Although the Viper is my invention, most of the principal characters in this novel lived, and the details of the Christmas Eve Plot are as reported. Had it not been for an unsatisfactory scarf and a drunken coachman, there might never have been an Emperor Napoleon or an Empress Josephine. If you think that’s not such a bad thing, imagine how history would have gone if any of the governments that preceded theirs had survived.
The English, whom I admire, are nevertheless guilty of recreating the myth of St. George, holding out virtually alone against the dragon Bonaparte. The reality is far less heroic. They acted, first, to prevent the contagion of Republicanism from reaching Britain, and second, to secure their economic and political interests on the European Continent—but seldom in direct conflict with the armies of France.
With the exceptions of Lord Nelson’s navy and the Duke of Wellington’s Iberian campaign, England was idle for most of the Napoleonic period, letting its allies take beating after beating and substituting its treasury for cannon, bankrolling plots by others against the government in Paris. I gave the Cutthroat Club a name; however, the cabal existed, comprised of a mad king, a corrupt Parliament, and nobles with holdings on the Continent. Its sole aim was to reverse the will of the French people and enslave them once again to the Bourbon Court, preferably shedding everyone’s blood but its own in the process.
No one could invent a Joseph Fouché. Napoleon’s Minister of Police was J. Edgar Hoover, Heinrich Himmler, and the KGB rolled into one, ruthlessly wielding limitless power over his fellow citizens. He schemed, first, with the Bourbons, then with the Revolutionary Committee of Public Safety, then the Directorate, then the Consulate, then the Empire, and with the Bourbons again after the Restoration.
He’s always been with us in some form. You see him whispering in the ears of chancellors, premiers, ayatollahs, and presidents. Today, eyeglasses and a business suit—and the cooperation of a self-serving press—make him seem ordinary and harmless, but he’s responsible for much of the world’s evil. Forget Waterloo: Allowing this creature to remain in power as long as he did was the Corsican’s biggest mistake.
Police Prefect Nicolas Dubois was a competent administrator, in charge of Paris’ first organized police force. He was also a brilliant detective. Despite ridicule from above and below, his idea to reassemble the pieces of the cart and mare killed on 4 Nivose provided the first break in the investigation, which Dubois continued to pursue despite jealous lack of cooperation on the part of the Police Ministry under Fouché. It’s a matter of the ups and downs of changing government that both men were eventually dismissed from office at the same time.
The direct results of what began with the Christmas Eve Plot are known to history.
On the night of March 14, 1804, three brigades of police and three hundred dragoons crossed the Rhine, arrested Louis Antoine, the Duc d’Enghien, a member of the Royal House of Bourbon, and brought him back to France. He was charged with conspiring against the Republic with Georges Cadoudal and others in order to place himself on the French throne. Under questioning, the Duke confessed that the British Parliament paid him 4,200 guineas a year for his cooperation in bringing down the Consulate. Following a military trial, Bonaparte signed an order of condemnation and the Duke was executed by firing squad.
Two months later, in an effort to provide a line of succession and discourage further attempts on the First Consul’s life, the Republican Senate declared Napoleon Bonaparte Emperor of the French. The Royalists had succeeded in restoring the monarchy; ironically, the monarch was the very man they’d schemed to destroy.
The Republic was dead. Vive la République!
—Loren D. Estleman