Chapter 96: Foundation Stone (6)
Chapter 96: Foundation Stone (6)
July 16, 1790.
Kingdom of France, near the city of Troyes.
National Guard General Staff tent.
“Hoo. Hoo.”
“Don’t be so tense. Relax your shoulders a bit, Captain Bonaparte.”
“Yes, yes! Chief of Staff!”
“Hah. You’re wound up tight. Go on in. The Commander is waiting.”
“Loyalty! Captain Napoleon Bonaparte! I’m here because the Commander summoned me!”
Napoleon pulled aside the curtain at the headquarters tent and stepped inside, shouting briskly like a fresh transfer recruit.
No—more accurately, he couldn’t help shouting like that.
This was a world of stars, every single one with gold epaulets and dazzling medals pinned to their chests—a place where a mere junior officer couldn’t even breathe comfortably.
And among that meteor shower, a bright yellow star—its shoulder marked with the only blue cross—rose and spoke.
“Ah, Captain Grapeshot! I’ve been waiting. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Gilbert du Motier, Commander Lafayette of the National Guard. It is an honor to meet you.”
“I-I’m the one honored, Commander!”
The twenty-one-year-old captain, taking the hand of the war hero he’d only ever known from drawings, felt his heart pounding.
“Haha. Perhaps because you’re young, there’s strength in your voice. Sit here, Captain.”
“Yes, Commander!”
“First, let’s wet our throats before we talk. Coffee is fine?”
“Ah! I like coffee.”
“If you prefer wine or cognac instead of coffee, that works too. One good thing about becoming a general is that even in the field, you’re always provided good liquor without having to secure it yourself.”
“Hearing you say that makes me feel like I absolutely have to become a general.”
“Haha, is that so? In fact, Captain Bonaparte—by my assessment, you seem quite capable.”
The apex of three hundred thousand French troops, a star among stars.
At the Commander’s final words, Napoleon’s eyes snapped wide.
“...When you say I seem quite capable?”
“Excuse me a moment.”
Lafayette moistened his throat with wine brought by his orderly, then continued.
“I mean it literally, Captain. I received and reviewed the training report from this exercise, and there were many points of impressive performance—your drilling of the soldiers as well. In particular, switching ammunition types moment by moment and, in plain terms, grinding up Major Grouchy’s cavalry—when I first heard it, I wondered if the controller had submitted a false report.”
His throat was dry.
Faced with a solemn oracle descending from a lofty star glittering beyond the heavens, Napoleon—growing thirstier by the second—downed the coffee in his cup in one gulp without even noticing the heat.
“...Isn’t it hot?”
“It’s fine! I’m naturally sturdy, so this is how I drink it!”
“...If you say so. Ahem. In any case, not only I, but all the officers in the staff issued favorable evaluations of Captain Bonaparte. Do you know what that means, Captain?”
“I... don’t really know.”
“Haha. Think of it simply. Simply. I have two options I wish to offer you, Captain Bonaparte. Listen, then choose the one you want.”
To the rigidly tense Napoleon, Commander Lafayette raised two fingers.
“First: You may take the position of Regimental Chief of Staff in the La Fère Artillery Regiment where you are currently serving. It is the orthodox promotion path. Naturally, I will promote you accordingly from captain to major. However, there is a possibility your rank will stagnate for a long time after you become a major. As you know, pinning major at age twenty-one is not merely ‘fast’ promotion.”
“I understand what you mean.”
“Good. Second: I propose you take command as regimental commander of a newly established regiment.”
“R-Regimental commander?”
Regimental commander meant colonel.
Colonel—the rank most soldiers couldn’t even dream of.
“Naturally, as with the first option, I will grant you the rank of colonel befitting a regimental commander. But do not forget: this rank will remain ‘temporary’ in every sense.”
“Temporary... meaning you could take it back, if something happens?”
“That is correct. But do not worry too much. Even if that happens, I will still promote you to major. However, until a vacancy opens, you will be placed on home standby orders. You understand that on home standby, your allowance is reduced.”
“...May I ask which regiment I would be assigned?”
“It is the Volunteer Training Regiment.”
His chest went cold in an instant.
A Volunteer Training Regiment? That was a backwater posting among backwater postings.
A unit run purely for drill, with no real mission—spending all day pushing around raw recruits who still had the smell of civilian life on them.
A custom-built retirement home for washed-up “captain colonels” with no chance of making general.
So everything up to now—saying I was promising, saying I impressed him—was it all a lie?
“Don’t think too badly of it just because it’s a training regiment, Captain Bonaparte. Right now, what our National Guard needs most is exactly that training regiment.”
“...Pardon?”
“You’ve drilled soldiers yourself, so you know—but most of our National Guard forces are amateurs. Do you think it makes sense that the majority of soldiers can’t even do basic addition and subtraction properly? To put it bluntly, the National Guard is nothing more than a large mass of fools.”
Commander Lafayette leaned forward, looking Napoleon squarely in the eye as he continued.
“And yet. In that amateur army, one artillery battalion is sending more than one round per minute. Loading that takes even seasoned naval troops a baseline of one minute and thirty seconds.”
“So you want me to...?”
“Haha. Looking at you, Captain Bonaparte, it seems my words have already become the answer.”
Can you do it, Captain? Lafayette added with a smile.
“If you entrust it to me, I will create the strongest army in the world—the Grande Armée—Commander!”
“Good. Colonel Napoleon Bonaparte. Let’s do well together. And I have already found an aide to support Colonel Bonaparte.”
“Is that so?”
“Chief of Staff, bring him in.”
“Let me see who it—”
Napoleon closed his eyes.
“I heard Colonel Bonaparte is the same class year as Major Emmanuel de Grouchy and was close with him. And Major Grouchy himself volunteered to serve as Colonel Bonaparte’s Chief of Staff. Such strong comradeship is a wonderful sight. Hahaha!”
Commander Lafayette smiled with satisfaction as he wrote a few lines into his notebook.
[Reorganization of the 3rd Paris Volunteer Training Regiment complete.]
[Regimental Commander: Colonel Napoleon Bonaparte / Chief of Staff: Major Emmanuel de Grouchy]
July 24, 1790.
Kingdom of France, Palace of Versailles.
Office of the Captain of the Royal Guard.
“In this state, we have no chance. If things erupt, we must escort His Majesty, break through the defensive line at all costs, and move quickly to the Netherlands where Nancy—or the Count of Artois—is stationed. If it’s truly the worst case, we may even have to sail to Britain through Calais...”
“General, I do not think it is right to abandon the battlefield without even fighting properly.”
Dumouriez’s hand, which had been moving pieces on the map, twitched and stopped.
“...What did you say? Say again what you just said to me.”
“As a guardsman who serves His Majesty, I judge such thinking to be defeatist, General.”
“That’s right! An honorable guardsman should always have the spirit that we can win—”
“Our Royal Guard is an elite force that even fought Friedrich! And just a few years ago, didn’t we crush the Redcoats of those British pirate bastards? If you recall our valor—”
These... these crazy bastards.
What was all that? Defeatism? Spirit? Valor?
Back when Friedrich was alive, these small fry wouldn’t have even dared set foot near the gates of war.
They were probably barely twenty, and they talked like they themselves had faced Friedrich and the Redcoats. Was this a joke?
Dumouriez barely forced down the anger that looked ready to explode, then pointed at the youngest-looking lieutenant among the lined-up officers.
Yes. The green lieutenant who had been going on about valor and elite troops.
“...You. There.”
“Yes! General.”
“What is your name?”
“Yes, I am Second Lieutenant Hugo de La.”
“Hugo. Hugo... How old are you?”
“Yes. I am twenty-two this year.”
“A second lieutenant at twenty-two—you must be from the military academy. Which one? Brienne? Paris?”
“Yes, I graduated from the Paris Military Academy.”
“Hah. Is that so.”
“Yes, that is—”
“To think the Paris Military Academy now admits cadets as stupid as you. Shocking. If I were still the headmaster, this kind of disgrace wouldn’t have happened. Tsk.”
Officers, and supposedly academy graduates, yet they couldn’t even judge by eye whether a fight was winnable or unwinnable.
And I’m supposed to beat that bastard Lafayette with these idiots? Louis XVII—no, Orléans, are you insane?
Even a shit stick in the toilet would be better than these morons.
“Second Lieutenant Hugo.”
“Yes, General.”
“Can you read an operational map?”
“...Yes, I can.”
“Then read it.”
How could a mere junior officer dare disobey a general who loomed higher than the sky?
Hugo, no more than a minnow, held back trembling hands of humiliation and began reading what was written on the operational map.
On the map, multiple units were scattered in confusion around Versailles and Paris.
The Royal Guard was surrounded by triple their manpower and six hundred thousand Paris citizens, and twenty thousand royalist troops departing from Nancy and Zagreb faced a National Guard force of similar size.
“What do you think, Second Lieutenant Hugo?”
“...They are certainly difficult enemies, but I believe that with the fighting spirit our guard has accumulated on the battlefield until now, we can overcome it.”
“What? Fighting spirit accumulated until now? Good! Then I will personally test your spirit.”
“Urk!”
“That vaunted fighting spirit can’t even endure this?!”
Hugo clutched the shin kicked by the boot and rolled on the floor.
“Among you, if anyone has spent even one second on a battlefield, raise your hand.”
Cold.
Into a chest already ready to burst with rage, irritation stabbed in again.
You pig-like bastards.
“Men who’ve never even been to the field—never been to war—go around talking about my seniors’ records as if they were your own medals! Are you playing with me?!”
“...”
“...”
“...”
“Why are you all silent? If you have mouths, pick up any word at all like you did before.”
What a situation—having to line up fools and call them the guard, men who couldn’t even tell shit from chocolate because they believed the king stood behind them.
The king you lot worship is already a sinking ship.
“...We’ll end today’s operational meeting here. All of you go sleep and cool your heads before we meet again.”
“Yes, General.”
Dumouriez put on his hat, left the Captain of the Guard’s office alone, and headed to an annex palace on one side of Versailles.
“Halt! Identify yourself!”
“It’s Dumouriez.”
“Ah, General. No issues on duty.”
“Good. You’re working hard. And... how is the person inside?”
“As always. He remains in the room without incident.”
“I see. Open the door for me for a moment. I have something to say to him.”
“Yes, General.”
The guard unlocked the padlock with a key and let Dumouriez into the annex.
“Hah. This room is bigger than the Captain of the Guard’s office. So he’s confined, yet he’s living more luxuriously than I am. Isn’t that right, Antoine Desaix, Deputy Captain of the Royal Guard?”
Dumouriez shouted the last words loudly.
“...Did you come to release me from suspension?”
A young officer answered as he emerged from deeper inside the room.
“No. I came to make a deal. A deal where you live—and I live.”