The Riskiest Gambit

The evening prior to the last day at court, the room in the King's study was heavy with the grim foreboding of a coming conflict. The propaganda battle on the Paris streets had been at boiling pitch, a cacophonous chorus of rival versions. But Art understood that the transient triumph of popular sentiment would count for naught if he could not carry the verdict in the hard stone court within the Palais de la Cité. Everything he had done depended on one ghastly thin spot: the testimony of one aged man.

He had summoned his two most reliable, and most disparate, counselors for one last war council. Jacques Necker, his man of figures and common sense, and Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, his man of letters and stagecraft. He had just apprised them of his last throw: to summon the retired huntsman, Jean-Pierre Dubois, as a linchpin witness for the prosecution.

The immediate and unanimous horror was the response, but it was from two completely different sources.

Necker, who had been nervously pacing, stopped dead. His face, already pale from weeks of stress, seemed to lose another shade of color. "Your Majesty," he whispered, as if the words themselves were a heresy. "You cannot be serious. This is madness. It is a constitutional catastrophe waiting to happen."

"Explain, Minister," Art said in a steady voice, betraying none of the uproar churning in his own gut.

"It is the law! The entire system of French society and jurisprudence is grounded in an admitted order," argued Necker vigorously. "A baron's solemn oath is beyond the reach of impeachment in a court of justice. You will be asking a committee of judges comprised wholly of proud aristocrats themselves to rise up in public and proclaim in the face of the world that the word of some lowly servant is more true, more valuable even than the solemn oath of a Baron. You will be asking them in effect to discredit the foundation on which themselves they occupy a privileged station!"

He threw up his hands in disgust. "They will not do it. They cannot! They will discover a legal technicality to strike his testimony. They will declare him an unsound witness. They will degrade him and the Crown by proxy for even trying such a crass tactic. You will lose the trial and irreparably damage the perception that the courts possess legitimate authority. It is too much of a risk!"

Before Art could reply, Beaumarchais had stepped out into the center of the room, a sour, half-aggrieved smile on his face. "You are at your most logical, as ever, Minister," the playwright told him. "And, for just that reason, dead wrong in the nature of the peril."

He glanced at Art, his face changing from humor back into grave seriousness. "The Minister is afraid of a legal crisis; I am afraid of a theatrical one. The Minister is afraid the judges will deny the credibility of the huntsman's testimony. I am afraid they will accept it, just in time to see him publicly vivisected by Vergennes's lawyers."

Beaumarchais began pacing up and down, his mind seeing not a court but a stage. "Look at the theater, Your Majesty! The prosecutor brings in this naive, simple-minded old man on the witness stand. He spins his rural emotional story. It is effective. The people are moved. Then rises the defense. A smooth gentleman as venomous as a viper, proficient in monologue and scorn. He will not attack the old man's integrity; he will crumple his will. He will misquote his statements, perplex him with nonsense questions as to times and dates and the exact position of the sun. He will mock at his rural origins, his unsophisticated manner of speaking. He will lead the impoverished man to bemoan in frustration. The lawyer will make our protagonist a pitiful, stumble-footed old imbecile incapable of remembering his own name, let alone the King's intentions a decade ago. The judges will have no occasion to discredit his testimony; the defense will discredit it in the teeth of the very magistrates, and we will look callous operators for having brought in a raving servitor into a business beyond his comprehension."

These two scenarios of destruction hung before our eyes: Necker's juridical apocalypse and the theatrical tragedy of Beaumarchais. Both convinced us completely.

Art listened to them both, nodding slowly. He understood their fears because he shared them. He summoned the HUD, needing to see the raw data, the probabilities of this insane gamble.

DECISION PROMPT: Call Jean-Pierre Dubois as a witness in the trial of the Baron de Clugny.

RISK LEVEL: EXTREME.

POTENTIAL OUTCOMES (PROBABILITY):

CATASTROPHIC FAILURE (45%): Witness is discredited; Baron is acquitted. Public Trust plummets. Legal authority of the Crown is shattered. Old Guard Faction: POWER SURGE.

PARTIAL FAILURE (20%): Witness testimony is dismissed on a technicality. Trial ends in ambiguity. Public Perception: CONFUSED. Stalemate.

PARTIAL SUCCESS (25%): Witness testimony casts significant doubt, but is not enough for a conviction. Baron is acquitted, but his reputation is ruined. Old Guard Faction: WEAKENED.

TOTAL VICTORY (10%): Witness is believed. Baron is convicted. Public Trust soars. The Old Guard's power is crippled. A new legal precedent is set.

The numbers were horrifying. A forty-five percent chance of catastrophic failure. Only a one-in-ten shot at the total victory he needed. Any rational man, any sensible king, would back down. But Art's entire reign was a gamble against impossible odds. He had to trust his gut.

"You both are right," said Art, shutting up his two counselors. "The hazards are tremendous. But both of you are missing the purpose of the exercise."

He gazed at Beaumarchais. "This has ceased to be a question of the Baron's guilt or innocence. This is now a trial for the soul of France. That is the play we are putting on. On the stage of that courtroom, in full view of all Paris and the whole kingdom, we will set the simple, unadorned word of a workman who faithfully served his king for forty years. And we will set it in the balance against the false oath of a decadent aristocrat who robbed the public coffers in order to discharge his gaming debts."

He spoke to Necker. "We shall have the judges—and through the judges the entire France—resolve. We shall have them face the question: Is more valuable in our kingdom the oath of a man of honor who has nothing? Or a simple truth from a truthful man who has nothing more? We shall have them choose between the world the way it is and the world the way it ought to be."

He looked back at his playwright. "It is the central theme of your Figaro, Monsieur, brought to life in a court of law. It's the most important role I will ever cast."

A slow smile crept over Beaumarchais's face as he understood the raw, reckless magnitude of Art's plan. He was not just attempting to win a trial; he was attempting to redefine the nation's code of morals in public.

The mood in the room changed from despondency to a sort of scared, high-stakes determination. The remainder of the night was dedicated to rehearsals for the impending battle. Art's small group of loyalist lawyers practiced with the grizzled old huntsman, Jean-Pierre. The procedure was tense with difficulty. They did not attempt to mentor him or insert words into his lips; that would kill him. Rather, they attempted to steel him for the barrage to come. They subjected him to harsh, patronizing questions, prefacing the defense attacks they would bring.

Art sat for an hour in the shadows of the room and observed the old man's pride, his simple frankness, but his fear and confusion too. Jean-Pierre was a forest-and-field man, not a man of this world of word games and intellectual sadism. A great pang of guilt pierced Art. He was putting this good simple man into the shark tank and staking the whole fate of his kingdom, the fate of a nation, on the strong but weakened shoulders of a retired valet. It was the most dangerous, the most callous, the most imperative wager he had ever placed.