, bringing both sides’ artillery strength to more than one hundred pieces.

Half an hour later, the largest bombardment of the Second Prusso-French War began. More than 200 guns, along a front two to three kilometres wide, exchanged fire at ranges of 1,000 to 1,500 metres from 11:30 a.m. for more than two hours, until ammunition on both sides—mainly solid shot—seemed nearly exhausted, and the batteries were forced to reduce and then halt their fire. (Canister’s practical range was only about 200 metres; shell was most effective within 1,000 metres.)

This two-hour cannonade was perhaps the war’s most spectacular sight. The entire battlefield lay beneath flame and smoke. More than 200 guns, distributed roughly evenly across the opposing lines, poured out their shot without pause.

Because Prussia’s artillery skill was plainly inferior, the Prussians lost more than sixty guns and at least 300 gunners, while the French lost only fifteen guns in total and fewer than fifty gunners. Even so, after hours of solid-shot exchanges, both sides’ crews were visibly exhausted. The early accuracy and efficiency faded into increasingly aimless firing. Near 2:00 p.m., both artillery commanders, almost simultaneously, ordered the cannonade to stop.

As the thunder of guns ebbed, Prussian infantry were already ready to advance. Roughly 15,000 Prussians moved against the French position. For most of the approach, they marched in straight lines in orderly formation, only receiving the order to fire when within thirty to forty metres of the enemy. Without doubt, this was the Prussian method inherited from Frederick the Great.

On the western front of the Seven Years’ War, Frederick the Great and the old Brunswick Marshal had used precisely this deliberate, disciplined approach on open ground: square against square, lines marching in perfect alignment until within fifty or sixty paces, then firing volleys—breaking French and Swedish armies two or three times their own strength.

With the drums beating, the two Prussian divisions spread into an advancing line at least two kilometres long. That meant the attacking troops would be exposed, across a 1,500-metre open plain, to heavy French artillery fire. At this moment, General Senarmont ordered the batteries to change immediately to shell, because in soft snow solid shot could not ricochet repeatedly and thus inflicted limited damage on infantry.

When the Prussian formations reached 1,000 metres, they had entered the effective range of twelve-pound shells. In barely five minutes, hundreds of bursting rounds detonated above and among the Prussian lines, inflicting at least 1,000 casualties and nearly breaking the infantry brigade closest to the marsh. Under General Moncey’s direction, the enemy on the left flank was the artillery’s priority target.

Enduring heavy losses, the Prussians closed to 200 metres. Then cheap rifle bullets replaced costly shell. Under the French method of war—hardly “gentlemanly”—enemy standard-bearers, officers, and front-rank sergeants became the snipers’ preferred targets. Under the terror of fire, Prussian soldiers instinctively bunched inward from the flanks toward the center. The original two-kilometre line compressed to less than 800 metres, the packed ranks forming a dense target that gave the oncoming canister ideal effect.

Because French fire was concentrated on the Prussian left wing, the forward-most brigade there was nearly destroyed. When they tried to climb the wooden fence, they were met by a sudden volley from several thousand smoothbore muskets. Their morale already shattered, the Prussian right wing (the left enemy flank from the defender’s perspective) began to panic, and panic became rout. As shouting skirmishers turned and fled blindly, they collided with their own follow-on troops. Fear spread, and more men broke.

General Rudolf, sensing disaster, immediately sent gendarmes to try to halt the collapse, but it was useless. The right wing disintegrated completely even before the fighting was over. Yet the Prussian left wing performed well. While the French concentrated most of their fire on the Prussian right and center, the left-wing commander abandoned rigid line discipline and ordered his men to quicken their pace and drive straight at the French weakest point.

“That fellow isn’t bad—better than the other Prussian officers, at least,” Masséna said with unfeigned approval as he watched the forty-three-year-old Prussian colonel through the glass. A second later, the Italian old rogue turned to a messenger and added, “Find a few sharpshooters. Leave that Prussian colonel on the field as fertilizer.”

Minutes later, in another world, the man who would have become a Prussian Marshal—Comte de Gneisenau—had just finished issuing his fire-by-ranks order when several rifle bullets from the French position struck him in the forehead and chest. He fell forever onto the snow—now blood.

Colonel Gneisenau’s death did not trigger the right wing’s rout; instead it ignited fury among the attackers. Soldiers shouted, “Revenge for Colonel Gneisenau!” and surged forward with bayonets fixed, heedless of the French fire, crashing up against the stone wall.

On the lakeside, the French defense lacked the hard-to-cross wooden fence, and the Prussians reached the wall with ease. After brutal hand-to-hand fighting beneath it, the thin French right was forced open, and the Prussian army broke through the Third Division’s stone wall line for the first time.

Fortunately, General Senarmont, commanding the artillery, spotted the crisis at once and decided to bring guns forward as if they were troops. He gathered fifteen pieces, formed them into three fire groups of five, and under his shouted orders advanced them in succession—“guns with bayonets,” pressing forward as though attacking.

At a range of only 150 metres, the first group fired lethal canister. Then the second group pushed forward fifteen to twenty metres and fired a second canister blast. Finally the third group fired its own killing salvo. Thus, without infantry or cavalry cover, three gun groups alternated forward in attack for ten minutes, holding off the Prussian right’s furious assault and buying priceless time for reinforcements to arrive. Soon the gap near the lake was sealed by two infantry brigades from the Second Division, which drove the Prussians back beyond fifty metres from the French guns. (This was General Moncey’s famous action in another world.)

In the center, when Prussian troops struggled to climb the wooden fence, French smoothbore fire from seventy metres inflicted heavy losses. Yet the Prussian officers, like Colonel Gneisenau, displayed extraordinary courage. Under storming shot, a leading officer stood his great frame upright and roared at the hesitant men stumbling through the fence, ordering them to fix bayonets, close ranks, and charge the seventy metres to the stone wall for a savage, bloody melee.

But dozens of French guns that had been battering the Prussians along the marsh completed their task and shifted their aim, concentrating together on the Prussian center as it pressed forward. At less than seventy metres, the Prussians ran into a metal barrier of nearly 200 rounds of canister and shell. More than 800 men fell without a sound into the snow. Once their commanders were down, the center finally broke and withdrew. At the same time, the Prussians on the lakeside sensed the tide had turned; courage drained away. In the end, ignoring their officers’ orders, they fled to the rear, and the assault collapsed completely.

In truth, the noon infantry attack was a massacre. French losses in defense were under 1,000, with only 200 killed or badly wounded; the Prussian attackers, meanwhile, suffered casualties exceeding half their strength. Total losses surpassed 9,000, including 4,000 killed or severely wounded. Yet a larger, more disastrous defeat still lay ahead.

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After the Prussian assault on the French Third Division (with part of the Second Division reinforcing) failed, General Masséna and General Moreau immediately turned to the offensive and attacked the Prussian positions. While Rudolf’s attention fixed on the front, shifting troops to meet the coming counterattack, no one expected French forces to appear out of the woods and advance across a marsh churned to mud—led by two Saxon cuirassier regiments.

French engineers had worked the previous night, driving rows of solid stakes into the marsh between the open ground and the concealed French strike force in the woods—Macdonald’s First Division. Across those stakes, at a level just below the water surface, they laid thick planks, creating an assault causeway about twelve metres wide, broad enough for eight horses abreast. To prevent slipping, the cavalry wrapped thick anti-slip cloth around their horses’ hooves in advance.

In only minutes, 1,500 Saxon cuirassiers in red cloaks, sabres flashing, burst into the stunned Prussians. At that moment, most Prussian guns still had not been swung around. Behind the heavy cavalry came five light cavalry regiments of the French First, Second, and Third Divisions, and then 30,000 infantry and gunners.

The first charge of only two heavy cavalry regiments shattered Rudolf’s force along the entire line. As thousands of Prussians turned and fled back toward the Beelitz River, they collided—by the worst luck—with Prussian reinforcements still crossing, and the riverbank became a tangle of chaos.

Blücher, frantic, drew his sabre and shouted for every officer to form defensive positions on the spot, to resist the French cavalry pouring in from the south bank and the infantry and artillery following behind, buying time for the main body to withdraw.

But it was all futile. General Lefebvre and the Fourth Column (the reserve)—30,000 French, including several thousand light cavalry and fifty guns—had successfully swung around near the north bank of the Beelitz. Once the order for the general assault came, French artillery near the north bank opened a violent fire on the Beelitz River itself, where tens of thousands of Prussians were packed together like stew.

When the first shells began falling over the Prussians’ heads, Blücher knew the day was lost. He abandoned the attempt to save the army and ordered a light cavalry regiment at his side to break out with him before the encirclement closed. The forces he left behind, however, were trapped in a French ring. Barely fifteen minutes later, a crushed General Rudolf threw down his sabre again and ordered 30,000 Prussians to abandon pointless resistance.

Around 2:00 p.m., when word came that the attacking force had been annihilated and only Blücher had escaped, General Kalckreuth—holding Beelitz in the rear—also ordered his infantry division to cease resistance, march out, and surrender their arms to General Lefebvre of the Fourth Column.

In this battle, of Blücher’s 55,000 men, aside from the small portion left on the Michendorf–Nuthetal line, nearly all were destroyed. Of the roughly 50,000 Prussians committed, those who were not taken into French prisoner-of-war camps lay down forever on the cold snow.

In truth, Prussia’s disaster had only begun.

When Blücher and a few hundred light cavalry raced back to the Michendorf–Nuthetal line, they found fewer than 2,000 defenders there—not the 30,000 reinforcements from Brandenburg. Only then did they learn what had happened: the Potsdam headquarters had received an unverified report that large French forces were active near Zossen and Wildau, southeast of Berlin.

Thus, before the 30,000 Brandenburg reinforcements could even catch their breath, headquarters ordered them out again. Hungry, thirsty, exhausted, the Prussian soldiers were driven by officers cracking whips and shouting abuse, forced into a rapid march to block an enemy force of unknown strength forty kilometres away.

Instead, this reckless move became General Nansouty’s famous battle. Before the 30,000 Prussians reached the southern outskirts of Zossen, Nansouty secretly placed 5,000 infantry behind them. When French guns began to roar, cavalry hidden in the woods and the infantry in the rear struck at the Prussians’ head and tail at the same time. Caught unprepared, even a weary force of 30,000 with numerical superiority was thrown into total confusion by fewer than 10,000 French. In only minutes, Prussian morale shattered and collapsed.

In that battle, of the 30,000 Prussians, only 500 light cavalry escaped and made it back to Berlin. The overwhelming majority—32,000 men—found themselves with no way out and surrendered in masses.

After the defeat on the Beelitz River, and with General Kalckreuth surrendering Beelitz without a fight, Prussian strength south of Potsdam fell to fewer than 3,000 men. The Michendorf–Nuthetal line, intended as the next defensive position, had in reality already fallen without being attacked.

Blücher, with no time for deep repentance, knew the war was beyond saving. He dispatched an aide—his colonel—before French gunboats and light cavalry could seal off Sanssouci, to report the defeat to the Potsdam headquarters, and to urge that King Wilhelm II flee east to East Prussia under cover of night.

Yet Sanssouci’s final order was different: Blücher was to exploit his “long-legged General” advantage, gather the remnants that could be assembled in West Prussia, and “shift position” six hundred kilometres to Königsberg (today’s Kaliningrad), preparing to rebuild in East Prussia with Russian assistance under Crown Prince Wilhelm III. As for Wilhelm II himself, he returned to Berlin with his staff, intending to hold the capital to the last moment.

As for Sanssouci, Berlin, and all of West Prussia west of the Oder, the Prussian Command Headquarters no longer held much hope. With the near-destruction of 100,000 Prussians around Potsdam, the fall of half the kingdom was only a matter of time. Blücher felt a faint regret: why had he not, after last year’s defeat in Champagne, taken Colonel Gneisenau’s advice and urged King Wilhelm II to carry out sweeping reforms of the Prussian army? Instead they had stubbornly clung to Frederick the Great’s old system, dreaming of continuing to dominate the world.

While Prussia, defeated in the Second Prusso-French War, began to grope toward self-examination, the French and their allies continued expanding their gains in West Prussia. Under Commandant André’s instructions, even if Prussia could not be dismembered completely, its war potential had to be shattered as far as possible—its hard spine, “an army that has a country,” broken.

London and St Petersburg had jointly sent envoys to André, demanding—indeed threatening—that France and her allies must not pursue the remnants into East Prussia. Though André, furious, smashed more than one set of expensive English bone china and cursed Catherine II as an old witch, in the end he clenched his teeth and accepted the political coercion of Britain and Russia, promising not to carry the war into East Prussia.

On February twentieth, less than two hours after Macdonald’s Second Column (the central force) and Lefebvre’s Fourth Column (the reserve) won the brilliant victory of the Beelitz River, the young General Nansouty and his Third Column (the right wing) carried out a surprise attack and encirclement in the woods south of Zossen against 30,000 Prussian reinforcements. The Prussian main force in West Prussia effectively ceased to exist.

On the left wing, before departing Magdeburg, General Hoche’s First Column (the left wing) secretly changed into the white uniform of Saxony to deceive Prussia. With gunboats in support, Hoche took Genthin smoothly. Then, taking advantage of Brandenburg’s emptied defenses—its garrison pulled away to the southeast of Berlin—he seized the city outright. Soon, three steam gunboats steamed up the Havel and entered the Griebnitzsee, training their guns directly on the Potsdam City Hall. One hour later, a white flag rose over Potsdam and the city announced it would not resist. At the same time, a French light cavalry detachment entered Sanssouci, which King Wilhelm II had already abandoned.

From the twenty-first to the twenty-second, Hoche’s First Column, Macdonald’s Second Column, Lefebvre’s Fourth Column, and Nansouty’s Third Column advanced in triumph. The four columns—110,000 men in all, including 20,000 Saxons—formed a great encirclement of Berlin from the west, southwest, and southeast. Inside the city, fewer than 30,000 Prussian troops still claimed loyalty to Wilhelm II; most were new recruits, and the veterans had largely marched into French prison camps.

From the Baltic direction, once the Swedish fleet entered the Bay of Stettin, the Mayor of Stettin (today’s Szczecin) received special authorization from the city council and hurried to declare the city an open city to avoid bombardment. The garrison soon surrendered and accepted orders from Stockholm.

In only days, all Prussian Pomerania followed Stettin’s example and surrendered without a fight. Since Sweden’s recovery of Pomerania in February 1793 fulfilled the greatest desire of Sweden’s monarchs since the Thirty Years’ War, this great victory raised the Regent Duc de Södermanland’s political prestige at home to an unprecedented height—and, inevitably, drew the envy and hatred of more noble rivals.

At the same time, with full cooperation from the 15,000-strong Free Polish Legion, 20,000 Saxon troops, paying only a light price against Prussian militia who had neither guns nor morale, completed the full occupation of Prussian Upper Silesia. The Polish–Saxon coalition—linked by kinship—met in triumph at Breslau on the Oder. Stimulated by this news, 10,000 Austrian troops that had been hesitating on the Bohemian frontier finally moved. Under the command of the resurgent Archduke Charles of Austria, they marched north down the Oder into Prussian Lower Silesia, joining the feast of partitioning West Prussia.

...

Accompanied by the newly formed Guards Division directly under the Command Headquarters, André entered Sanssouci on the morning of February twenty-second in an extremely ordinary black four-wheeled carriage. The first thing he did was not to tour the Prussian King’s “Versailles,” nor to admire Frederick the Great’s achievements, but to visit and inspect a mill beside the palace.

The reason was simple: André, trained as a lawyer, suddenly recalled the well-known story in Parisian legal circles—the so-called “Sanssouci miller legend,” in which Frederick the Great, fearing the sanctity of law, judicial independence, and the fairness of judgment, supposedly yielded to a commoner.

In fact, the story was pure invention—Voltaire’s fabrication. The Enlightenment thinker, who had lived at Sanssouci for two years, intended to mock Bourbon absolutism by implying that even “barbarous” Prussians were better. The truth was that since the eighteenth century the mill had been royal property, supplying grain to Sanssouci, and could not have been dismantled. Of course, if the palace owner wished it demolished, it would have taken only a word.

Forty kilometres away in Berlin, though the Prussian capital was under tight encirclement by 120,000 of the Franco-Saxon Coalition, with more than 300 guns trained on the city, Wilhelm II still refused to surrender. General Moncey, as supreme commander of the allied forces, followed his superior’s will and publicly declared that, on humanitarian grounds, he would guarantee open routes to supply Berlin’s 200,000 inhabitants with meat, eggs, milk, flour, and vegetables.

At noon, André granted an interview in Sanssouci’s gallery hall to Alfred, a field correspondent of Le Figaro. As the only official newspaper designated by the Command Headquarters and the attached correspondent, Alfred could at times even bypass the gendarmerie and submit interview requests directly through André’s aides.

In truth, Sanssouci’s gallery hall was a scaled-down version of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, though its furnishings were still gilded and dazzling. From the floor-to-ceiling windows—hung with gold-leaf paper or eastern silk—André could take in the view outside at a glance. In winter, there was little to see: the vines on the steps looked withered and dying, much like the palace’s former master. The 168 glass hothouses planted with fig trees were not in André’s line of sight.

“Monsieur Alfred, you have one last question,” André said, after answering fifteen standard questions the reporter had submitted in advance. He had seen through the tall window that his envoy Penduvas had arrived at the gates of Sanssouci. From the faintly dejected look on his subordinate’s face, it was clear that the stubborn Prussian King had refused to surrender.

The reporter asked, “Commandant— as we all know, your four columns have encircled Berlin. Which column will be the first to enter the city?”

André smiled and replied, “The Fifth Column. In fact, my men have already infiltrated Berlin and are waiting to coordinate with the four forces outside. Berlin will fall soon. And, by the way, you may print that last sentence verbatim in Le Figaro and in the French Army Bulletin.”

With that, André turned and left, his footsteps echoing through the gallery hall.

Because the Prussian palace had surrendered without a fight, both the exterior buildings and the interior furnishings were well preserved. After a thorough security inspection by the gendarmerie, André took Wilhelm II’s large study as his own office. The arrangement was scarcely changed, including the portrait of Frederick the Great hanging on the wall directly opposite.

When Penduvas General handed his hat and sword to Captain Meldar waiting outside and pushed open the study door, he found André standing before Frederick the Great’s portrait, studying it with evident interest.

“Tell me—if he were still the King at Sanssouci today, could we still defeat Prussia?” André turned and asked his intelligence officer.

It was plainly the kind of question that belonged to “a direct conversation between sovereigns.” Penduvas wisely said nothing; if Talleyrand had been there, he would have delivered flattering praise without end.

André smiled, gesturing that the General of MI6 could report.

As André had expected, Wilhelm II—weak-willed and lacking resolve—still refused to surrender. Yet Talleyrand, now released from house arrest, had sent word through intermediaries that he was confident he could force Berlin into unconditional surrender within two days, provided he was granted authority to conduct Prusso-French peace talks.

“There is one more condition,” Penduvas added. “Comte de Talleyrand hopes that, beneath the walls of Berlin, before the eyes of the crowd, our army will defeat the Prussians by the very method of attack they pride themselves on.”

“A cunning old cripple,” André commented. Before Talleyrand went to Berlin, André had shown him the French army’s newest weapons: percussion-lock muzzle-loaders using mercury fulminate in copper caps and firing Minié-type bullets. Such rifles could fire four to five rounds per minute and had an effective range of 500 metres; against dense marching formations they were slaughter. Talleyrand was clearly seeking, by a roundabout means, to humiliate the Prussian King, and André meant to indulge that particular perversion—after all, it was Prussia that had torn up the secret treaty first.

“Tomorrow, General Oudinot will send one infantry regiment of the Guards Division into action,” André decided. Those troops had been equipped two months earlier with the same percussion muzzle-loaders throughout.

As for secrecy, it mattered less now. This was Europe at the end of the eighteenth century; every state learned from its rivals without rest. Even André’s cannon—kept under severe security—were rumored to have been replicated by the British in the Tower of London, with performance not far behind. Thus André ordered that, from March this year, the ban on sales of six- and twelve-pound André artillery would be lifted—though for the moment, only Saxony and Sweden could purchase them. The British could as well.

Secrecy in weapons, in truth, was a joke. What was harder to copy was the asymmetry in materials science and metallurgy. The stainless steel products that had astonished Europe, for example—British metallurgical engineers exhausted themselves and still could not penetrate the true secret.

Moreover, new weapons demanded new tactics; otherwise André’s army would beat you all the same. Acquiring weapons was easy. Changing doctrine was far harder. If it were not, the strange spectacle of men fighting modern war with modern weapons in the American Civil War would never have existed.

As Penduvas prepared to take his leave, André suddenly stopped him.

From a drawer, he took out a letter of credence from Saxony and handed it to his intelligence General. “Make your preparations. In three days, you will depart for Stockholm as the new Saxon ambassador to Sweden. I have also ordered General Moncey to draw a group of infantry, artillery, and cavalry officers from the Elbe Army Group to accompany you. Officially, they will help train the Swedish army and raise its combat effectiveness. In reality, they will be training an armed force loyal to Drottningholm—the Regent’s palace—to protect the Duc de Södermanland and his wife, and of course my Louis and Pierre...”

Very few knew the secret between the Duc de Södermanland and Commandant André, but Penduvas General, as the head of MI6, was among those who did. Since revolutionary France and the Swedish court had in practice broken relations, and Sweden’s declared ally in the war against Prussia was only Saxony, Penduvas could only take up residence at Stockholm under the name of a Dresden diplomat and carry out the covert missions assigned by André.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Swedish noble estates were powerful and constantly wary of the Oldenburg royal house, which leaned toward autocracy. When the struggle was fiercest, the estates even resorted more than once to the vile method of assassinating kings (and the reverse as well). Two of the most famous incidents were these: Gustavus II den Store, who fell at Lützen—some whispered that the fatal wound came from behind; and Gustavus III, who died last year at a masked ball, with a poisoned dagger buried in his chest.