A new and unfamiliar calm had settled over Paris. The execution of the Hébertist leaders had decapitated the radical street movement, leaving the Paris Commune neutered and subservient. The Jacobin Club, shattered by its internal purges and the fall of both its titans, was a shadow of its former self. The King's authority, backed by the awe of a populace that now saw him as a miracle worker and the quiet, professional threat of Colonel Giraud's bayonets, was, for the first time since the revolution began, almost absolute.
The Tuileries Palace was no longer a gilded cage, but the undisputed center of power. Louis found himself in the strange position of having won the brutal, internecine war for Paris. The frantic, moment-to-moment crisis management that had consumed him for months began to subside, leaving a quiet, echoing space in his mind.
He spent this newfound peace in the nursery. His political victories felt abstract, the machinations of a complex game. This was real. The Dauphin was recovering. It was not a sudden, magical healing, but a slow, steady, and undeniable return to life. The attenuated virus, having taught the boy's immune system how to fight, had been vanquished. Now, his small, ravaged body was beginning to mend. The color was returning to his cheeks. He was taking solid food again. The deep, painful ache in his bones was receding.
Louis would spend hours sitting with him, reading from books of history or explaining the mechanics of a clock. On this particular afternoon, the boy was strong enough to sit in a large, cushioned armchair by the tall windows, looking out over the manicured palace gardens. He was still pale, still terribly thin, but he was alive and present, his eyes bright with a child's curiosity. It was a scene of quiet, domestic triumph, a triumph that felt more real, more essential to Louis than any law passed or enemy executed.
Marie Antoinette sat with them, her needlepoint lying forgotten in her lap. The shared trauma and the miraculous recovery had reforged their relationship into something new: a true partnership, built on a foundation of absolute, unquestioning trust. She looked at her husband now not just with affection, but with a kind of awe. He was the man who had faced down the abyss and had, by some impossible combination of wisdom and will, saved their son.
It was into this haven of peace that the outside world intruded. A secretary announced the arrival of a special courier. A soldier, the man said, his uniform caked in the dust and mud of a ride that had clearly crossed a continent. He bore the first official dispatch from the Commander of the Army of Italy, General Bonaparte.
Louis felt his heart begin to pound with a different kind of anticipation. He had been so consumed by the war in Paris that the war abroad had become a distant, theoretical exercise. He had forged the sword and sent it on its way, but he had no idea if the blade was as sharp as he had hoped. He knew this news was critical. A victory, coming on the heels of his triumph in Paris, would cement his new power, making him unassailable. A defeat could unravel everything, proving his judgment flawed and emboldening his few remaining enemies.
The courier, a young cavalry officer with a sun-burnt face and exhausted but ecstatic eyes, presented the sealed dispatch. Louis broke the seal, his hands steady, betraying none of the tension he felt.
He began to read. The dispatch was written in Napoleon's characteristically blunt, almost brutal style. It was not the flowery, self-aggrandizing prose of a traditional general. It was a report, a list of facts, a declaration of results.
As he read, Louis's eyes widened. A slow, incredulous, and then genuinely joyous smile—the first the court had seen in many, many months—spread across his face. He looked up at his wife, who was watching him with anxious intensity. His face was alight with a fierce, triumphant joy.
"He did it," he whispered, his voice filled with a sense of disbelief and wonder. "The madman. The little Corsican madman. He actually did it."
Marie Antoinette came to stand behind him, her hands on his shoulders, and together they read the rest of the dispatch. The cold, factual prose was a story more epic, more stunning, than any romance of chivalry.
The scene in the study seemed to dissolve, replaced by a series of quick, flashing, almost hallucinatory images of battle, narrated by Napoleon's voice, a voiceover of his written words.
"To the King of the French, Commander-in-Chief of the Armies," the voice began, confident and direct. "I report on the opening phase of the campaign in Italy. In accordance with my proposed strategy, the army abandoned the coastal road on the 10th of April. We commenced a forced march through the 'impassable' Col di Cadibona…"
The image was of a long, dark line of soldiers, struggling through knee-deep spring snows in a high Alpine pass at night, their faces gaunt, their determination absolute. Cannons were being hauled over impossible terrain by teams of sweating, cursing men.
"Surprise was total. On the 12th of April, we fell upon the right wing of the Austrian army under General Argenteau at the village of Montenotte. The enemy, believing himself secure, was caught between two of my divisions. The engagement was short and decisive…"
The image was of a chaotic, brutal battle in a small, terraced valley. French soldiers, screaming revolutionary slogans, pouring down the hillsides, their bayonets flashing. The disciplined white ranks of the Austrians, caught completely off guard, breaking and fleeing in panic.
"Having shattered the Austrian right, I did not pursue. I turned the army west. The Piedmontese-Sardinian army under General Colli was attempting to maneuver to support their allies. We were faster. We intercepted and destroyed their vanguard at the Battle of Millesimo on the 13th, and broke their main line at Dego on the 14th…"
The images were a blur of speed and violence. French columns marching at a grueling, relentless pace. A chaotic fight in the narrow streets of a stone village. The capture of a key redoubt on a hilltop, the French tricolor rising over the smoke.
"In the space of less than seventy-two hours, the two allied armies have been completely separated. They can no longer support each other. The Austrians are in a panicked retreat to the east, to defend Milan. The Piedmontese are broken and retreating west. I have captured forty cannons, twenty-one battle standards, and fifteen thousand prisoners. The passes of the Alps are now secure. The road to the fertile plains of Lombardy is open to us. The enemy is in disarray."
The dispatch ended with a single line of such pure, breathtaking arrogance and genius that Louis almost laughed out loud.
"Tell the King his sword is sharp."
He put the dispatch down. It was a victory more total, more rapid, more complete than he could have possibly imagined in his wildest dreams. This was not just a battle won; it was a new kind of warfare, a new era of history, announced in a whirlwind of speed and violence.
He knew, instantly, what he had to do. This victory was not a state secret to be savored in his study. It was a weapon, the final, decisive weapon in his war for the hearts of the French people.
He gave a series of sharp, clear orders to his waiting secretaries. The full text of General Bonaparte's dispatch was to be printed, immediately, on the front page of every newspaper in Paris. He wanted every citizen to read the electrifying words for themselves. He ordered a public holiday, a day of national celebration. He commanded that the twenty-one captured Austrian and Sardinian battle standards, which were being sent back to Paris, be paraded through the streets by a detachment of Colonel Giraud's veterans and then hung from the rafters of the Notre Dame Cathedral.
After the miracle of his son's life, he would now deliver the miracle of an impossible military victory. The King of Science was now indisputably the King of Victories. His power, at this moment, felt absolute.
But as he looked again at the dispatch, at the name "Bonaparte" signed with an audacious, almost regal flourish, a new, chilling, and deeply prophetic thought entered his mind. A sword this sharp, this powerful, this effective… can it truly be controlled forever? Or does it, in the end, develop a will of its own?
To be the first to know about future sequels and new projects, google my official author blog: Waystar Novels.