The sounds of gunfire and the frantic cries of servants continuously clawed at Marquis de Saint-Véran’s nerves.
Servants were helping him into his military uniform, while he bellowed at the dust-covered Major Brouin, “You said it’s Bertier’s Army?”
The latter shouted back hoarsely, “Their banners… and the Paris Police Academy…”
It wasn’t that he was confident, but rather that if he didn’t shout, his voice would be drowned out by the gunfire.
“Have you lost your mind?” Marquis de Saint-Véran glared at him darkly, snatched a telescope from his attendant, and cursed as he headed for the roof, “So who is attacking me right now? Bertier’s three corps, or some ridiculous police force?”
Upon stepping onto the roof, he immediately saw black smoke billowing everywhere around the estate, and the distinct sounds of gunfire and bugle calls clearly indicated an intense battle underway.
“Who in the world is it?” The Marquis de Saint-Véran extended the telescope and saw a line of infantry stretching four or five hundred meters wide advancing relentlessly toward them.
The soldiers were in a neat formation, their shooting during the advance was extremely proficient, and their pace steady; it seemed the shooting from his own side hardly affected them.
Meanwhile, several platoons of scattered troops on either side of the formation were utilizing the terrain to advance in detours, quickly reaching some of the outbuildings on the estate’s perimeter.
The corner of his eye twitched involuntarily.
His own soldiers, positioned in the buildings, were clearly outmatched in the exchange of fire. Two very important buildings to the south had already fallen.
Soon, the scattered troops hoisted their flags on the rooftops and started shooting down at the defensive lines from a high position.
When those flags unfurled in the wind, Marquis de Saint-Véran’s expression turned ghostly white—he indeed recognized the Paris Police Academy’s banners! Major Brouin had not lied.
After that, through the spreading gunsmoke, he also saw the banners of Bertier’s Corps.
It dawned on him that the only force capable of mobilizing both these groups was the Royal Family. So, was it the Royal troops attacking him?
Bertier’s three corps and reserve police to attack the elite Moncalm Legion?!
He tried to dispel the sense of absurdity in his mind, and then frowned deeply, the Royal Family’s actions amounted to sparking an all-out civil war—the military would not stand idly by over today’s events!
Had Austria’s stag gone mad?
While his mind was filled with turmoil, a dull thud came from below the villa, and the whole building shook violently, causing him to stumble repeatedly.
The attendant hurried forward to steady him, urgently saying, “General, the house was hit by a cannon. Please leave here quickly!”
Upon realizing what had happened, Marquis de Saint-Véran’s pupils contracted sharply. The estate was vast, stretching over 4 kilometers in both length and width; cannons from the perimeter could not possibly hit here.
For a cannonball to strike this house, it meant the enemy had advanced within six or seven hundred steps!
He pushed the attendant aside and peered down from the villa, indeed seeing over a hundred enemy troops exchanging fire with his Imperial Guard.
The rooftop door was pushed open. A staff officer from the legion stumbled in, yelling, “General, Colonel Bernie has surrendered to the enemy. The western defense line has fallen …”
“I saw it,” Marquis de Saint-Véran cut him off with a dark expression. With no reserve forces in hand, how could he plug the gap in the defense line?
He saw more of the reserve police flood in from the west, and his own guard was being pressed by intense fire to the flowerbeds in front of the villa.
After a moment, he let out a long sigh and turned to his staff, “Pass the order, all troops are to cease resistance.”
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“Yes, General.”
40 minutes later.
In the hunting rest lounge on the east side of the manor, the Marquis de Saint-Veran eyed the young man in cavalry uniform before him and said icily, “Your Highness, the Crown Prince, I need you to explain this attack!”
He was not at all concerned about his own safety. In fact, he believed that the Royal Family was the one in serious trouble—not he.
“Ah? Explain?” Joseph smiled, “The Moncalm Legion has mutinied, and my soldiers bravely quelled the uprising.”
The Marquis de Saint-Veran glared at him angrily, “What rebellion? You are framing us!”
Joseph interrupted him, “No, this is what hundreds of reporters witnessed, and I believe it will be reported tonight.”
“Hmph, do you not realize that you are inciting a civil war!” the Marquis de Saint-Veran still held his head high, “The King persecuting his own army, do you think the other generals will stand by and do nothing?”
“Merely suppressing a rebellion, they will have no objections to that.”
“Who do you think you’re fooling with such tricks?!”
Joseph waved his hand, “Whether you have rebelled or not does not depend on what actually happened, but rather on whether the military’s top brass accepts the conclusion that you have rebelled.
“Oh, I’m sure the shrewd generals can guess what happened here, but they will only choose to believe that you have rebelled.
“Because doing so will distance themselves from your situation.”
“Without provincial unrest to back you up and lacking a justifiable excuse, the military won’t openly be enemies with the Royal Family,” Joseph gestured towards the battlefield outside the window, “Your grand army didn’t even last two hours, which has further made them aware of the Royal Family’s combat capabilities.
“Now you are the rebels, and they are not. The Royal Family wants to punish the rebels, and they are safe.”
“Do you think, under these circumstances, will they bring you back into the ‘non-rebel’ faction, causing them to stand with you on the same front?”
The Marquis de Saint-Veran’s face instantly turned ashen.
He knew that the Crown Prince was right; other military bigwigs simply had to acknowledge the rebellion to avoid risking conflict with the Royal Family.
As for the truth? No one cared about the truth.
Especially when the newspapers had swayed the public opinion, they would simply go with the flow…
The Marquis de Saint-Veran swallowed hard and nervously looked towards Joseph, “What do you want from me?”
Joseph stepped forward to brush off the dust from the shelling that had fallen on his clothes, “Don’t worry, if you cooperate with me, reveal your conspiracies and testify against some people, then you can be exiled to the Besancon region, you might even retain some of your wealth.
“Or you choose to keep secrets for some people, and then your entire family is exiled to Seychelles.”
He knew that according to French tradition, even if the Marquis de Saint-Veran had rebelled, at most he would be sentenced to exile. After all, the Prince of Conde, the “Great Conde,” twice allied with Spain in rebellion which even made Louis XIV wary of returning to Paris, yet in the end, his fate was merely exile, ultimately even returning to France after a few years.
The Marquis de Saint-Veran nodded almost without hesitation, “Your Highness, please allow me to pledge my loyalty to His Majesty the King once more! Oh, all of this was the doing of the Duke of Orleans! Just two months ago, he told us there would be a famine…”