October 14, 1806.
Jena, Saxony.
The battlefield stretched out like a shattered painting, grey and broken under the morning mist.
Napoleon sat astride his horse atop a low hill, cloak billowing behind him, boots black with the mud of conquered soil.
Around him, the marshals waited, grim-faced, as the scattered remnants of the Prussian army fled through the fields, their banners torn, their ranks dissolved.
Cannon smoke hung heavy in the air.
The fields below were littered with broken standards, abandoned artillery, and the twisted bodies of men and horses.
Victory.
Complete, decisive, merciless.
Napoleon's gaze swept the ruined landscape.
He said nothing for a long time, simply watched as the enemy fled — no pursuit necessary. Their will was broken more completely than their formations.
Murat reined in his horse beside him, the flamboyant marshal's uniform stained and battered from the charge.
He grinned, wiping blood from his gauntlet.
"We've crushed them, Sire. Jena is ours."
Napoleon nodded once, slowly.
"And Auerstedt?"
Before anyone could answer, a young officer galloped up the hill, his face pale beneath his helmet.
"Marshal Davout reports full victory, Sire," he gasped. "At Auerstedt — the Prussian main force shattered."
A rare smile crossed Napoleon's face, fleeting as a shadow.
"Double victory in a single day," he murmured, almost to himself.
"Austerlitz was not a miracle. This is proof."
Behind him, Berthier and Soult exchanged glances — a flicker of awe, and of something colder: a creeping realization that the man they followed was no longer merely a general, or even an emperor.
He was becoming something more dangerous.
A symbol.
An inevitability.
Napoleon turned his horse sharply.
"Send riders," he commanded. "Every town, every village. They must know. They must see the eagle's wings stretched over Europe."
The officers saluted sharply, spurring their horses away.
Left almost alone on the hill, Napoleon sat still for a moment longer.
In the valley below, the last scattered Prussians threw down their arms.
The sun pierced the mist, striking the battlefield with thin, silver light — and in that light, the crows had already begun to gather.
Napoleon watched them.
Watched them feast.
And said nothing.
---
The news traveled faster than the horses that carried it.
By evening, in the grand halls of Weimar and Leipzig, the whispers had become roars:
— The Prussian army is destroyed.
— The King flees.
— Napoleon marches unopposed.
In the gilded salons of Paris, the impact was like a thunderclap.
At the Hôtel de Ville, citizens pressed against each other, faces alight with disbelief and triumph.
The municipal guards struggled to hold back the surge as proclamations were nailed to the walls:
Victory at Jena! Victory at Auerstedt! Europe bends before France!
Church bells rang out across the city.
Drums rattled through the streets.
Wine casks were smashed open; toasts rose up like hymns to a new god.
At the Tuileries, Napoleon's ministers assembled hastily, robes fluttering, faces flushed.
Talleyrand, ever composed, leaned lightly on his cane as he accepted the congratulations with a slight, amused smile.
He listened to the younger officials cheer wildly, proclaiming the Emperor as greater than Alexander, greater than Caesar.
He said little.
Talleyrand knew:
victory was the most intoxicating drug,
and Paris was already deep in its fever.
In the Marais district, where merchants and artisans had struggled through months of shortages and rising prices, the victory brought a different kind of frenzy.
For a night, the bread lines disappeared.
For a night, debts were forgotten.
For a night, men and women clutched each other in the smoky light of taverns, shouting:
> "Vive l'Empereur!"
As if shouting loudly enough could conjure food into their empty pantries.
At a café near the Seine, a poet stood atop a wine barrel, declaiming verses hastily composed:
> "From the ashes of kings rises France,
From broken swords we forge our crown—
No hand, no nation shall unseat the eagle!"
The crowd roared approval, raising tankards and fists alike.
But in a darkened alley behind the festivities, two men spoke in low, urgent tones.
One wore a butcher's apron.
The other, a tailor's frayed coat.
Ordinary men, invisible to the revelry.
"The bread was cheaper today," the tailor muttered. "But tomorrow?"
The butcher spat into the dirt.
"Tomorrow we pay for today's wine," he said. "And for today's blood."
They said no more.
Above them, the bells of Notre-Dame peeled into the night, silver and triumphant.
And beyond the river, in the hidden offices of the Ministry of Police, secretaries began writing new lists of names.
Not Prussians.
Not enemies abroad.
Names of French citizens — those who had spoken too freely, doubted too openly.
The eagle had conquered.
Now it would watch.
Relentlessly.
Silently.
Without mercy.
---
Two days later, in a gilded room deep within the Tuileries Palace, the celebration took a different, sharper tone.
Napoleon sat at the head of a long table, the map of Europe spread out before him, its colored borders already obsolete.
Around him, the marshals and ministers stood in silence, the echoes of the public's adoration still clinging faintly to their cloaks like perfume.
Napoleon's finger traced the map with methodical precision.
"Saxony will bend," he said calmly. "Hesse will fall without resistance. Prussia is no longer a state—it is a field for harvest."
Berthier, standing at his right hand, murmured agreement, while Fouché, ever the calculating shadow, said nothing, merely adjusting a ledger at his side.
Across the table, Murat shifted impatiently, the wildness of battle still burning in his blood.
"When do we march on Berlin?" he asked, unable to restrain himself.
Napoleon's lips curled slightly — not a smile, but something colder.
"We do not march," he said. "We advance. Berlin is already ours. It only remains to teach the Prussians that they have lost."
He tapped the map sharply, once.
"But," he added, voice hardening, "we must move before winter binds our heels. Speed is victory. Hesitation is death."
The room remained still.
Even now, even after Jena and Auerstedt, the tension was palpable.
The ministers knew: each triumph pushed them higher, closer to the sun — but closer, too, to the flames.
Outside the palace walls, preparations were underway.
Carpenters built new platforms for triumphal arches.
Women embroidered banners proclaiming the Emperor's glory.
Children were drilled to sing odes to his victories.
Yet in the lower halls, among the clerks and messengers, a different kind of news traveled mouth to mouth:
Food shipments delayed.
Grain stores requisitioned for the army.
Taxes to be raised to fund the new campaigns.
And among the nobility, hidden behind silk drapes and crystal chandeliers, whispered fears grew louder.
They had celebrated the eagle's flight.
Now they feared its shadow.
At the far end of the table, Talleyrand finally spoke, his voice a soft ripple in the heavy air.
"Sire," he said, bowing his head slightly, "Berlin may fall. Prussia may yield. But empires built on fear crack more quickly than those built on hope."
Napoleon's gaze pinned him like a hawk pins a trembling sparrow.
"For now," Napoleon said, "fear is sufficient."
And with that, he turned back to the map, dismissing the warning as he dismissed the weakened kings of Europe:
As obstacles,
Not threats.
Not yet.
---
That evening, as Paris roared in the throes of celebration, the corridors of the Tuileries grew colder, emptier.
In her private apartments, Josephine sat alone before a low fire, the orange light playing across her white dress, casting long shadows on the marble floor.
The distant noise of festivities barely touched her room.
She could hear the muffled drums, the cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" echoing from the streets beyond the gardens.
But here, it felt hollow — distant as the songs of another lifetime.
A folded letter lay unopened on the small desk beside her.
From Barras — the old revolutionary, the kingmaker who had once elevated Napoleon and watched him rise beyond reach.
Josephine did not need to read it.
She knew what it would say.
She had heard the murmurs in court:
Napoleon would need a new Empress.
An heir was not a matter of love but of empire.
Her time was slipping away, like sand through jeweled fingers.
She stared into the fire, remembering the days when love had been enough — when a brilliant young general had looked at her not as an asset, but as a miracle.
Now he looked through her.
Past her.
Beyond her.
The door creaked softly.
A figure entered — her son, Eugène de Beauharnais, recently made viceroy of Italy.
He knelt quietly beside her chair, placing a hand lightly over hers.
"You should join them," he said gently. "They are singing songs for you too."
Josephine smiled — a small, brittle thing.
"No, my dear," she said, voice almost a whisper. "They are not singing for me. They are singing for a dream. And dreams... they change."
Eugène said nothing.
He knew better.
In another part of the palace, Lucien Bonaparte — Napoleon's brother — sat with a group of foreign diplomats, laughing too loudly, drinking too freely.
He hated the empire his brother had built.
He hated the chains hidden beneath the laurel crowns.
But he also feared what would come if it cracked.
Around them, in the marble corridors, servants whispered and hurried faster than necessary.
They could feel it.
The Empire stood tall.
Victorious.
Glorious.
But somewhere, deep beneath the surface, the roots had begun to rot.
And rot, once begun, only spreads.