From the very beginning, Grando had not believed the king could bring reinforcements from Austria to save his kingdom, which was about to sink amid raging storms.
So, as soon as he graduated from seminary, he immediately joined the army. Although he had once wanted to become a missionary, he had also, to some extent, fought alongside Napoleon during the Battle of Toulon.
Yet what happened after the Battle of Toulon made him clearly realize that he could not remain in France. Like the others, he soon went to Switzerland, then moved to Italy with his cousin, and returned to Lyon after the amnesty decree was issued in 1796.
Georgiana sensed an optimism in him, or at least he was unlike certain Lyonnais she had met. Once, during a meeting, she let slip the words "Reign of Terror," and Martin immediately changed the subject.
The local dignitaries of Lyon were unwilling to become entangled in political turmoil, but the continuing grain riots and the Jacobins led by Charlier worsened the situation.
The promotion of a taste for simplicity dealt a devastating blow to the luxury trade, but Lyon's silk industry had already fallen into difficulty before the French Revolution. It was a chain reaction caused by the destruction of the cotton textile industry following the Eden Treaty of 1787, affecting cotton mill owners as well as speculators involved in cotton.
Still, none of that was as terrible as what followed Charlier's execution. In 1793, the Committee of Public Safety decided to make an example of Lyon. After hearing that Lyon had fallen under the control of the Royalists and foreign enemy forces, they ordered the city destroyed, so that both the city and its name would vanish, leaving only a monument amid the ruins.
At the time, there was a