While Louis struggled over finding his way through the constitutional labyrinth within France, another, even more dangerous storm raged outside its borders. The revolution, into which he was striving to mold such a secure, constitutional monarchy, was not taking place in a vacuum. It was a nightmare for the rest of the European heads of state, a living nightmare that threatened to engulf over their borders as well.
The émigrés,ably headed by his own outraged brother, were a relentless, venomous presence at the Vienna, Berlin, and Russian courts. They spun a terrible narrative: the French King a captive, the National Assembly a clique of radical attorneys and infidels, and the entire nation into a bloody, rabid anarchy threatening to destroy the entire civilized world. They cried out, implored, threatened, the summoning of a great royalist crusade to invade France, crush the revolution, restore the Ancien Régime by force of arms.
Vergennes, who became a begrudgingly loyal foreign minister under Louis's new government, presented the gloomy picture before the newly formed Council of Ministers. The war room, whose maps had once focused on the Caribbean, had one, massive map of Europe now centering the stage, invasion routes underscored ominously red.
"Your Majesty," declared Vergennes, whose voice bore the weight of gravity that overcame their lifelong antagonism. "Your revolution has succeeded too well. It has become such a feared example. The Emperor of Austria hears of the rumors of reform in his own dominions and shivers at them. The King of Prussia gazes at the toughness of his own army and questions whether it might resist the contagion of 'liberty.' The Empress of Russia looks at our Declaration of the Rights of Man and sees in it a direct challenge to her absolute government."
He nodded to a pile of diplomatic dispatches. "They are starting to listen to your brother. The émigrés are whispering to them that you are a captive at the Tuileries, that you secretly yearn for their armies to release you. The rumours are obtaining volume. They are starting to speak of a coalition."
Louis listened, a cold knot building in his stomach. He was building a new house, but his neighbors had assembled with torches, thinking that his house was on fire and that the flames would spread to theirs soon as well. He knew he couldn't avert such a danger through old-fashioned diplomacy. An ambassador's tactful assurances couldn't rival the panicky, eyewitness reports of atrocity from the émigrés. He needed a new kind of intelligence, a new kind of foreign policy. He needed facts, hard data.
He decided to apply the same system which had worked so well on his National Audit on the rest of the continent too. He would conduct a secret, detailed audit on the continent of Europe.
He summoned up Necker, no longer as his finance minister, but as his chief intelligence officer. "Minister," Louis began, "currently our foreign policy is based on rumor, tradition, and the dispatches of the ambassadors, which far too frequently tell us what they think we want to hear. That must end. I want the facts of our neighbors' positions, as opposed to their rhetoric. A foreign policy of a country, at its core, is an exercise of its balance sheet. A king might thump his chest and rattle his sword, but he cannot go to war without money, men, and bread."
He put Necker on a new, previously unforeseen assignment. "I want you to take advantage of the system of financial agents and auditors we have made available. I want a complete financial summary of each of the mighty states of Europe. I want to know the exact state of Austria's national debt. I want to know the expected crop of the current harvest of grains from Prussia. I want to know exactly what Russia expends month by month on its expensive war against the Ottoman Empire. I want to know about their commerce deficits, the expense of conscripts, the interest rates on their loans on the sovereign security. I want their national balance sheet on my blotter."
Necker, convinced that the world might be understood by means of numbers, approached the task with bleak elan. French foreign policy, for the first time, would no longer depend on glory or honor but on economic intelligence.
As the reports trickled in over succeeding weeks, Louis entered the stream of data from the ranks into his HUD. His mental image of Europe underwent a transformation. It no longer existed as merely a map of frontiers and armies; it had evolved into a multi-colored dashboard of points of vulnerability and of pressures, of weaknesses and of strengths. The HUD, now fed a continuous stream of hard data, was capable of geopolitically predicting of a shocking and formidable order of accuracy.
He first focused on the greatest threat: Austria, under his own brother-in-law, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II.
GEOPOLITICAL ANALYSIS: AUSTRIAN EMPIRE.
Financial Status: SEVERE DEBT. The recent war against the Ottoman Empire was ruinously expensive. Treasury reserves are critically low.
Military Readiness: LOW. The army is overstretched, weary from the Turkish war, and suffering from supply shortages.
Internal Stability: FRAGILE. Unrest in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and in Hungary requires a significant military presence.
PROBABILITY of initiating a war against France without powerful allies: 5%.
Then he looked at famously militaristic Prussia.
GEOPOLITICAL ANALYSIS: KINGDOM OF PRUSSIA.
Financial Status: STABLE, but with limited cash reserves.
Agricultural Status: POOR. A series of bad harvests has led to rising grain prices and the threat of popular unrest.
Primary Geopolitical Focus: The impending final partition of Poland, in concert with Russia. This is their main strategic priority.
PROBABILITY of initiating a war against France alone: 10%.
Lastly, he looked at his old arch-rival, Great Britain.
GEOPOLITICAL ANALYSIS: GREAT BRITAIN.
Financial Status: CRITICAL. The loss of America and the immense cost of the last war have created a severe debt crisis.
Political Climate: HIGHLY WAR-WEARY. The merchant class, which holds great influence in Parliament, is desperate to avoid another costly conflict and rebuild trade.
PROBABILITY of joining an offensive, anti-French coalition: 15%.
The audit of Europe revealed a radical truth. The great states of Europe, loud though they sounded, threatening as they were, all of them, somehow, weak, were overextended, financially strained, and preoccupied by their internal affairs. The formidable coalition, which the émigrés dreamed of, was a house of cards. They had no means of waging a large-scale fight against a newly rejuvenated, financially strong France.
In possession of that knowledge, Louis recognized that he had no cause to meet the threat of arms with arms of his own. He possessed something far more subtle yet effective: his treasury. He would prepare for no war but a war of preemptive economic diplomacy.
He crafted a three-pronged policy to soothe his neighbors but completely isolate the émigrés.
First, he sent a private mission to Vienna, not under arms, but under a money offer. He would, as a show of "familial goodwill" from one brother-in-law to another, place France's newly gained financial strength, as well as its control over the world banking houses of Geneva, at Austria's disposal, in order that they might redistribute some of their draining wartime loan at renewed more favorable interest rates. It was a generous offer that would save the treasury of Austria millions, as well as, quietly tie the Emperor's financial strength to Louis's own.
Second, he opened the French granaries. He sent a commerce mission into Prussia, offering them a massive surplus of grain at inexpensive, subsidized rates. He would preclude a hypothetical domestic scarcity that would have faced Frederick William II, a gesture of goodwill that at the same time would make the penniless French princes bowing before the penniless French princes far unlikely to hear them out on behalf of his troops.
And, at last, he targeted the true locus of power in Britain: their merchants. He had the National Assembly pass a unilateral reduction of French tariffs on some of Britain's most vital manufactured essentials, such as textiles and steel. It was an icon of free trade, an olive branch that went over very well among the powerful British merchant class, as they immediately set about to press their Parliament to make peace as well as usual commerce with France. He was creating a powerful pro-peace faction deep inside London.
It had been a shining, silent campaign. He was exploiting France's growing economic strength as a weapon, defeating his potential enemies by good loans, cheap food, and liberalized commerce, and he was winning without firing a gun. It was a new kind of warfare, a warfare of budgets and commerce treaties, and he was winning it. The émigrés became more and more isolated, their voices of war ignored by kings who worried far more about French corn and French money.