The Jacobin Club and the Cordeliers Club were the two most famous societies of Revolutionary France. The former, within two years, would come to influence all eighty-three provinces and 25 million citizens; the latter, through two uprisings, would come to dominate forty-eight districts and the 600,000 souls of Paris.

  The Cordeliers Club stood on the Rue des Cordeliers, inside the former Cordeliers Monastery. In November of the previous year, following the August Decrees of the Constituent Assembly, the Paris Commune had enacted an ordinance restricting the Church: any monastery that did not devote itself to public education or charity was to be closed or repurposed by 1 January 1790. Thus the Cordeliers monastery—serving only God—was soon confiscated, and the few remaining friars were evicted by the National Guard.

  At the end of January 1790, the Cordeliers District was merged with the Théatres District. To ease the hostility of the H?tel de Ville, Danton, usually so assertive, adopted a strategy of retreat: he voluntarily resigned his post as district president and set his sights instead on the General Council of the Commune, hoping thereby to stand next year as a candidate for Mayor or for Chief Prosecutor of Paris.

  To that end, Danton needed allies—men of spirit and conviction. He chose the abandoned monastery as the training ground and rallying hall for his new fellowship of Cordeliers.

  Unfortunately, he underestimated the hatred that Bailly and Lafayette bore him. Most liberal nobles were convinced that the October march on Versailles—the storming of the Queen’s chambers and the killing of the royal guards—had been secretly orchestrated by Marat and Danton together. So, in the April elections for the Commune’s General Council, the ever-confident Danton met his first political defeat.

  From André’s residence, it took no more than fifteen minutes’ walk to reach the Cordeliers Club. Like most quarters of Paris, the streets were filthy, strewn with refuse and rotting waste. Four-wheeled carriages thundered past peddlers hawking at the curb; danger and noise filled the air. At this hour between afternoon and dusk, the men were at work, leaving old men coughing on doorsteps, women dragging mud-stained skirts as they toiled, and naked children shrieking through the mire.

  As André turned onto the Rue des Cordeliers, someone called his name. He turned and saw a familiar face—Louis Lazare Hoche

  Tall, broad-shouldered, and strikingly handsome, Hoche still wore his white breeches, black boots, and blue uniform belted with white straps. Only one thing had changed: the fleur-de-lis of the royal guards was gone, replaced by the tricolour cockade of the National Guard on his hat.

  André smiled and embraced him warmly. “Louis, I’m glad to see you! Earlier this year I passed by the Tuileries and heard from Lieutenant Lefebvre that you’d left the Guards and gone back to Versailles. What brings you to Paris—only to visit me?”

  Hoche looked slightly embarrassed. “I didn’t wish to leave the Guards. They expelled me—someone reported me for reading Rousseau’s Social Contract in the barracks. But thanks to Monsieur Legendre’s recommendation, I’ve joined the National Guard of the Théatres District. See? I’m already a sergeant.”

  He slapped proudly at the three yellow chevrons on his sleeve. For a coachman’s son, it was no small thing; before the Revolution, a commoner could rise no higher than sergeant unless ennobled.

  André laughed, wagging his finger. “A sergeant’s nothing to boast of. The Guard pays no wages, gives no rations, and you must buy your own uniform and musket. Come with me instead! The great and noble André Franck needs brave men to guard his crusade for justice. Perhaps—and I only say perhaps—in two or three years I might make you a Captain, a Colonel, even a General!”

  Three years later, Hoche would indeed become one of the Republic’s finest generals—not the most brilliant tactician, but the most obedient soldier France possessed. Whether fighting the Coalition on the Rhine, crushing the Vendée rebellion, or dying on the doomed Irish expedition, he never wavered. By contrast, Napoleon Bonaparte

  Finishing his jest, André pulled Hoche along toward the club.

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

  Legendre, standing at the entrance, noticed them with surprise. Since meeting André last October, he had learned the man from Reims was courteous yet proud, never one for open affection. Not even the “Friend of the People” Marat had received more than a handshake. Now, however, this young countryman had earned an embrace—Hoche must have impressed him. Perhaps, Legendre thought, it might be worth investing in the lad: he could move Hoche into a room on Rue Saint-Jacques, next to André, rent-free.

  André, of course, had no inkling of these thoughts. He was only struck by the poor first impression the club made. The monastery’s Romanesque fa?ade was crumbling; the narrow windows admitted almost no light, and even by day the vaulted hall had to be lit by dozens of torches.

  Inside, the furnishings were miserly. The silver and bronze candlesticks, the shrines and censers, the crucifix—all gone. The pews of the old nave had vanished.

  Now the presiding chairman’s desk was merely a carpenter’s bench; the speaker’s platform, placed at the centre, consisted of four rough posts and a heavy plank laid across them. On the wall behind the dais, Danton and Desmoulins had pinned a strip of printed cloth bearing a motto in red paint:

  Liberté, égalité, Fraternité.

  When André and Hoche entered, someone was already speaking from the platform. It was only two in the afternoon, long before the workers finished their shifts, and the audience was sparse—barely a dozen, scattered in little knots whispering among themselves. Few even turned their heads as the lawyer and the soldier entered.

  After a word of apology to André, Hoche went off to greet another young officer in blue uniform—a man of about twenty who was leaning forward, speaking with a middle-aged gentleman.

  “That uniformed fellow with the fine bearing is Captain Brune, Hoche’s superior in the district battalion,” whispered Legendre, who had appeared beside André. “The man he’s flattering is Laclos—once an artilleryman, now secretary and spy for some great personage. He carries more louis than you could count, spending his days drifting from club to salon, buying loyalties. Look at him—that handsome broad face of his is creased with worry.”

  “The great personage—ha! The Duc d'Orléans, no doubt,” André murmured.

  To a man with the cheat-sheet of history, this was no secret. He also knew that Laclos had written Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a novel of seduction and deceit later hailed as a milestone of French literature.

  “Your sources astonish me,” said Legendre. Then, remembering André’s ties to the Palais de Justice, he nodded—of course the lawyer would be well-informed.

  “And the others?” André asked, nodding toward a group by the stairway. He recognised only one face: Camille Desmoulins

  Desmoulins was easy to pick out—thirty years old, black hair flowing, boyish face, bright eyes. His stammer had ended his legal career before it began, turning him into a journalist, pamphleteer, and revolutionary orator.

  Legendre pointed. “The one speaking with Desmoulins is Fréron, also Danton’s friend—another newspaperman. He looks mild and quiet, never quarrels, rarely smiles—but Marat says there’s a hibernating viper inside him.

  “The shorter man beside them, pale and gaudily dressed, is Fabre, a playwright and essayist who once won a prize before the Revolution; and the tall, slim, handsome fellow in the brown cloak is Séchelles, a lawyer like you—a libertine with more aristocratic lovers than a regiment.”

  As Legendre talked, André’s gaze shifted to three others near the rostrum. The man shouting from the platform was Hébert, tall and pink-faced, declaiming to his two loyal listeners about the sanctity of violence—insisting that only force could advance the Revolution.

  Of his audience, the short, burly one was Simon, a rough-tempered cobbler with strong hands for applause; the other, Frey, was smaller still, with darting eyes and a rodent’s twitch—squeaking encouragement to the speaker.

  “…So in the coming days,” Hébert was proclaiming, “we must either hold our breath and pray to a useless God, waiting meekly for the release of our comrade Babeuf—or rise, as the Friend of the People bids us, and call upon the sacred right of insurrection, summon the sans-culottes of all forty-eight districts, and free our brothers from the Chatelet prison!”

  André listened with growing irritation. If this fool provoked a premature uprising, the first casualty would be André himself.

  “Only fools mistake shameless violence for strength!” he thundered suddenly, his voice at least 30 decibels louder than Hébert’s.

  “If violence solved all things, then let the lions rule France!”

  “Who are you?” Hébert cried, arms flailing in rage. His two followers—the cobbler and the mouse—raised their fists and shouted at André.

  “This is André Franck, Babeuf’s defence lawyer!” Legendre hurried to explain.

  “Franck,” squeaked Frey, tilting his head, “as Babeuf’s lawyer, should you not support our just cause?”

  “I oppose all senseless violence,” André declared, borrowing boldly from words not yet written.

  “For in the clamour of violence, the voice of law becomes too faint to hear.”

  “You defend Babeuf—a man who preached violence—and yet you condemn it?” Simon jeered.

  “I was waiting for that,” André thought, and with a solemn air delivered the coup de grace:

  “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

  Note:

  "I disagree with what you say...": This famous line is not by Voltaire himself but was invented in 1906 by an English journalist, Evelyn Beatrice Hall