January 1807.
Paris.
The new year came not with triumph, but with a long, cold sigh.
Snow blanketed the streets in dirty grey drifts.
The Seine moved sluggishly under a skin of ice.
And in the once-bustling marketplaces, the carts stood half-empty, their owners shouting hoarsely into the biting wind, trying to sell what little remained.
Bread cost twice what it had a month ago.
Meat was a rumor.
Oil and wood — luxuries only the rich could still afford.
And as hunger gnawed at the bellies of Paris, something else began to grow alongside it — something sharper than desperation.
Anger.
It hummed through the narrow alleys and smoke-choked taverns.
It flickered in glances exchanged across breadlines.
It whispered from hand to hand in the form of crude pamphlets printed in secret:
> "The Emperor dines on gold.
The people dine on promises."
Inside a dim wine cellar off the Rue Saint-Honoré, a different gathering took place — smaller, quieter, and far more dangerous.
Not common workers this time.
Men in finer coats, with clean hands but hard eyes.
Smugglers.
Disgraced officials.
Merchant captains ruined by the Continental Blockade.
At the center of the rough table sat a man known only as "Le Vieux" — The Old One — though he was no older than fifty.
His hair was silver from stress, not years.
He tapped a gloved finger against the table as the others muttered updates:
Grain shortages in Normandy.
Salt riots in Marseille.
Armed bands forming in the countryside.
"And Paris?" he asked, voice like dry paper.
A man with ink-stained fingers leaned forward.
"Our presses work day and night," he said. "The pamphlets spread faster than they can burn them.
Even in the garrisons... some of the soldiers grumble."
Le Vieux nodded slowly.
He withdrew a letter from inside his coat, placing it carefully on the table.
The wax seal bore no crest — only a simple X.
An English seal.
No one touched it, but all eyes followed his hand.
"The funds are secure," he said. "The arms will arrive within the month."
A murmur swept the room — part fear, part elation.
Outside, Paris groaned under its own weight.
Inside, the first seeds of true insurrection were being watered with foreign gold.
Not yet an uprising.
Not yet.
But the firewood was being stacked.
The flint readied.
And when the spark came, it would not be a riot.
It would be a storm.
---
At the same hour, far from the squalid cellars, within the gilded walls of the Tuileries Palace, Napoleon's ministers huddled in urgent session.
The great marble corridors of power, once filled with confident strides and booming proclamations, had grown tight with whispers and quick, nervous glances.
In the Emperor's private council chamber, lit only by a few sparse candelabras, the atmosphere was brittle, like a blade stretched too thin.
At the head of the polished table, Minister Gaudin unfurled a new set of reports, his hand trembling slightly despite his best efforts at composure.
He did not need to speak.
The numbers spoke for themselves:
Treasury reserves dwindling below sustainable levels.
Loans refused or stalled across half the major banking houses.
Smuggling bleeding through the blockades at an unstoppable rate.
Napoleon was not present.
He was still in Berlin, orchestrating new victories — blind, perhaps willingly, to the crumbling foundation under his feet.
In his absence, the ministers turned on one another.
Fouché, cold and unreadable, sat with his hands folded, saying nothing.
Talleyrand, lounging with the casual arrogance of a man who survived every regime by switching sides at the precise moment necessary, tapped his cane idly against the floor.
"If we delay the soldiers' pay any longer," Gaudin said, clearing his throat, "we risk open mutiny."
"Then pay them in promises," Fouché murmured.
A few ministers chuckled nervously.
Others stiffened.
"You joke," said the Minister of War, voice sharp, "but we are inches from disaster."
"Better inches from disaster than under the heel of London," Talleyrand said, lifting his gaze at last.
"Or would you have us grovel before Castlereagh?"
The room bristled.
No one dared admit it aloud, but everyone knew the truth:
Britain's invisible hand was already choking France — not on the battlefield, but in the counting houses and marketplaces.
Every loaf of bread too dear, every merchant ruined, every conscript unpaid — it was London's victory written in invisible ink across Paris's suffering.
Gaudin's voice shook with the strain of honesty.
"If we cannot secure new revenue..."
He hesitated.
"Then we must begin to consider... requisitions."
The word hung in the air like a loaded pistol.
Requisition.
A polite word for legalized theft.
Strip the nobles of their silver.
Strip the merchants of their grain.
Strip the churches of their gold.
An act of desperation.
An act that would turn loyal citizens into enemies overnight.
But no one offered an alternative.
The ministers looked at one another — tired, grey, afraid.
The Emperor's victories were brilliant.
Magnificent.
But back home, in the heart of France, the empire he fought to expand was beginning to devour itself.
And outside, beneath the frozen stars, Paris whispered its hunger into the dark.
---
The next morning, before the city fully woke, a line of black-draped carriages rolled out from the Ministry of Finance, each guarded by a heavy escort of grim-faced soldiers.
They fanned out across Paris, knocking on doors with the authority of imperial decrees.
In the wealthy districts of Saint-Germain and the Marais, the nobility who had once toasted Napoleon's triumphs found their salons invaded by clerks and officers bearing cold demands:
Inventories of jewelry.
Ledgers of unpaid taxes.
Tallies of "voluntary contributions to the glory of the Empire."
There was no trial.
No negotiation.
Gilded heirlooms were weighed on traveling scales.
Candelabras were dismantled.
Portraits in heavy gold frames were stripped from walls and bundled into wagons.
"Temporary requisition for national security," the clerks recited, dead-eyed.
Some nobles protested.
Some wept.
A few, wiser than the rest, handed over their treasures in silence, knowing that defiance would bring soldiers, and soldiers would bring ruin.
At a merchant's house near Place Vendôme, a different scene unfolded.
The owner — a robust man with the look of comfortable power — refused to open his doors.
By midday, his home was broken into.
His family wept as their silver was hauled into the streets under the indifferent eyes of the soldiers.
Onlookers watched from windows and alleys, silent and grim.
They saw the once-untouchable humiliated.
They saw that wealth was no shield anymore.
In the artisan quarters, the blow fell even harsher.
Workshops were stripped of copper, of brass, of any material that could be melted into coin or cannon.
The blacksmiths cursed behind clenched teeth.
The cobblers muttered among themselves.
The weavers quietly passed around tattered pamphlets blaming the Empire for their ruin.
That night, Paris burned with a different fire — not of rebellion yet, but of humiliation and rage.
In the dark, unseen corners of the Faubourgs, men sharpened old blades, dusted off pistols hidden since the Revolution.
In whispered gatherings, plans began to take shape:
Stop the grain wagons.
Cut the telegraph lines.
Seize the government granaries.
It would not happen tomorrow.
Perhaps not even next month.
But the idea — the possibility — had entered their blood like a fever.
Meanwhile, in Berlin, Napoleon penned glowing letters back to Paris, filled with tales of glory, of honor, of destiny fulfilled.
He wrote of triumph.
Paris, bleeding and shivering beneath the weight of his victories,
wrote nothing back.
---
In the opulent apartments of Josephine, the light of the afternoon was muted, bleeding through heavy velvet curtains.
The Empress sat at her writing desk, a fresh letter from Berlin trembling slightly in her gloved hands.
It was from Napoleon — grand, sweeping words about new treaties, about how the Prussian court had been humbled, about the glittering future he was forging with every march of his armies.
Not a single word about her.
Not a single question about Paris.
Not about the shortages.
Not about the riots.
Not about her.
Josephine set the letter down carefully, her face an unreadable mask.
Behind her, Madame de Rémusat entered, carrying a fresh tray of tea and a folder wrapped in simple twine.
Josephine gestured for the tea to be placed aside.
Her fingers moved to the folder instead.
Inside: reports from her personal informants — servants embedded among the ministers, ladies-in-waiting planted inside the homes of the city's most powerful families.
She leafed through the pages in silence.
Food riots in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel.
Secret meetings in the basements of the Marais.
Discontent among the lower officers of the garrisons.
She paused at a name.
Fouché.
Josephine's mouth tightened slightly.
The Minister of Police had grown... too silent.
Too still.
And Fouché's stillness was never a sign of loyalty.
Madame de Rémusat hovered near the door, uneasy.
Finally, Josephine spoke, her voice low and cool:
"Send word to our friends among the merchants.
The old families.
Anyone with something left to lose."
Madame de Rémusat hesitated.
"Your Majesty... you mean—"
Josephine turned, her smile sharp and terrible in its sadness.
"I mean to remind them that chaos serves no one.
And that should the Eagle fall...
those who helped it crash will be the first to burn."
Madame de Rémusat bowed quickly and fled.
Left alone again, Josephine stared out the frost-rimmed window, down into the swirling, restless streets of Paris.
The people thought they could break the Empire.
The bankers thought they could bleed it.
The ministers thought they could replace it.
But Josephine — who had survived terror, revolution, and betrayal — knew better:
In the end, it was not force or famine or foreign kings that would decide the fate of France.
It was fear.
And fear, properly wielded,
was stronger than any crown.