The Man who Killed the King

by Dennis Wheatley

  “No; this accursed city is being taught a lesson, and there are many ill-disposed persons still at large. We patriots must take care of ourselves, and I cannot allow you to run such a risk.”

  As he spoke, Fouché jangled a bell on his desk; and Roger, feeling that it might excite suspicion if he refused the proffered hospitality, had to stand unhappily by while orders were given to an underling to provide him with a room and all he required.

  His uneasiness was redoubled when, just as he was about to follow his guide, Fouché added with a thin-lipped smile, “Supper will be served in half an hour, Citizen Colleague. Over the meal perhaps we shall remember where we met before.”

  Upstairs, Roger contemplated feigning illness to escape this fresh ordeal; but he decided it would look too much like running away, and his chances of laying the dangerous ghost that haunted Fouché’s mind would be better if he continued to put on a bold front. So, after a horrid interval, during which he suffered from an acute attack of nerves, he pulled himself together and went down to supper.

  His apprehension was somewhat allayed by finding that, instead of having to spend the evening in intimate talk with the two Proconsuls, some twenty people had assembled for the meal; and soon he was fully occupied giving them news of Paris while they told him about their work of “purifying” Lyons.

  As a start they had elevated Challier, the Revolutionary who had been executed by the reactionaries, to the status of a saint. He had not been a villainous person at all, but was an ex-priest who, out of genuine sympathy for the misery of the slum-dwellers, had exchanged Christianity for Communism. His activities had inevitably caused riots; so as soon as the Federalists had gained control of the city they clapped him into jail. Some months earlier, Paris had sent Lyons a guillotine, which had been left unused out in a yard; then, when the Federalists had broken finally with the Convention, they had decided to make a cynical gesture of defiance by christening the instrument with Challier. As the executioner of Lyons had never before operated a guillotine and its blade had been allowed to become rusty, a horrifying bungle had ensued. After the axe had been hauled up and dropped three times on poor Challier’s neck, the awful business had had to be finished with a sword. Even so, Roger was inclined to doubt if the martyr would have approved the acts that were now being committed in his honour.

  On the arrival of Fouché and Collot, every church in the city had been despoiled of its crucifix, and a bust of Challier set up on the altar in its place. To initiate this measure the two Proconsuls had organised a solemn procession in which a donkey had played the leading rôle, a bishop’s mitre having been strapped on its head, and a crucifix and Bible tied to its tail. On reaching the Altar to the Nation in the principal square, the Representatives had gone on their knees in the dust before Challier’s bust, the donkey had been given a drink out of a chalice and communion wafers to eat, and a great bonfire had been made of all the Bibles, crosses and other religious symbols that could be found. The gentlemen from Paris had then set about their congenial work of avenging Challier’s death in earnest.

  When the company sat down, Roger was given the place of honour between Fouché and Collot, and he was thankful to find that the latter did most of the talking; yet, his danger from Fouché apart, he found it a great strain to show the lively interest in the conversation that was expected of him. The ex-comedian took a ghoulish delight in describing the harrowing scenes which were daily taking place before the Revolutionary Tribunal and on the scaffold. He and Fouché were sentencing scores of people to death at every sitting, sometimes trying and condemning them en bloc in groups of a dozen or more; the prisons were now crammed to suffocation, and, as Fouché cut in to remark, “Our trouble is that the guillotine works too slowly.”

  They were, however, making plans to rectify this, and they described to Roger a new procedure they intended to introduce in two days’ time. Two parallel trenches were to be dug across the field of Brotteaux, on the far side of the Rhône. A number of prisoners were to be ferried across tied up in couples back to back, so that they could not run away. They were to be placed standing up in a long line between the trenches, and cannon loaded with grape-shot fired at them. They would then fall into one or other of the trenches which, after their bodies had been stripped, would only require to be filled in.

  Roger pointed out that the bodies of those nearest the cannon would protect the rest; so many might only be wounded or temporarily escape injury altogether, with the result that a most horrible scene must ensue. But Fouché only shrugged, and Collot remarked cheerfully:

  “Oh, a few musket-shots will soon finish off the remainder; and I assure you this method will be much more humane than the guillotine. When about to embrace ’Madame’, the last in a queue of twenty dies nineteen times by anticipation, whereas in our mitraillades all will be dead within a few moments of each other.”

  While carp and roast pike were followed by capons, partridges and venison, which in turn gave place to tarts, jellies, ice creams and custards, these gruesome topics continued to hold the interest of all present; with the one exception of Roger, who gave only his outward attention to the respective merits of beheading and shooting. He knew that he was sitting on a powder mine; so he drank sparingly of the fine Burgundies and Châteauneuf du Pape that were put before him, and carefully chose every word he said, lest he should inadvertently start some chain of thought in his enemy’s mind that would lead to his recognition. Fouché, too, seemed even more dangerous towards the end of the evening, as he was one of the few in the party who kept sober; but at last it began to break up, and with nothing further said about a previous meeting he went off to bed.

  Within a few minutes Roger followed him, but could not sleep. Again and again in his mind he saw the sidelong glance of those merciless fish-like eyes, and with every creak of the house he reached for his pistol, fearing that it must be Fouché coming to denounce him as an Englishman and a spy.

  At last dawn came. Hurriedly he dressed, descended to the dining-room and bolted a cup of hot coffee that was being served there, then went out and cursed his escort into greater activity. By half-past seven, with a sense of having escaped from the clutches of the devil himself, he was on the road south once more, yet he did not feel really safe until he had left the tragic city several leagues behind him.

  On the afternoon of the 6th, Roger presented himself at the headquarters of General Dugommier outside Toulon. The General proved to be a fine, soldierly-looking man, with nothing of the Revolutionary about him; but he received his new Représentant en mission with becoming deference and, after reading the despatches brought by him, proceeded to explain the military situation.

  From the heights of Six-Fours to the west of the town, on which the Republican headquarters were situated, the whole scene of operations lay spread out in a panorama. France’s greatest naval base consisted of two bays, the inner of which was almost landlocked by two jutting promontories. Below them, some three miles away, lay the western one, on which stood Fort Mulgrave. Two miles to the north-east of it, across the inner harbour, rose the spires of the city. Beyond them the ground sloped up to a long ridge—the Montagne de Faron—held by the Allies. To the south lay another great promontory, and to both south and north of it were scattered the tall ships of the Allied Fleet.

  Vice-Admiral Lord Hood had appeared off Toulon in July with 21 ships of the line, to blockade the port and contain the 17 French warships that lay within it. Towards the end of August the Federalists in Toulon had placed their city under the protection of the Admiral. Shortly afterwards 17 Spanish ships of the line had appeared, followed by contingents of Neapolitans and Sardinians. All these naval forces had landed sailors and marines to reinforce the small French Royalist-Federalist garrison which had felt itself too weak to hold the port alone; but the Austrians had failed to fulfil their promise to send 5,000 regular troops from Italy.

  On the other hand, after the fall of Lyons and the defeat of the Piedmontese in the Nice a
rea, the Republic had been able to divert more and more troops to the investment of its recalcitrant naval base. Ollioules, five miles to the north-west, had been captured in mid-September, and the three-quarter circle about it closed to the line La Valette-La Garde in the north-east. Since then the Republicans had succeeded in advancing their lines to within a kilometre of Fort Mulgrave, their forces had increased to some 37,000 as opposed to a garrison of about 17,000 and, during a sally from the fort on the 30th of November, they had captured General O’Hara, who had commanded the few British troops that could be spared from Gibraltar.

  The fort, and the promontory it covered, known as “Little Gibraltar”, were, as General Dugommier pointed out to Roger, the key to the whole position, because if they could be captured the inner harbour could be closed, and the town compelled to surrender.

  That night Roger met four of the Citizen Representatives who had now, as the result of the merging before Toulon of several Republican armies, congregated at Dugommier’s headquarters. They were Fréron, a forceful terrorist, whose influence Carnot had been anxious he should counteract; Ricord, a nonentity; Augustin Robespierre, who would have been another nonentity but for the prestige of his elder brother Maximilien; and Salicetti, the deputy for Corsica. None of these people knew the first thing about war, or had the natural flair for it of a Dubois-Crancé or a Rewbell. After they had been talking for a while, the General drew Roger aside and said:

  “You see how handicapped I am by all these men who think they know best, and to whose opinions I must accord a certain degree of respect. Citizen Carnot tells me that you were of great assistance to General Dumouriez; so I pray you make your own assessment of the situation as soon as you can, and see if you cannot support me in my plan to concentrate everything against the Little Gibraltar; otherwise I shall be forced into senseless and wasteful attacks from a dozen different directions.”

  Roger promised to take stock of things for himself, and next morning set out on a tour of the thirty-mile-long Republican perimeter. That night he slept at a second headquarters at La Valette, from which the forces to the east of the town were commanded. He found it very different from that in the west, and soon realised that this was due to the presence of Citizen Representative Barras. Here there was none of the spartan simplicity that he had met with on the previous night, but a dinner cooked by a chef of the ancien régime and a dozen pretty young ladies to help eat it.

  Paul Barras was a ci-devant Count who had seen military service in India, and gone over early to the Revolution. His views were radical, but his tastes were still luxurious and women were his ruling passion. Nevertheless, he was a power to be reckoned with, as he had more intelligence and personality than all four of the other Representatives put together. Roger found him easy to get on with, but too wrapped up in his own pleasures to prosecute the siege with vigour.

  On the night of the 8th, Roger was back with Dugommier, and on the 9th he accompanied him on a tour of inspection to the south-west, where the Republicans were driving their saps toward Fort Mulgrave. The greater part of the Republican artillery was also concentrated there and the General introduced him to its Commander. He was a short, thin, seedy-looking individual with a sharp, slightly-hooked nose and lank hair, whose dark eyes were his best features. He was about Roger’s own age, and his name was Buonaparte. With those dark eyes of his flashing in his sallow face, he explained to them his reasons for the siting of each of his batteries, one of which he had pushed so close up to the fort that it was under a continuous fusillade. So many of his gunners had become casualties there that to overcome the reluctance of others to take their places he had christened it the “Battery of the Fearless”, and now it was considered an honour to have served at it. That the expenditure of men was justified there could be no doubt, as from its forward position the battery could fire right into the fort, and was doing terrific execution.

  When they had left him the General remarked, “That young man has been a godsend to us. At the taking of Ollioules in September our only capable artillery officer was killed, and this little Captain happened to come up from Aix, where he was kicking his heels in charge of the artillery park. We gave him Lieutenant-Colonel’s rank, and ever since he has worked like a Trojan. We had less than a dozen cannon at that time, but he despatched people in all directions to collect pieces from the forts along the coast, found gunners from God knows where to man them, and animated his men with tireless ardour. He is never absent from his batteries, yet somehow finds time to organise his own supplies. He is having 5,000 gabions a day made at Marseilles, and at Ollioules has established his own shot foundry with eighty workers. Unfortunately, though, he is an incredibly self-opinionated man and extremely temperamental; so unless he is careful he will break himself by running counter to one of his superiors.”

  On the 11th a council of war was held, and Roger found himself in a position of some difficulty. He shared Dugommier’s views entirely—that the capture of the Little Gibraltar would bring about the fall of the city, and should be given priority over all else; but as that was obviously contrary to British interests, he was most loath to lend his support to it. As it transpired, he had little option, for the General had already won over most of the others to his plan, and the fiery little Artillery Commander scathingly silenced the only murmurs of opposition. Although he was the junior officer present, he hammered the table with his clenched fist, and appeared ready to fight anyone who attempted to contradict him; so the matter was soon settled, and it was agreed that all the forces that could be collected from the other sectors should be concentrated for an all-out night assault on Fort Mulgrave on the 16th.

  Roger had learned that Buonaparte was a Corsican; so as the thin figure in the threadbare uniform stalked away from the meeting he said to the Corsican deputy, Salicetti, “That young countryman of yours certainly knows his own mind; he should go far.”

  Salicetti gave him a doubtful look. “Perhaps; if he does not over-reach himself. He has ambition enough for ten and is a born intriguer, but at any time he may take one chance too many and come a cropper. Four times in the past three years he has gone to Corsica and remained there for long periods without leave, because he hoped to do better for himself in the Corsican National Guard than in the regular army. For the past year or more he should have been serving with his regiment in Northern France; so he is at least technically guilty of desertion. In normal times he would long since have been cashiered, but owing to the unsettled state of things his neglect of his proper duties has been overlooked. He has the fact of his being a good Jacobin to thank for that, and recently he was clever enough to work himself into the good books of the Convention by writing an anti-Federalist pamphlet called ‘The Supper of Beaucaire’.”

  “I think I saw it,” Roger remarked, “but I did not recall the name of its author. Was it not about five travellers who met at an inn? The soldier of the party, who I take it was supposed to be Buonaparte himself, argues the other four around to the view that patriotism must be placed before internal politics, and that everyone should support the Convention in the war against foreign enemies?”

  “That is so. The Convention liked it so much that they ordered several thousand copies of it to be printed and distributed. If he keeps to those lines he will do well. Personally, I admire his forth-rightness; but I fear he is likely to make many enemies.”

  Now that the plan of attack and its date was settled, Roger began to cudgel his wits for a way in which he could help his own countrymen to resist it. This was just the kind of occasion on which Dan would have been invaluable to him, as the bilingual ex-smuggler would have found no difficulty at all in slipping through the lines at night to convey a warning; but for Roger to do so himself was out of the question, as it was impossible for anyone in his position to disappear from headquarters for more than a few hours without his absence being noticed. After much thought he decided that he must allow himself to be captured; but how to do it without serious risk of being kille
d presented a knotty problem.

  It was at Fort Mulgrave that nearly all the English forces had been concentrated; so next day he rode down there again and spent several hours studying its defences through a telescope. To the north of the Fort lay the village of La Seyne, and outside it was a small redoubt. To suggest that its capture before the general assault would facilitate the major action seemed plausible enough, and it did not appear to be strongly defended; so a surprise attack should secure it, at all events temporarily. Représentants en mission always went into battle with the armies to which they were attached, and frequently took command in local actions, so it would not be thought at all strange if he proposed to lead an attack on the redoubt himself. Some risk had to be run, but if he escaped injury in the first rush the rest should be easy. Under cover of darkness he could become separated from his men and allow himself to be captured. As a prisoner of importance, he would at once be taken before the senior British officer, and if he said he would talk only to Lord Hood they would send him aboard the Flagship. To the Admiral, in private, he was prepared to disclose his true identity, as a guarantee that he was telling the truth about the Revolutionaries’ plans. It was possible that he might even see his father, as, when he had last heard of him, Rear-Admiral Brook had been serving in the Mediterranean.

  There was, too, a special bonus to this plan, if only he could pull it off; for a Citizen Représentant ranked as a Major-General, and he felt confident that Lord Hood would have no difficulty in arranging for him to be exchanged under a flag of truce for General O’Hara. This idea for getting back quickly to his own work and at the same time rescuing a British General from captivity greatly appealed to his sense of humour, and as he snapped his telescope shut he was grinning broadly.

  That night the talk in the headquarters mess was all of Lyons, as a courier from that city had arrived that afternoon. From the 4th Fouché and Collot had been putting into practice their new idea for disposing of reactionaries in large batches, and on the first day they had liquidated sixty. As Roger had foreseen, it had proved a horrible business; only about fifteen had been killed by the discharge of the cannon, and half the remaining pairs had had legs or arms blown off, while the rest had suffered no injury. As the still living staggered about with corpses or wounded tied to their backs, the troops had been ordered to shoot them down, but several fusillades of musketry had failed to still the writhing of this screaming, tormented mass of humanity; so eventually the gendarmes had had to go in with their sabres and finish them off.