Fox of France

Because of the wariness and fear of Mirabeau, the king and queen did not follow his advice. In hindsight, this may have been their best chance.

Both Mirabeau and Lafayette have reminded the king and queen about the same thing, that is, their relatives are unreliable. When Mirabeau chose the place of escape, he also emphasized that the king must not run too close to the border. And one of the reasons for doing this is to avoid harm to the king by those who share the same blood as the king.

It is also believed that the reason why the king and queen did not adopt Mirabeau's proposal, apart from distrust of him, was that they were simply unwilling to accept constitutionalism. Fleeing to Lyon, the strength of Lyon alone is not enough to fight against Paris, let alone subdue Paris. In the end, some kind of compromise may be reached, but it is still a compromise in which Paris has the upper hand.

However, in the matter of fleeing, the queen gradually convinced the king that she must escape from Paris. It's just that various things keep delaying the escape.

Both Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette can be said to be typical examples of "born in the deep palace and grown in the hands of women". They had no experience in planning an escape. If they can trust Mirabeau, then this guy who often flees because of cheating and avoiding debts can provide a lot of help.

However, firstly, the king and queen could not trust Mirabeau, and secondly, God seemed to no longer favor the French royal family who had always been filial to him—Mirabeau died suddenly.

Of course, Mirabeau was not poisoned with aconitum by Pierre Belec. But Mirabeau's death had something to do with wine. It is said that in the previous period of poverty, he got rid of some bad habits that would destroy his health, but after getting new financial resources, his bad habits became worse. For example, alcoholism, gluttony, and some things that are inconvenient to describe.

It is said that Monsieur Mirabeau would be with some whores, feasting all night long. In order to continuously enjoy fine wine and food without being restricted by the limited capacity of the stomach, Mr. Camilla imitated the sages of ancient Rome—when they were full, they would take some emetics and then spit them out. Then you can continue to eat and drink.

In later generations, people with a little health knowledge will know how damaging this practice is to health, but people in that era did not understand this. So, after another all-night party, Mirabeau suddenly fell ill. The disease deteriorated rapidly, and it didn't take long for the disease to overcome Mirabeau.

Although Mirabeau was a libertine, he was knowledgeable, insightful, and good at coordinating various relationships. His death made the various factions in the parliament lose a coordinator that was acceptable to everyone.

However, Mirabeau's death had little impact on Joseph and the others for the time being. During this time, Joseph and Napoleon spent almost all of their time building up their little army.

The size of this "Red Army" force slightly exceeded the original estimate. Originally, Joseph and the others only planned to build a company-level team, but they soon discovered that because of the special attributes of this team, the team needed more supporting personnel than expected. After careful calculation, including these personnel, the number of the entire team would exceed six hundred anyway.

The first direct consequence of the increase in personnel is the increase in costs. Just like those stories, for a project, the budget at the beginning and the final cost can always be several times different.

Fortunately, after carefully reviewing the project, Lafayette still believed that the money was worth spending, and the project was able to continue. But he still said jokingly:

"Joseph, in your team of more than 600 people, there are only more than 60 private soldiers who can line up on the battlefield in a serious way, and there are less than 200 people including artillery and cavalry. However, there are nearly 400 people. At that time, I will drag a team of 200 people to fight with you. If you defeat them, they will say: "You use 600 people to beat us with 200 people." Come with a team of two hundred people, you only have so few fighters..."

Napoleon, who was following Joseph at the time, said, "Our team can fight at least a thousand people."

After hearing this, Lafayette just glanced at the young man. Obviously, he took Napoleon's words as the arrogance of ordinary young people. But Lafayette is a very generous person, he doesn't want to argue with the young man, so he just smiled, but didn't say much.

With the support of Lafayette, the formation of this army went smoothly. Two months later, most of the army's personnel and equipment were basically in place, and Joseph and Napoleon began to work intensively.

This army is an army that includes multiple arms. In addition to infantry, there is also a relatively large artillery with eight cannons. Both Napoleon and Joseph believed that modern warfare is artillery warfare. In most cases, combat planning should revolve around how to effectively use artillery firepower.

Most of the soldiers and low-level officers in this unit were selected by Lafayette from the French army near Paris, so after more than a month of training, the entire unit was basically formed. However, neither Joseph nor Napoleon expected that their first combat mission was not to repair other troops, but to capture the king.

Joseph had received his order in the morning. The order was issued by General Lafayette, and the general content was that the enemies of the revolution had "kidnapped" the king's family and took them out of Paris. So now the general orders the army to go on alert immediately, ready to fight at any time.

"The king was kidnapped?" Upon receiving this order, Napoleon couldn't help but sneered and asked, "Who kidnapped him? I'm afraid it was himself?"

"Napoleon, this is not what we should consider now." Joseph said while winking at Napoleon.

Napoleon understood that Joseph must have something to say, but it was hard to say it in front of other people. So he shut up and didn't speak.

"Which way is the king going, does anyone know?" Joseph asked the orderly.

"Some say they may have gone to Lyon, and others say they have gone to Montmedy." The orderly replied, "The parliament has sent representatives to chase them in these two directions. The general asks you to be ready to respond at any time." Get ready, once you give an order, you will take action."

"Okay, you go back and report to the general, we can be ready within ten minutes and wait for his orders at any time." Joseph replied.

The orderly saluted him, then ran out, jumped on his horse and headed in another direction.

Seeing that the orderly had gone away, Napoleon immediately said: "Joseph, there will be a war soon!" Joseph noticed that Napoleon's face turned red with excitement.

"Calm down, the king hasn't run out yet, maybe he will be arrested." Although Joseph's history is not good, he also knows that Louis XVI was guillotined in the end. So he was not optimistic about the king's escape at all. The reason is very simple. If the king really ran away so easily, how could he be pushed to the guillotine?

But Napoleon obviously didn't think so. He said: "Joseph, you fool! How can you still have such fantasies! You don't even think about how far a two-horse buggy can travel in one night. I believe the king must have been ready before this, and there must be people who would meet him along the way. These people don't even need to do anything else, but just have another buggy there, and when the king arrives, Immediately change to a carriage, and run as fast as possible, so that if he starts in the middle of the night, by now, he should have reached the border and made peace with the royalists and the Austrians. The representatives of the National Assembly even It's impossible to catch up with them. I think this math problem is extremely simple, even for a fool like you. I really don't know how you can still have this illusion..."

"I don't know," Joseph said, "I just have this feeling, I always feel that our king can't seem to do such a neat thing as you said."

"Our king is indeed not a straightforward guy, but, but he can't be so stupid, right?" Napoleon said.

"Who knows?" Joseph spread his hands.

However, on the afternoon of the third day, a new order came, which confirmed Joseph's guess—the king was actually intercepted!

"Representatives of the Parliament stopped the king's family in Varenna. Some mercenary cavalry were operating nearby, and only a small number of national guards were in charge of protecting the king. General Lafayette ordered you to set off immediately to protect the king. family and bring them back to Paris."

The orderly handed over the order signed by Lafayette to Joseph and left. Joseph immediately ordered his subordinate cavalry captain Robert to lead the cavalry to set off first, and himself and Napoleon walked behind with the infantry.

Napoleon once wanted to follow the cavalry, but was stopped by Joseph. Because Joseph didn't want himself and his brother to be in the limelight at this time.

"The current situation is still very chaotic. At this time, we have to hide our political stance as much as possible. We are different from others. Others can only climb up by standing in line and being corrupt. But we are different, we can Rely on talent and corruption. So we have to avoid dangerous standing as much as possible." Joseph said to Napoleon.

"My brother, you are very steady," said Napoleon. From the corners of his slightly raised mouth, Joseph could see that what he actually wanted to say was: "Joseph, you are such a coward."