I Am the Crown Prince in France

Chapter 243 You are who you are, and you are also if you are not

The sound of gunfire and the panicked shouts of the servants kept scratching the Marquis of Saint-Villan's nerves.

The servant was helping him put on his military uniform, and he yelled at the disgraced Major Brune: "You said that's Berthier's army?"

The latter shouted loudly: "It's their flag... and the Paris Police Academy..."

Not because he was confident, but because if he didn't shout, his voice would be muffled by the gunfire.

"Is your head broken?" The Marquis of Saint-Villan glared at him with a dark face, grabbed the telescope in the attendant's hand, and walked toward the roof with a curse, "So who is attacking me now? Berthier's Are those three regiments still some ridiculous police force?”

He stepped onto the roof and immediately saw black smoke billowing everywhere around the manor, and the sound of gunshots and bugles became clearer. It was obvious that a fierce battle was going on.

"Who is it?" Marquis Saint-Villan opened his telescope and saw a line of infantry four to five hundred meters wide approaching towards this direction.

The soldiers lined up in an orderly manner, shooting extremely skillfully while marching, and their pace was steady. The shooting from their own side seemed not to affect them at all.

At the same time, there were several companies of skirmishers on the opposite side of the line, taking advantage of the terrain to move forward in a roundabout way, and soon reached some houses on the periphery of the manor.

The corners of his eyes twitched involuntarily.

The soldiers on his side were defending the building, but they were obviously at a disadvantage in the exchange of fire. Two houses in very critical locations to the south have been lost.

Soon the skirmishers planted flags on the rooftops and began firing down the garrison lines.

When those flags were blown by the wind, the Marquis de Saint-Viran's expression instantly seemed as if he had seen a ghost - those were indeed the flags of the Paris Police Academy! Major Brune wasn't lying.

Then he saw the flag of Berthier's Legion among the drifting smoke.

He immediately thought that the only one who could mobilize these two forces at the same time was the royal family. So, this is the royal family’s troops attacking themselves?

Attack the elite Montcalm Legion with Berthier's three regiments and reserve police? !

He tried to dispel the sense of absurdity in his heart, and then frowned deeply. The royal family's behavior at this time was tantamount to provoking a full-scale civil war-the military would never be indifferent to today's events!

Is the Austrian cousin crazy?

Just when his mind was filled with distracting thoughts, a muffled sound came from below the villa, and the entire building shook violently, causing him to stumble one after another.

The attendant hurriedly stepped forward to support him and said hurriedly: "General, the house has been hit by a cannon. Please get out of here quickly!"

After the Marquis Saint-Villan realized what happened, his pupils suddenly shrank. This manor occupies a huge area, with a length and width of more than 4 kilometers. Cannons cannot hit this place from the outside of the manor.

And the fact that the cannonball can hit this house means that the enemy is approaching within six to seven hundred steps!

He pushed the attendant away and looked down at the villa. Sure enough, he saw more than a hundred enemy soldiers on the west side shooting at each other with his own bodyguards.

The door to the roof was pushed open. The army staff officer stumbled in and shouted: "General, Lieutenant Colonel Berni surrendered to the enemy. The defense line on the west side has been lost..."

"I saw it." The Marquis de Saint-Villan interrupted him with a gloomy expression. He doesn't even have a reserve team, so what can he use to plug the gap in the defense?

He saw more reserve policemen rushing up from the west, and his own guards had been pressed to the flower bed in front of the villa by heavy fire.

After a moment, he let out a long sigh, turned to his staff and said, "Send an order for the whole army to stop resisting."

"Yes...general."

40 minutes later.

In the hunting lounge on the east side of the manor, the Marquis of Saint-Villan glanced sideways at the young man in cavalry uniform in front of him, and said in a cold voice: "His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, I need you to explain this attack!"

He had no fear for his own safety. In fact, he thinks the royal family is in trouble, big trouble at that.

"Ah? Explanation?" Joseph smiled, "There was a rebellion in the Montcalm Legion, and my soldiers heroically crushed the rebellion."

The Marquis of Saint-Villan glared at him angrily and said, "What kind of rebellion? You are framing this!"

Joseph interrupted: "No, hundreds of reporters saw this. I believe it will be published tonight."

"Hmph, don't you realize that you are provoking a civil war!" The Marquis of Saint-Villan still raised his head, "The king is persecuting his army. Do you think the other generals will sit back and watch?"

"It's just counterinsurgency, they won't have any objections."

"Who do you think you can fool with such a trick?!"

Joseph waved his hand: "Whether you rebel or not does not depend on what actually happened, but on whether the top military officials accept the conclusion that you rebelled.

"Oh, I believe that the shrewd generals can guess what happened here, but they will only choose to believe that you rebelled.

“Because it cuts your situation off from theirs.”

"Without the support of riots in various provinces and without reasonable excuses, the military will not openly be enemies of the royal family." Joseph gestured toward the battlefield outside the window, "Your army did not even last two hours, which makes it even more difficult. It made them realize the fighting power of the royal family.

"Now you are the rebels and they are not. The Crown wants to punish the rebels and they are safe."

"Do you think, in this case, they would pull you back into the 'non-rebel' camp and have to side with you?"

The Marquis of Saint-Villan's face suddenly turned pale.

He knew that the Crown Prince was right. As long as other military bosses admitted that they were rebels, they did not need to risk becoming enemies of the royal family.

As for the facts? No one cares about the facts.

Especially when newspapers drive public opinion, they will just follow the trend...

The Marquis of Saint-Villan swallowed hard and looked at Joseph nervously: "You, what do you want?"

Joseph stepped forward to help him dust off the dust on his clothes caused by the shelling: "Don't worry, if you cooperate with me, expose your conspiracy and testify against some people, then you can be exiled to the Besançon area, and you can even keep part of it." property.

“Or you choose to keep certain people’s secrets and then exile your family to the Seychelles.”

He knew that according to traditional French habits, even if the Marquis of Saint-Viran rebelled, he would be sentenced to exile at most. You know, the Prince of Condé, the "Grand Condé", united with Spain twice to launch rebellions, which made Louis XIV afraid to return to Paris. In the end, he ended up in exile, and even returned to France a few years later.

The Marquis of Saint-Villan nodded almost without hesitation: "Your Highness, please allow me to pledge my allegiance to His Majesty the King again! Oh, all this is instigated by the Duke of Orleans! Just two months ago, he told us that there would be a famine. …”