The Accountant Becomes Louis XVI to Save His Neck

It was during the first week of May, 1789, that political emigration met at Versailles. Throughout France, new delegates from the States-General met, with a rowdy, disruptive sense, so reminiscent of a gathering nation finding its voice. The atmosphere was electric, a dangerous combination of optimism, anticipation, and thinly disguised, bubbling tension. The immaculate gardens and geometric avenues that encircled the palace held their breath, a theater stage to a story still untold.

Louis viewed from one of the palace windows, a godlike vantage from which to see the three distinct rivers of humankind flow toward his kingdom. The transition to his realm was no longer a question of reports and brochures; it was here, up front.

He watched the delegates of the First Estate, the clergy, seek their quarters. It was a body bitterly divided against its own membership. The high clergy—the archbishops and cardinals in their fine silk cloaks—rose up in stately carriages, their faces masks of noble disdain. They considered this entire enterprise a rough and dangerous interruption. But they were outnumbered by a vast margin by the parish priests, the curés, who climbed up afoot or in rough carts, their faces furrowed and their coarse black coats worn through. They were men who climbed up from the countryside, who had canvassed their parishioners over drafting the cahiers de doléances, and their hearts, Louis knew, were with the people, and not with their own noble superiors.

He gazed on the delegates from the Second Estate, the nobility, a rush of silks, swords, and overweening pride. Many were the very same men whom he had battled within Parlement and within the Assembly of Notables. They considered themselves to be the inevitable leaders of the nation, come to put the upstart Third Estate, and perhaps even the King, into their proper place. Even here, though, were cleavages. There was present, of course, the old, familiar, heroic form of Lafayette, and a number of other enlightened nobles who were persuaded by reform, and a greater number of poor provincial nobles who seethed with hatred against the great courtier families.

Then he glanced at the Third Estate. They were a vast, serious tidal pool of black coats, a dreary foil to the plumage of the other two orders. Legally, they were excluded from bearing swords, a daily, public reminder they were below. There were no peasants or artisans among them; they were the best of the commons, the men whom the villagers and townsman have elected to speak for them. They were lawyers, merchants, doctors, and thinkers of titanic capacities, burning ambitions, and a lifetime's accumulation of grudges against a system that, relentlessly, had excluded them from power.

Louis watched their faces as they came through the palace gates, and a shiver of real, historical fear stroked him for the first time. He recognized some of them, not from his court, but from his past life's history texts. He saw a man with a notoriously ugly, pockmarked face and a scorching, burning gaze, a lawyer from Arras named Maximilien Robespierre. He saw another, a man with a strong body and a thunderous voice who could already be heard calling to order his fellow delegates, a forceful Paris lawyer known as Georges Danton. And he saw the dramatic, imposing presence of the Comte de Mirabeau, a wayward nobleman ostracized by his own kind for his debauched habits, who had successfully elected himself Third Estate representative. All these were no ordinary merchants. All these were giants, builders of a future, and they were all here, together, within his roof.

In the final days before the opening ceremony, Louis experienced crushing pressure. The hanging question regarding the voting procedure—by order or by head—was a storm brewing to blow. He was lobbied by a final, frantic campaign from both sides.

Vergennes, with the King's own brother, a reactionary Comte d'Artois, asked a final, personal audience. They did not go to him in a fit, but with a despairing, terrified entreaty.

"For God's sake, Your Majesty, to preserve your own throne, you have to be firm," said Vergennes, his voice without even his usual irony. "Proclaim for 1614 form. It's a rule. It's precedent. Keep them within their own quarters. If you grant them voting by head, you are not creating a council, but a monster. You'll be giving birth to the National Assembly that will have swallowed the nobility, the Church, then your own throne. They won't be your colleagues; they'll be your masters."

The next day, a delegation from the Third Estate, led by the practical and powerful Mirabeau, visited him. They came bearing a very different message.

"Sire," replied Mirabeau, his magnificent voice a rolling, overwhelming bass. "You have acted grandly and boldly. You have called your nation to cure itself. Do not now, just as all is completed, say to that nation it is not entitled to speak with one, solitary tongue. You fear their power, but you have no cause to. The Third Estate is no enemy to you; it is your strongest and truest support against selfish pretences which have laid your kingdom prostrate. Trust us. Trust your people. Give us vote by head, and with you, and with our aid, a new France shall be erected, a France of equality and energy, with a popular and revered constitutional king as its chief."

It was the eve of the opening ceremony, and Louis was alone in his study. The whole palace was tensely charged, but his room was a bubble of excess, complete silence. The final copy of the royal proclamation that would contain procedural rules rested on his desk. The place where the vital clause was to be was blank.

He was at his last fork in the road. He was perilously close to history's edge, and he just could not make up his mind where to go. The HUD, which lately had been so wayward, now put the two possibilities right out, with a bleak, ominous honesty. It was by far the greatest decision it ever did make to him.

CRITICAL DECISION: The Voting Procedure.

Option A: Vote by Order (The form of 1614).

Short-Term Stability: +20%. The structure is maintained.

Faction Support: Nobility +50%, Clergy +50%.

Third Estate Support: -90% (STATUS: REBELLIOUS). They will see this as a total betrayal.

Projected Outcome: The Third Estate will walk out or refuse to collaborate. The financial crisis cannot be overcome, leading to bankruptcy by the state and eventual, disorganized collapse within a time span of three years.

Option B: Vote by Head.

Short-Term Stability: -70%. The existing power structure is shattered.

Faction Support: Nobility -100% (STATUS: HOSTILE), Clergy -100% (STATUS: HOSTILE).

Third Estate Support: +100% (STATUS: ALLIED).

Projected Outcome: The Third Estate will be dominant in the assembly. They will declare themselves a National Assembly and strip the other two orders of their privilege. The absolute monarchy will be abolished. You will be pushed to negotiate a new, written constitution, becoming a constitutional monarch. The future is unwritten, but you'll be sitting at the table.

He considered between two things. One, a slow, certain death. The other, leaping into a dirty, uncertain future, a future where he would relinquish the complete authority that he was born with, but might just have a possibility to truly save the country and his people.

He considered the cahiers de doléances, the peasants' anguished protests and the merchants' dashed hopes. He considered Lafayette's visionary enthusiasm and Vergennes's ominous counsel. He considered his own son, Louis-Joseph, sleeping calmly within the royal nursery, innocent of the fact that his father was even then to determine his world's destiny.

Louis picked up his quill. The ink was black against the white parchment. He dipped it into the inkwell, the small scratching sound echoing through the motionless room. He moved the nib to the white space of the edict. He had to choose. The accountant who had wished to live. The king who had learned to reign. The man who was a new father. He made his choice.