A frail old man, dressed in a thin linen coat, struggled to the front of the grain warehouse, pulling along a skinny child of about ten years old. Bowing his head and clutching his chest, he pleaded, “Sir, kind sir! Bread in the city is selling for 22 sous a pound—we simply can’t afford it… Please have mercy and give us some grain! Otherwise, we really won’t survive!”

Normally, bread in Nice cost no more than 10 sous per pound. For the city’s poor residents, who scrimped and saved every sou, this meant they’d been unable to buy food for over half a month.

Around them, voices began to rise in desperation:

“Please, give us grain at a fair price! The King said so in his proclamation…”

“My child has only eaten once in the last two days—please, I beg you!”

“Sir, most of the bakeries in the city have run out of flour; everyone is counting on the reserve grain…”

“For the love of God, have pity on us…”

The grain warehouse official could only offer feeble excuses, unable to meet the crowd’s demands.

In the crowd, a man with three moles on his face smirked and signaled to the twenty or so men around him. The scarred man leading them immediately rushed toward the warehouse guards, shouting, “We can’t starve—let’s get the grain ourselves!”

His accomplices quickly joined in:

“We have a right to bread!”

“That’s right, we’re only taking food for our families and children—God will forgive us!”

“Come on, let’s do this!”

The starving crowd hesitated, fearful of advancing.

But the scarred man boldly smashed open the warehouse gate. A guard aimed his gun at him, shouting, “Get back!”

Nearby, someone in the crowd yelled, “Look! These brutal guards are going to shoot us!”

The scarred man took advantage of the guard’s momentary hesitation to snatch his gun. The other guards, caught off guard by how quickly things escalated, hesitated just long enough to be surrounded by the scarred man’s twenty-odd accomplices.

Seeing the scarred man charge into the warehouse, some braver members of the crowd followed, which spurred even more people to rush inside.

In just over ten minutes, nearly a thousand starving people had flooded into the grain warehouse. The supervising official, seeing the guards beaten and overwhelmed, hid in his office, too afraid to come out.

Before long, the crowd inside the warehouse began filling bags with wheat. Those who didn’t have bags stripped off their coats, despite the cold, to carry as much grain as they could.

Within an hour, more than 20,000 pounds of wheat had been taken from the warehouse.

Most of the starving people left behind payments according to the “People’s Tax”—a customary 2 sous and 6 deniers per pound, a traditional belief in France that paying what one deems fair makes it a purchase rather than theft.

After the crowd dispersed, the warehouse supervisor, seeing the empty storage, felt a chill run down his spine.

This warehouse had been intended to supply Nice with a week’s worth of grain, but now it was completely empty. This meant that soon, all the bakeries and grain shops in the city would have to close…

The next day, in a wooden house on the outskirts of Nice, the man with three moles counted out over eighty silver coins and handed them to the scarred man.

The scarred man, the leader of Nice’s largest gang, the “Howell” gang, quickly nodded and flattered him before distributing the money to his followers.

The “three moles” man was a spy employed by the Duke of Orléans. Following the Duke’s orders, he had arrived in Nice a month earlier, hiring the Howell gang members for the exorbitant rate of 4 livres per person per day to help incite riots.

After careful planning, their actions the previous day had been a great success.

Having handed out the “wages,” the “three moles” man led the gang members back to the grain warehouse to wait.

As expected, soon after, some citizens who had heard about the grain theft came to try their luck, only to find the warehouse completely empty.

The scarred man’s crew then approached them, spreading the word that later that afternoon, people would be “collecting” the remaining grain from the city’s shops and bakeries.

By 3 PM, the atmosphere in Nice was tense and electric, as if a storm were about to break.

With the scarred man leading the charge into the city’s largest bakery, the entire city descended into chaos—people who had been hungry for too long, those anxious about food supplies, all began smashing open the doors of grain shops and bakeries, taking whatever they could.

At first, people followed the “People’s Tax” custom, but as the looting continued, it devolved into pure theft.

By evening, the city’s entire bread supply system had collapsed.

Those who hadn’t managed to grab any grain were destined to find nothing but empty shelves the next morning. These unfortunate souls made up the majority of the city’s population.

The next day, the shattered remains of the “Markman” bakery were surrounded by a crowd of desperate citizens—the owner and bakers had long since fled, and there was nothing left inside. Despite knowing this, people still lingered out of habit.

In their moment of despair, the scarred man appeared with a thousand followers, marching through the streets. From the crowd came cries:

“The Viscount Sliert’s estate has plenty of grain. Let’s go ask him for some food!”

“If you don’t want to starve, come with us!”

“There’s no food left in the city—don’t hesitate!”

The people outside the bakery hesitated only for a moment before joining the march to Viscount Sliert’s estate.

Some recalled that the Viscount was known to be a decent man, but in such times, people were like panicked sheep, blindly following the leader without thinking.

By noon, Viscount Sliert’s mansion had been thoroughly looted. Following orders from his “employer,” the scarred man then led the hungry mob toward Baron Abella’s estate.

…

At the same time, in the center of Montpellier, another spy sent by the Duke of Orléans led a core group of dozens of gang members, along with large crowds of citizens, in looting food stores across the city.

When one of the gang leaders suggested to the mob that they should raid a noble’s house in the southern part of the city, someone in the crowd shouted, “Why don’t we go to the Marquis of Sarlier’s estate? His manor is huge—there’s bound to be plenty of food…”

But before he could finish, someone kicked him from behind, and two gang members “accidentally” tripped him.

The Marquis of Sarlier was an ally of the Duke of Orléans, so they had to ensure the fire didn’t reach him. In fact, the Montcalm regiment, led by the Marquis of Saint-Véran, was currently stationed at his estate, with over 17,000 men. Even if the mob went there, they would certainly be turned away.

This little episode quickly passed, and the mob began marching toward the southern part of the city.

Within just a few days, the starving mob had swept through most of Montpellier, while the Marquis of Saint-Véran, responsible for maintaining order, merely watched as the chaos spread…

Because the strategic grain reserves had been deliberately and maliciously mismanaged, the reserves in the entire southern and central regions of France were quickly depleted.

Following Nice and Montpellier, grain shortages began to appear in other regions, and the spies sent by the Duke of Orléans began to stir up unrest as well.

However, due to the slow and inefficient communication of the era, news had not yet reached Versailles.

…

Paris.

Sorel took advantage of a moment when two guards lowered their heads to light their cigarettes and slipped into the west side corridor on the second floor of the Palais-Royal.

Pressing her back against a statue, she took a deep breath and looked toward the door of the document room not far away, feeling a surge of relief: She had finally managed to sneak in!

Since the “prison break” that night, she and her Brotherhood companions had divided their tasks, with each assigned to investigate a different duke under suspicion. Sorel had chosen to focus on the Duke of Orléans.

She had initially heard that the Duke had recently gone on a trip to the south, thinking it was a perfect opportunity to find some incriminating evidence. However, to her surprise, the security at the Palais-Royal was extraordinarily tight—tighter even than at the Bastille!

She had made several attempts, only to find herself stuck on the outskirts each time. Today, she had finally caught the guards off guard, allowing her to slip into the document room.

After a patrol passed by, she quietly moved to the door of the document room. She pressed a listening device to the door for a few moments and, hearing nothing inside, skillfully picked the lock.

She thought to herself, “This is much easier than picking the locks at the Bastille,” as she cautiously pushed the door open and slipped inside, carefully closing the door behind her.

However, when she turned her gaze to the rows of shelves, she froze—there was nothing on them!

These shelves were supposed to be filled with neatly organized documents, arranged by time and type.

Pulling out her sword, she quickly searched the room, checking for any ambushes. Finding none, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Confused, Sorel left the document room and, after much effort, sneaked into the Duke of Orléans’s study. She found that, while the furnishings were as usual, there wasn’t a single piece of paper left—not even in the open safe, which was completely empty.

She then searched the Duke’s bedroom, conference room, and other areas, but found no documents or files of any kind.

Bewildered, she wondered why the Duke of Orléans would go on a trip without his guards, but take all his documents with him.

Suddenly, her pupils dilated as a thought struck her: The Duke of Orléans had fled out of guilt! The duke the Malet brothers mentioned might actually be him!

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that her theory was correct. She immediately left the Palais-Royal and hurried to the Prince’s office.

On the second floor of the Tuileries Palace, a drowsy Émond glanced at the clock on the desk—it was ten minutes past midnight.

He was about to send the girl away, telling her to come back tomorrow, when he remembered the last time the Prince had directly summoned her into his office.

He looked at Sorel’s curvy waist and long, slender legs, suddenly understanding why she had come so late. It must have been the agreed-upon time.

Joseph was woken from his sleep and looked grumpily at Émond, frowning. “Sorel? Do you know what time it is?”

But since he was already awake, he groggily waved his hand and said, “Since she says it’s urgent… Alright, show her to the reception room.”

A moment later, wearing his robe, Joseph motioned for Sorel to sit on the couch opposite him. Yawning, he asked, “What’s so urgent that you had to come at this hour?”

Sorel nodded vigorously, her face serious. “Your Highness, I’ve found out who’s behind the Malet brothers!”

“Oh?” Joseph instantly perked up. “Please, tell me everything.”

Sorel then recounted how she and her Brotherhood companions had gone to the Bastille to extract a confession and how the Malet brothers had let slip that their boss was a duke.

“A duke?” Joseph was now fully awake. Pointing at Sorel, he sternly reprimanded her, “You have some nerve—breaking into a prison like that. Aren’t you afraid I’ll lock you up too?”

“It was all for justice…” Sorel puffed out her chest, then sneaked a glance at the prince, who was frowning at her. Swallowing hard, she whispered, “Your Highness, you wouldn’t really arrest me, would you?”

Joseph waved her off. “Just tell me what you found.”

“Oh, okay.” Sorel quickly continued, “I searched the Duke of Orléans’s residence and found that all the documents in the Palais-Royal had disappeared…”

As she finished, Joseph’s face turned grim.

This time of year, nobles often traveled south to escape the cold, so the Duke of Orléans’s trip wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows. But he hadn’t expected the Duke to take all his important documents with him—this was definitely more than just a vacation.

However, Joseph didn’t think it was simply “fleeing out of guilt”—burning a small noble to death wouldn’t bother someone of the Duke’s status, especially since he hadn’t done it himself. The Duke wouldn’t care.

Something much bigger was going on here.

Soon, Fouché was also dragged out of bed and, together with the Prince, rushed to the Bastille to interrogate the Malet brothers.

With the crucial clue of the Duke of Orléans, the experienced interrogators from the intelligence agency quickly extracted a full confession from the two brothers.

Joseph frowned as he listened to Fouché’s report, his brow furrowing deeper. “But why would the Duke of Orléans go to such lengths to frame Monnot?”

He looked at the flickering candle on the wall, pondering. “If the Duke of Orléans is planning something big and Monnot is a key part of it, then it all makes sense…”

Suddenly, he turned to Fouché and ordered, “Quick! Send men to Monnot’s house!”

But when the intelligence agency’s men reached Monnot’s residence in Versailles, there was no sign of him.

According to Monnot’s servants, he had left for the south with his son on the same day as Sorel’s prison break, saying they were going to “soak up the sun.”

“Another trip south?” Joseph ordered Fouché with a stern face, “Immediately check who else has recently gone on vacation.”

“Yes, Your Highness!”

Joseph tried to piece together what the Duke of Orléans might be planning but couldn’t figure it out, so he decided to start with the clues he had.

He summoned the key officials of the Interior Department, ordering them to gather all the orders Monnot had signed recently.

Since most nobles lived in Versailles and these officials were mostly nobles, it didn’t take long to gather them.

By the time the first light of dawn shone into Versailles, a thick stack of documents had been piled in front of Joseph.

“Tell me the key points,” Joseph instructed the bleary-eyed assistant to the Minister of the Interior.

The assistant hesitated before saying, “Your Highness, the Marquis Monnot hasn’t done anything significant in the past two months, except… he seems to have been particularly focused on grain allocation.”

Managing grain transportation and distribution was normally the job of lower-level officials. It was unusual for the Minister of the Interior to personally involve himself in such mundane tasks.

Joseph squinted and asked for all of Monnot’s grain allocation orders to be brought to him.

But when Joseph saw the dozens of chaotic and haphazardly issued orders, rage instantly boiled up inside him.

That bastard Orléans—he’s trying to drag all of France into the abyss! (End of Chapter)

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Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep