The Covert Option

As a result of the vituperative war council, Art consigned his ministers to their business and locked himself in his study. For him, his head was a battle scene for the three men who had just withdrawn. Vergennes's call for great vengeance struggled against Necker's terrible specter of bankruptcy, and Lafayette's flag of romantic freedom waved between them like a battle standard. No comfort brought him the grotesque chances of the HUD, only a clearer picture of the two chasms which yawned on either hand of him.

He paced the room, the geopolitical map of the world laid out upon a vast table, a subdued testament to the magnitude of the problem. Open war was suicide. He wasn't confusing himself on that point. Necker was right. An all-out war with the Royal Navy would bleed finances at a pace that would make the Queen's fashion appropriation allotment a virtual rounding error. It would mean new, burdensome levies on a population still simmering with resentment. It would be like pouring oil on a fire. Bankruptcy would beget chaos, and chaos would beget the guillotine. That path was closed.

But absolute neutrality was its own lethal poison, only a slower-working one. Standing aside to allow Britain to suppress the American revolution would be signing France's death sentence for the next century. A victorious, burden-free Britain, rich in colonial spoils and an undiminished navy, would devote its entire, malignant energy to its ancient foe. France would be trapped, blockaded, and economically throttled into a second-class status. It was a slow death from sword-thrusts versus a slow strangling.

Something else would have to be done. Another way; another route.

His mind, a mind of a man of the 21st century, began to work, sifting historical equivalents he knew from a future no one else could imagine. He thought about the Cold War, of proxy wars in distant, dusty nations. He thought about clandestine operations, of deniability, of arming insurgencies to bleed a superpower without ever firing a gun in outright combat. Fixing the problem wasn't to fight Britain's war. Fixing the problem was to make Britain's war unwinnable for them.

He needed a man who was familiar with shadows and plots, a man who understood a flair for the theatrics of a masterpiece hoax. He summoned him in stealth. An hour later, Beaumarchais was ushered into the study.

The King sat with his eyes on a map of North America. "Monsieur Beaumarchais," he began without preamble, "I am in a play which is not to my liking, with two possible endings, both of which are tragic. I wish to compose a third act."

Beaumarchais, who lived for plot intricacy himself, leaned forward, captivated instantly. "A third act, Your Majesty?"

"Open war with England is financial suicide," stated Art, his finger tracing the outline of the Atlantic coast. "Allowing them to crush this revolution and emerge all the stronger is strategic suicide. We must have a way of keeping the Americans hopeful enough to remain at war. We must make this conflict as prolonged, as bloody, as expensive for the Brits as humanly possible. We don't have to defeat for the Americans, Monsieur. We simply must ensure that the Brits lose for them."

Beaumarchais's eyes gleamed as he recognized the lovely, chill calculus of plot. "A proxy war," he whistled, not having ever heard the phrase but recognizing instantly what it implied. "We strike the lion with a thousand stings, but our hands are clean."

"Exactly," replied Art. "But to have clean hands, we need a credible fiction. We need deniability. We cannot transport them weapons from the Royal arsenals. But what if a private merchant, a man of commerce who is sympathetic to the cause of freedom, should sell them weapons?"

He laid out his plan that had been taking shape in his mind. They would create a shell company, a fictional trading entity. It would be privately funded with a grant from the French Crown, to be eventually topped up with Spain. Its official commerce would be with the West Indies. Its actual business would be to purchase excess munitions—muskets, cannons, gunpowder, uniforms—out of the royal arsenals at deep discounts from market value and reselling to the American colonies on a very liberal line of credits. A line of credits that would very likely never be paid back.

"It gives us a perfect defense," Art declared, finding his stride. "If the British ambassador calls on me to protest, I will be deeply indignant and shocked. I will remind him that France is a neutral country. I will regret having no say in the private business operations of all my subjects. Pure free enterprise!"

Beaumarchais slapped his hands together in appreciation. He was not just a playwright, of course; he'd been a spy, a gun-runner, man of a dozen of different plots. And this was the largest, most audacious production he'd ever been given a spot in. There was a certain appeal of its sheer theatrics that resonated directly with his very being.

"It is genius, Your Majesty! A play for the world stage!" he exclaimed. "But a company of this sort would need a director, a man of business to be its face to the public. A man of discretion and... flair." He regarded Art importantly.

"Maybe you have a particular person in mind yourself?" he asked with a faint smile.

"Ah!" cried Beaumarchais. "And this establishment must have a name. Not French, that would be too obvious. Something exotic, perhaps Spanish, in order to instill an atmosphere of additional confusion." He assumed a dramatic pose. "And its name shall be... Roderigue Hortalez and Company!"

The plan was formulated. The final piece was to get Necker to an agreement. Art requested that he summon the finance minister, in preparation for a strenuous fight. He understood he could not take this as a means to war, but as a means to save.

The moment Necker entered pale and terrified, Art seated him and spoke with him not as a monarch, but as a fellow man of finance.

"Minister," declared Art, gesturing towards a page of paper on which he had written some vital figures. "Let us be done with ideals and glory once. Let us prepare a simple risk-assessment. The costs of a full-scale war with Britain, as you so correctly reminded us, would be well-nigh two billion livres, at a minimum. An expenditure which would ruin us."

He emphatically nodded.

"Now," continued Art, "imagine a second proposition. An investment. Let us say an initial payment of a million livres, done privately from a commercial business to furnish supplies to the revolutionaries in America." He slid the parchment across the desk. "With this cost—less than it would cost to build and man a new ship-of-the-line—we can subsidize their revolution. We can buy time for the British army for decades. We can extract hundreds of millions of pounds from them to extend their war effort. Our one-million-livre expenditure will pay its own way in terms of economic and military attrition of our paramount global rival, paid for at a ninety-nine percent discount. It is the ultimate of brutally efficient geopolitical bargains in French history."

He scanned the proposal. He was a man who did not like to take chances, who loathed any deal that would amount to a war. But he was a banker who could not help but be swayed by the harsh, vicious arithmetic of the numbers. He was presented with a choice. Either a definite fiscal Armageddon. Or a high-risk, high-reward bet that, palatable as neither it nor its concomitant risks were, was irrevocably a more penny-pinching fiscal gamble. To take a million to pay your opponent a hundred million was a swap that struck a responsive Swiss chord.

"It is a perilous business, Your Majesty," announced Necker finally, his voice grave. "A misstep, a ship seized, and we are in the very war that we hope to prevent,"

"Every business involves risk, Minister," replied Art. "But this is a risk we can afford to take."

Finally, after a lengthy pause, Necker gave a stiff, unwilling nod. "I will be able to disburse monies from a discretionary account. They would be impossible to trace."

The stealthy passage was officially a go. Art had paved a way between his aggressive advisors and made a new passage, a third act to secrecy for the unfolding of the world's drama.