The battle with the guilds was a messy, exhausting, and deeply satisfying victory. Louis had taken on the most entrenched, conservative power bloc of his own bourgeois allies and had, through sheer political cunning, broken their power. The Law on the Freedom of Commerce and Industry, now supported by the newly empowered journeymen, passed the Assembly with a comfortable majority. It was the first, crucial pillar of his grand design for a new France, and he felt the deep, profound satisfaction of an architect who has successfully laid the first stone of a great cathedral. He was so consumed by this domestic war of decrees and factions, so focused on his project of nation-building, that he had allowed the other great front of his reign—the war in Italy—to become a source of triumphant but distant background noise.
The dispatches from Napoleon arrived weekly, each one announcing a new, seemingly impossible victory. He was a force of nature, a whirlwind of martial genius. But the reports were becoming… strange. Less the formal reports of a general to his sovereign, and more the boastful letters of an equal partner. Louis, in his preoccupation, had allowed himself to be lulled by the steady stream of captured gold and glorious headlines.
The illusion was shattered by the arrival of an urgent, coded dispatch from Italy. It was not from Napoleon. It was from the man he had sent to be his eyes and ears, his political leash on his rogue general: the civilian commissioner, Christophe Saliceti.
Saliceti's report was not a military document. It was a political warning, and his fear and alarm were palpable even through the dry, formal prose.
"Your Majesty," the report began, "I must convey my gravest concerns regarding the evolving situation at the headquarters of the Army of Italy. On the surface, all continues to proceed with a success that can only be described as miraculous. General Bonaparte continues to win battles with a genius that defies conventional military understanding. The flow of captured specie and materiel into the coffers of the Republic continues unabated."
"However," the report continued, the tone shifting ominously, "I am compelled to report on a transformation in the General himself, a transformation that I believe poses a significant long-term threat to the authority of the state. He is no longer conducting himself as a general of the Republic. He is conducting himself as a sovereign."
Saliceti described, in meticulous, damning detail, the court that Napoleon had established in the magnificent Palazzo Serbelloni in Milan. He described how the General now lived in a state of regal splendor that rivaled the Tuileries, attended by a host of aides-de-camp and waited upon by the humbled Italian nobility. He was surrounded at all times by a clique of his most devoted senior officers—men like Murat, Lannes, and Marmont—who referred to themselves not as soldiers of France, but as "Bonaparte's Men," and whose loyalty was clearly to their general first, and to the Republic a distant second.
Even more disturbingly, Napoleon had started his own newspaper, printed at the front and distributed to his troops: the Courrier de l'Armée d'Italie. Saliceti had included several copies. Louis read them, a cold knot forming in his stomach. The paper sang the praises of the army, of its courage, and of its glory. But at the center of every story, every victory, was one man. Napoleon. The government in Paris, the National Assembly, the King himself, were barely mentioned, footnotes in the epic saga of General Bonaparte. He was not just commanding an army; he was cultivating a personality cult.
But the most disturbing section of the report was about a specific, brutal incident that had been omitted from Napoleon's own dispatches. Saliceti described how, after capturing the large city of Pavia, a minor peasant uprising had broken out, spurred by rumors of French looting. Napoleon's response was not that of a disciplined general restoring order. It was that of a Mongol khan.
"He did not seek to negotiate or to isolate the ringleaders," Saliceti wrote, his penmanship growing slightly unsteady, as if he were still shaken by the memory. "He declared that the city had committed an act of treason against his army. He ordered the city gates closed and then, as a lesson, had his cannons fire grapeshot directly into the crowded main square where the protests were centered. After the initial resistance was broken, he then, to my profound horror, granted his troops a full twenty-four hours to loot the city as a reward. The scenes that followed… I lack the words to describe them. It was an act of calculated, exemplary terror."
Saliceti's conclusion was chilling. "He is not just a general, Your Majesty. He is a force of nature, a man utterly devoid of any recognizable moral restraint in the pursuit of his objectives. He speaks of you and the government with all the required formal respect, but I have observed him closely. I believe he sees himself not as your servant, but as your equal, a founding partner in the new power of France. And he is building a personal army here, an army of veterans loyal only to him and to the concept of glory. He is becoming more popular, more famous, and I fear soon, more powerful than the King he is sworn to serve. I must, with the greatest urgency, advise you to consider recalling him before it is too late."
Louis put the report down, the silence of his study suddenly feeling heavy and oppressive. The HUD, which had been dormant, preoccupied with his domestic economic models, now flashed with a familiar and deeply unwelcome political warning.
SUBORDINATE LOYALTY ANALYSIS: General N. Bonaparte
Loyalty Index: 20/100 (Continuously Decreasing)
Personal Power Base (Military/Financial/Political): 85/100 (Increasing Rapidly)
RISK OF INSUBORDINATION / POTENTIAL COUP D'ETAT: MODERATE and RISING.
He was winning his economic revolution at home, building a stable, prosperous nation. But he was in danger of losing control of the very military machine that guaranteed its existence. The sword he had so brilliantly forged was beginning to feel unnervingly heavy, and it was developing a will of its own.
Just as he was contemplating this terrible new calculus, another dispatch was announced. This one, the courier said, was from General Bonaparte himself, and was marked with the highest possible urgency.
Louis broke the seal, expecting another report of another victory. But it was not a report. It was a demand.
Napoleon wrote that he had defeated the Austrians in every open battle, but their main army had now retreated into the incredibly powerful fortress of Mantua, the key to controlling all of Northern Italy. To take it would require a long, difficult, and costly siege.
"To ensure the final and total victory that France deserves," Napoleon wrote, his tone no longer that of a subordinate, but of an equal partner stating his terms, "I require immediate reinforcements of twenty thousand fresh infantry and a hundred heavy siege cannons from the foundries at Douai. I also require that you conclude your current, timid negotiations with the Austrians at once. Their pathetic offer to trade Venice for peace is a fool's bargain, an insult to the blood our soldiers have shed. The only acceptable peace is one that I will dictate from the gates of Vienna itself. Send me the men and guns, Your Majesty, and I will deliver you an empire."
The audacity of it took Louis's breath away. Napoleon was no longer just exceeding his authority. He was now openly dictating both military and foreign policy to his King. He was demanding the tools to become an even greater, more powerful hero, and daring Louis to refuse him.
Louis stared at the dispatch, the elegant, forceful script seeming to mock him. He was faced with a terrible choice. To give his general the army and the cannons he demanded would be to make him an unstoppable force, a man who could easily march on Paris as on Vienna. To refuse would be to risk a direct, open confrontation with the most powerful and popular man in France, a confrontation that could shatter the fragile peace he had built and plunge the nation back into civil war. The sword was no longer just heavy in his hand; its point was now resting gently against his own throat.