On the day after Verdun fell, a four-wheeled carriage drawn by three Ardennes heavy draft horses set out from the fortress’s western gate, escorted by two coalition gendarmes in green coats, and headed deep into the wooded Argonne hills. Inside the carriage were only two passengers: Goethe and Meldar.

  By the arrangement Goethe had reached with Duc de Brunswick, the German poet would visit the French commander-in-chief, André Franck, in the capacity of a scholar from the Duchy of Weimar. (The duchy had not yet joined the German coalition and was, for the moment, a neutral state.) The goal was to seek a friendly way to settle the present “military conflict.”

  Yes: “military conflict.” Plainly, Duc de Brunswick and his staff still felt excellent about their position. In their minds, the French Command Headquarters had abandoned the northern Lorraine highlands not because it had been forced out, but because it meant to exploit weather and terrain to slow the Austro-Prussian advance. At bottom, they believed, the French were simply too timid to stand against the mighty Prussian corps in a straight fight.

  Severe delays and inaccuracies in coalition intelligence, compounded by Champagne’s outward information blockade, led the coalition high command to misjudge both the quantity and the quality of French forces. Duc de Brunswick and his chief of staff, Field Marshal of Saxe-Coburg, agreed that the Army of the Meuse had no more than 60,000 men in total. After subtracting the Bohemian corps guarding the northern Ardennes approach and the troops holding the eastern fortress of Montmedy, the French could, at most, dispatch 40,000 men south.

  As for the several tens of thousands of “general reserve” reportedly assembled by the Northern Command Headquarters, the coalition dismissed them as little more than cannon fodder: National Guard rabble, provincial volunteers, or mobs clutching pikes. By the shared judgment of Duc de Brunswick and the French emigre detachment, such mobs required no artillery support at all; two or three volleys would suffice to send these untrained civilians running.

  Thus the Prussian corps’ principal opponent was 40,000 French regulars under General Moncey—led, moreover, by a French commander who was said to have used despicable methods to encircle an Austrian royal cavalry regiment and cripple a hussar regiment.

  After Verdun was taken, the coalition’s central column—80,000 Prussians plus 10,000 from the westward detachment—saw its forward strength fall from the original 90,000 to roughly 40,000. The remainder were tied down watching the French near Montmedy, garrisoning the Longwy–Etain–Verdun line to secure roads, bridges, and the baggage trains, and tending to thousands of sick and wounded.

  Forty thousand against forty thousand: the Prussian commander-in-chief and his Austrian general staff chief could already picture the ending. After the Seven Years’ War, continental Europe’s foremost military power no longer belonged to France. Most military men, including the French themselves among the emigres, accepted that at equal numbers the Prussian Army’s overall strength exceeded the French by a wide margin. And because France’s politics had been unstable for two years, with military pay in chronic shortage, a large share of mid- and senior-level officers had fled abroad, making efficient command and control impossible.

  With the balance shifting ever further in their favor, Duc de Brunswick and his commanders firmly believed that 40,000 well-equipped, well-drilled Prussians could smash 60,000 Frenchmen—or more—on a frontal battlefield. That, they told themselves, was the true reason André had, for more than two weeks after hostilities began, refused to reinforce the fortresses across Lorraine and had persistently avoided decisive battle: he meant to rely on a long supply line, foul weather, and contagious disease to force the foreign intervention army to retreat.

  As for Second Lieutenant Meldar, no longer a prisoner of the Prussian corps, his status had been altered into that of a liaison officer assigned to the Duchy of Weimar. (The entire “state” was, in essence, a single city.) Duc de Brunswick even ordered that Meldar’s sword and pistol be returned. The young French officer’s daily duty was to accompany Privy Councillor Goethe of Weimar, though his movements were to remain under coalition gendarmerie supervision.

  Meldar, of course, did not refuse such a bargain. No one wanted to rot in the filthy POW camp at Etain. Once, he even told Goethe that when the war ended he would go and see Weimar for himself. In the poet’s description, Weimar was an antique, graceful city cradled by the Ettersberg. The Ilm flowed quietly through green streets; buildings lay calm and gentle amid trees and flowers. One could say: Weimar was not a city with parks, but a park that happened to contain a city.

  By the time Meldar, acting as guide, led Privy Councillor Goethe into territory controlled by the French, their talk in the carriage had turned chiefly to the novella Goethe had written eighteen years earlier, The Sorrows of Young Werther.

  “Hey, Monsieur Goethe, did you really know that German girl called Lotte?”

  “Oh? Was she pretty? Did you hook up with her? Sorry—Paris lawyer habit. That bastard lawyer also said that anyone who writes this kind of book is a pretentious womanizing scoundrel.”

  “I heard a lot of church organizations, including the Papacy, claim your book encourages and incites young people to kill themselves, and they demanded bans across the German states, even total burning. Is that true?”

  ...

  And so, soon enough, when the carriage held only Meldar’s voice, it was because the forty-three-year-old Goethe had begun to brood over his own life.

  After entering the Argonne Forest, the carriage followed the road toward Sainte-Menehould, some forty-five kilometres ahead. A tributary of the Meuse ran to the left of the forest track; fast water churned through a ravine piled with branches, rock, and sand. Hours later, the carriage had left the heights and descended into the valley.

  Goethe’s prominent nose seemed to catch the scent of earth soaked with moisture—fresh with flowers and grass, and utterly free of gunpowder. Through the carriage window, and through the grey haze outside, he could not make out the surroundings. The world felt hushed, save for a few nightingales whose calls carried far, sharp and clear.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Strange,” Goethe murmured to himself. “Why are there nightingales?”

  Opposite him, Second Lieutenant Meldar glanced at the poet with an ambiguous half-smile. He suddenly threw open the window and called to the two coalition gendarmes who had been following behind the carriage in a protective posture.

  “Gentlemen, in the interest of preserving your lives, I strongly suggest you holster your pistols and lower your sabres... Ha. That is much better. Oh—and one more thing. Welcome to the Marne.”

  He rapped on the carriage wall to signal the driver to stop, then jumped down and faced the fogbound forest road. He put two fingers to his lips and whistled loudly: three long notes, one short, repeated twice.

  “Who’s there?” A low voice came out of the fog—and then more footsteps, from every direction. The carriage was clearly surrounded by armed soldiers.

  Meldar recognized the owner of that voice at once and shouted, “Hey, Brother Moreau! It’s me—Meldar, Second Lieutenant Meldar from the artillery survey detachment!”

  No sooner had he spoken than Colonel Moreau, visibly startled, emerged from the mist. With the colonel were more than one hundred French infantrymen with weapons in hand.

  ...

  On the first weekend after André moved the Command Headquarters’ main base from Reims to Suippes, he received a field report from the forward defense forces. Duc de Brunswick, it said, had dispatched a German man of letters and poet named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as his private emissary, seeking an audience with the French commander-in-chief, General André. In addition, Second Lieutenant Meldar—once taken prisoner by the coalition—had returned as guide, accompanying the party back into the Marne.

  Inside the Command Headquarters, André handed the intelligence around the table for the assembled generals to read, then asked with a smile, “Well? Gentlemen, should we form ranks and go out to welcome the German poet?”

  “Of course,” General Moncey replied at once, “provided Monsieur Goethe has come as Duc de Brunswick’s envoy of surrender.” The Army of the Meuse commander seemed to be worried about something.

  André only smiled. Berthier, the chief of staff, glanced at the army commander and said, “My guess is that the clear-headed Prussian prince wants to sit tight in Verdun and has no desire to push farther west.”

  General Chassé, commander of the gendarmerie, continued, “I agree with the chief of staff. Our gendarmes have interrogated more than one hundred captured coalition officers and men. After reaching Verdun, the Prussian corps’ ration for ordinary soldiers has dropped to two-thirds of what it was two weeks ago, when they attacked the fortress of Longwy. In many cases, the quartermasters have been replacing bread with disgusting mashed potatoes. As for meat, we are told it is issued only once every five days.

  “Also, although Brunswick and his commanders are doing their utmost to conceal the true number of men infected with contagious disease, I am certain the reality is far higher than the 500 or 600 they reported to the monarchs of Prussia and the Austrian Empire—ten times higher, perhaps more. One further point: at Verdun, because roads are slick, transport is difficult, and other non-combat losses have mounted, the Prussian army’s artillery has fallen to sixty guns. To make up for the loss of long-range fire, Brunswick has even ordered his engineers to dredge French cannon that the defending troops threw into the Meuse.”

  By André’s standing orders, the garrison’s weapons, cannon, and ammunition had to be handed to the gendarmerie or destroyed before a fortress fell; nothing was to be left to the foreign intervention army. As for food, potatoes could be left behind, but once soaked by rain they had to be cooked within forty-eight hours, or they would rot completely.

  When he heard that the Prussians were dredging French guns, General Senarmont, then the Command Headquarters’ artillery commander, burst into laughter. “Those are French standard pieces, nothing like Prussian artillery patterns. Even if they capture a dozen, I promise their artillery supply officers will go mad. In any case, my grand artillery regiment has been fully equipped with the new André cannon—highly mobile, ferocious in firepower, and extremely simple to use. What is more, to cope with the endless autumn rains in the hills, every new piece uses a lanyard ignition system in place of the old flintlock method; unless one is fighting in a true downpour, the ignition success rate is no lower than 80%.”

  When André turned his gaze toward Custine, the old general—bearded, fifty-one years of age, already promoted to major general—straightened at once, stiff and formal. “Commander-in-chief, I agree with Berthier, Chassé, and Senarmont. Until victory is secured, we do not accept the Germans’ peace overtures.”

  André nodded. He immediately instructed General Chassé, “Have the gendarmerie place Monsieur Goethe and his entourage under secret detention. No contact with anyone. Send them to the Bacourt camp for supervision. Remember: aside from lacking personal liberty and freedom of communication, the German poet is to be treated in all respects according to diplomatic envoy standards.”

  Then André turned to Colonel Marey, seated in the corner in black coat and black trousers, silent from beginning to end. “Within forty-eight hours, I want the Prussian crown prince to believe that Duc de Brunswick’s emissary is holding peace talks with the French commander-in-chief, aiming to reach a settlement to end the war. Also, have the Military Intelligence Office spread rumors among the rebel emigre detachment that the Prusso-Austrian Coalition has betrayed its earlier promises and no longer intends to march on Paris. The story should be that André has taken the state treasure from the Tuileries and bribed the cash-starved Prussian prince. As one of the exchange terms, Duc de Brunswick has supposedly decided to disarm the emigre detachment in full and hand those French rebels over to the Northern Command Headquarters for punishment.”

  After the routine meeting ended, Marey followed André into the latter’s office.

  “Speak,” André asked without turning around. “What is it?”

  Marey stepped forward and explained, “Yesterday, Chief Provincial Prosecutor Prieur, acting on the Marne Electoral Committee’s commission, asked that you remain in the Marne and stand as a deputy from Reims in the next National Assembly election.”

  André shook his head, then smiled. “There is no need anymore. Two hours ago, word came from the Paris electoral committee: four former Legislative Assembly deputies from the Northern Command Headquarters have secured enough votes in the Paris district elections. In other words, I am already a deputy to the National Convention. As for the Marne, the Ardennes, and the other northern departments’ candidates—carry it out according to the plan we discussed earlier.”

  That morning, in his reply to Servan, the Minister of War, André Franck—the supreme commander of the northern theater—wrote in a tone of unyielding, heroic resolve:

  “On September fifteenth, the fortress of Verdun fell completely. My forces are actively preparing for battle in the eastern Marne, ready to meet Duc de Brunswick and his great Prussian corps.

  “Whether at Grandpre, or Islettes, or at Chene-Popule and Croix-aux-Bois, these positions shall be France’s Thermopylae Pass—the place where King Leonidas of Sparta and three hundred warriors died. Yet I am certain that, as the God-Favoured, I shall be more fortunate than Leonidas. In truth, my generals and I are all absolutely convinced that we will win a victory even greater than Plataea.”