The Men Are Ready to Fight

Pierre Giscard snorted. "And the leather."

"Even if they skinned you alive, you wouldn't be worth two hundred million francs!"

Pierre Giscard rolled his eyes at the old marshal, tilted his head, and retorted.

"It's a loan. They're just using Alaska as collateral."

"What if the Russians don't pay it back?!"

"How do you know they won't? Or have you all colluded behind our backs?"

Pierre Giscard's tactic of turning the accusation back on his accuser was common in business. Soult, however, had been a soldier all his life, and even in old age and declining health, he still had some fire in his belly.

"I'll shoot you dead right now, you traitor!"

Seeing that the old marshal had truly lost his temper, the onlookers immediately took his gun away.

"Mr. Prime Minister, please don't be angry. Mr. Giscard has a point. We still have several years before the loan comes due. We can talk about it then."

"That's right! Mr. Giscard deserves the most credit for successfully negotiating with the Russians!"

"Exactly! Exactly! This is a victory for France!"

"We won! We won big!"

The people around him chimed in one after another. The traitor who, in Soult's words, had spent two hundred million on a freezer had instead become a "hero" in everyone else's eyes.

Soult could only fling his scepter to the ground and storm off. There were too many Orléanist financial capitalists in the cabinet, all conspiring with one another. Even with Guizot gone to North America, he could no longer hold back their rise.

Soult could only go to King Louis Philippe, but the wealthy backers behind the Orléanists had already sounded out the king. Soult came away empty-handed.

In the end, after Soult's repeated appeals, Pierre Giscard was merely dismissed from office. He faced